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This paper aims to argue that national cultural context variables influence open strategy formation processes. This study suggests that country-specific differences may influence open strategy, a form of strategic decision-making and present propositions linking national culture dimensions, national trust orientation and open strategy.

The conceptual framework links the literature on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to the open strategy paradigm. This paper adopts a contingency approach linking national culture to open strategy.

The theoretical arguments demonstrate that uncertainty avoidance, time orientation, power distance, individualism versus collectivism and national trust culture all have a moderating influence on the antecedents and outcomes of open strategy. The findings extend the external validity of the open strategy paradigm and show that a culture-bound explanation of open strategy may be useful to the understanding of open strategy.

The findings highlight the challenges and opportunities that managers face when they adopt open strategy processes in multinational settings and across different cultures. Managers need to be aware that national cultural variables affect how employees behave and how they are likely to act when faced with opportunities for inclusion, shared decision-making and transparency. The findings suggest that training employees ahead of time on the cultural effects of their behavior may aid the successful adoption of open strategy in different cultures.

This manuscript to our knowledge, maybe one of the first to make a direct link between openness and national cultural values. In the process, the conceptual framework extends research on the role of context on openness, as well as research at the nexus of cross-cultural issues and strategic decision-making.

A study of companies in three different industries shows that growing internationalization of business brings about major changes in the positioning of competitors and the appropriate competitive strategies. Only after going through a financial crisis did the companies studied emerge from national to international status.

Nearly two decades into South Africa’s democracy, this chapter describes the most recent policy and strategy initiatives to ensure sustainable development and to enhance the country’s tourism competitiveness. It discusses the key national tourism policies, plans, and strategies, which together provide the framework for tourism development and management in the country. The importance of balancing a “top-down” framework with “bottom-up” local engagement is emphasized as a cornerstone of South Africa’s future tourism journey. In line with the philosophy that “structure should follow strategy”, the institutional framework to manage tourism during the next planning period is outlined. The discussion concludes with the critical success factors to enhance South Africa’s future sustainable tourism competitiveness.

Establishing timely national product design standards is an important cooperative activity capable of capturing economic benefits from having the national product design standard adopted for global commerce. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory analysis of five global economic powers' – Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA – national standards strategy (NSS), comparing them for commonality in institutional standards setting policy approaches, i.e. there should be a general “convergence” in specific NSS policy initiatives among similar, economically developed countries.

The five national standards strategies are evaluated for distinctive policy initiatives, with common policy initiatives combined, resulting in 18 distinctive policy initiatives found among the surveyed population. Each national standard strategy is then compared to the 18 policy initiatives, with commonality recorded.

Contrary to any preconception that economies considered comparable in economic development would tend to converge around similar NSS policy initiatives, the evidence reveals there is less harmonization (the results show convergence is overwhelmingly in the moderate/low categories – 14 policy initiatives, or 77.8 percent), with initial evidence indicating that the degree of public or private institutional involvement in technology standards setting may affect the types of policy initiatives included in a NSS.

The paper is exploratory in nature, with only five nation‐states in the survey.

The paper provides insight into: the strength of a country's NSS versus a competitor nation; and public and private sector development of the national innovation system.

The paper offers an exploratory evaluation of harmonization of NSS across countries and its significance to the national innovation system and global competitiveness.

The purpose of this study is to assess, since the 2006 Fraud Review, recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels relating to fraud, using the Northeast as a case study. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime.

The research for the paper was undertaken by desk reviews of primary and secondary material. The paper also involved face-to-face interviews with personnel from the regional fraud unit and the three North-east police forces’ fraud units. The interviews were semi-structured and were conducted on grounds of anonymity for the personnel and the forces involved, with a focus on trends and issues. The personnel were invited to comment on a draft of the paper in terms of accuracy of the information they provided; no revisions or additions were proposed. Interpretation of that information is the sole responsibility of the author.

The paper finds that, despite the decade since the Fraud Review, issues of effectiveness or relevance of national fraud strategies, absence of incentives and identifiable benefits and continuous influence of competing agendas on police priorities continue to marginalise fraud as a mainstream police function and limit the level of resource committed to what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.

The research looks at the recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels through implementation by four policing units in the North-east. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime. While the research is limited in that, it draws on the experience of three local and one regional fraud unit; its findings support further research about the implementation of strategies and agendas in practice on the ground.

The research validates many of the findings by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and supports the need to review national strategies to ensure effective implementation at local level for what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.

The research raises important issues concerning public concern over fraud where majority of frauds are of high volume, low value with low levels of recovery and usually targeted at individuals but where the policing responses are targeted elsewhere.

