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Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

Absorptive capacity, technological collaboration and servitization are analyzed to establish ways to overcome the balance between products and services in manufacturing companies. A fresh perspective is introduced by presenting a framework for innovation strategy, moving beyond product-based R&D.

The hypotheses are tested using data on Spanish firms in the high-tech chemical and pharmaceutical industries through ordinary least squares regression analysis. The sample consists of 112 manufacturing firms included in the Spanish Survey of Business Strategies.

The results show that absorptive capacity facilitates servitization and that technological collaboration moderates the relationship between absorptive capacity and servitization. The synergies between absorptive capacity and technological collaboration for servitization are recognized from the perspective of open innovation as a way of resolving the trade-off between products and services.

Future research should introduce more sources of collaboration by broadening the value chain perspective. Other approaches to innovation may also be considered, including relationships to process innovation.

The results can provide meaningful guidance for companies to determine the key opportunities of servitization driven by absorptive capacity, and the best ways to leverage open innovation and collaboration strategies to exploit such approaches.

This research enriches theories on servitization, open innovation and innovative behavior. Open innovation strategy should be linked to greater servitization activity and should support an open service strategy. This approach is crucial for building innovation capabilities through technological collaboration.

Prior innovation orientation research has mostly focused on performance consequences, with some recent work examining its relationship with innovative practices such as open innovation. Yet, despite this growing body of open innovation research, there are still gaps and limitations. Notably, most prior studies have been conducted in Europe, limiting their generalizability to the rest of the world, and are replicative, exploring performance and competitive outcomes. There is very limited work examining the potential limitations of open innovation. This study extends innovation orientation research and examines the limitations of open innovation in North America.

This study explores the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among 386 North American companies.

This study is novel as it examines the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among North American companies. The research uncovers a linear relationship between innovation orientation and performance, a correlation between innovation orientation and open innovation and a counterintuitive curvilinear relationship between open innovation and performance. The curvilinear relationship, shaped as an inverted u-shape, suggests there are limitations to the strategy's effectiveness, actionable insight to companies, consultants and scholars alike. In the discussion section, findings are further unpacked with regard to their implications for the scholarly literature. The paper concludes with managerial considerations for creating an innovation orientation and the most effective level of open innovation for maximum competitive and performance implications.

Beyond the innovation orientation and open innovation research contributions, this study offers managerial insight for executives seeking to enhance competitiveness and drive firm performance.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive view of the different competition-based approaches that policymakers can exploit to foster external knowledge search and their positioning among innovation policy measures. A growing number of companies have implemented initiatives to access external knowledge to increase their innovativeness, consistently with the open innovation paradigm. Competition-based approaches have received increasing attention by the private sector as a way to access external knowledge. However, despite their potential role as innovation policy measures, a limited attention has been devoted so far to investigate them from the policymakers’ perspective.

To this aim, a two-stage empirical analysis has been carried out to develop a taxonomy of competition-based approaches. The first stage leveraged a multiple case study methodology including a sample of 20 competition-based approaches, while the second one leveraged interviews with Italian and European key informants.

This paper proposes a novel taxonomy including eight competition-based approaches, which differ among each other in terms of policy strategy, scope breadth and output required. Moreover, this paper enriches a well-established taxonomy of innovation policy instruments with the identified competition-based approaches.

This study contributes to the current debate on innovation policy by providing a taxonomy that includes eight competition-based approaches that can be exploited by policymakers to foster external knowledge search as well as their positioning among the innovation policy instruments. The taxonomy will hopefully support policymakers in identifying of the most suitable instruments in the light of their policy strategy and objectives.

Open innovation (OI), by now one of the major concepts for the analysis of innovation, is seen as a methodology for collaboratively designing and implementing solutions by engaging stakeholders in an iterative and inclusive service design process. This paper aims to empirically investigate OI capacities, defined as a cooperative, knowledge-sharing innovation ecosystem, and to explore how it can lead to improved performance of firms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Southeastern European (SEE) countries.

The study builds on the World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD’s) Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) dataset for 2009, 2013 and 2019. Primarily, the research model was estimated using log-transformed ordinary least squares (OLS). Taking into consideration that this