The research is the first study on the local implementation of national strategies on fraud and raises positive and less positive aspects of how far national strategies and intentions are addressed on the ground.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This study explores local Qatari job seekers' and employees' perceptions of the workforce nationalization strategy to address an inadequacy in the workforce nationalization literature in Gulf Cooperation Council countries. It also unpacks the factors that attract or discourage local job seekers and employees when considering a new job.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 28 local job seekers who were either currently unemployed or employed and seeking another job at the time of the interviews.

The data revealed that nationals perceive Qatarization as a means to replace expatriate employees with nationals, particularly in the public sector and leadership positions. This misinterpretation of the strategy leads to complications, such as the waithood phenomenon and a sense of entitlement for guaranteed employment. The findings also provide insights into nationals' attitudes toward employment, including job attraction and discouraging factors.

The results provide policymakers with insights into the misinterpretation surrounding nationals' perceptions of workforce nationalization and remedies for better implementation of the strategy.

The study addresses two clear gaps in the workforce nationalization literature: (1) examining how nationals perceive the workforce nationalization strategy and (2) unpacking the factors that make employment attractive or unfavorable for nationals.

Ideas related to “the Nordic” are important in the reconstruction of national identities in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and these countries’ modern national narratives are structurally highly similar. At the same time, there are clear differences between the Nordic countries regarding their national images. The purpose of this study is to a examine the relationship between ideas of the Nordic and national images through a qualitative study of brand manifestations on Nordic web portals for foreign visitors.

The two guiding research questions are: How do Nordic branding strategies and national stereotypes impact on nation-branding content toward visitors in the Nordic region? What traces of the Nordic as a supranational concept can be found when the Nordic is translated into concrete national brand manifestations? The analysis focuses on brand manifestations such as brand visions, codes of expression, differentiation, narrative identity and ideologies.

The analysis shows that clichés about the nations prevail in contemporary brand material and that Nordic branding strategies impact on the portals in diffuse and implicit ways. There are, however, some important common denominators, pointing toward a new Nordic brand related to exotic, untouched yet easily accessible nature, with a focus on pure, fresh and clean food with new tastes, in combination with happy and welcoming people.

The results from the study contribute with insight in how ideas of the Nordic on a supranational level transform when used in concrete and practical branding material. Further, this paper proposes a new Nordic branding focus, which contests traditional Nordic ideas.

This paper aims to help research managers design the performance management process and select measures and indicators, which relate to the strategies of their organisations directly.

In this paper, we will propose strategy maps for national research institutes (NRIs), so that the managers can describe the strategies of their organisations more clearly, accurately and logically. Also, we will propose a new method to set targets for key performance indicators (KPIs), which is named “Forecasting-Objective Achievement System (FOAS)”.

The authors have explored the general rules of the research activity and proposed the strategic map for NRIs, so that the research managers can more clearly, accurately and logically describe the strategy for the organisational development strategy, and build the performance measurement indicators based on it. It allows the managers to transfer the strategy into clear and concrete action initiatives, and the corresponding performance evaluation indicators. Also, this paper proposed a new method for target-setting for performance indicator to drive NRIs do their best to achieve high performance.

First, this paper proposes a framework of strategy maps for NRIs to transfer the strategy into clear and concrete action initiatives, and the corresponding performance evaluation indicators. Also, this paper gives a case study of a research institute in the field of physics to derive KPIs based on its strategy maps, which can show the effectiveness of this approach. But this institute conducts mainly the basic research, and there are other NRIs with different types of research, such as applied research, which have different characteristics with the NRI in the case study.

The authors propose the specific strategy maps for NRIs and a new method to set targets for KPIs. Further, the example of a national research institute is taken to analyze its strategy map and construct a performance measurement indicator system for it, so that the strategies in research management can be transferred to specific action initiatives. New ideas are provided for the performance measurement of national research institutes.

Industrial strategy has been officially out of favour at the national level since the 1980s, although some form of tacit industrial policy has existed for many years under different governments, often partial and usually not codified in official format. The new national Industrial Strategy of 2017 sets out a much clearer intent for how the 2016 Conservative government wants to rebuild the UK industrial base through both national level activity and through local and regional strategies.

At a regional level this is not so new, since the North East has had a variety of regional development strategies and innovation strategies dating back to the 1990s, associated with the implementation of the EU Structural Funds, with the former Regional Development Agency and now with the North East Local Enterprise Partnerships. These typically involved many aspects of the new local Industrial Strategies, so what’s new and what should the region be doing?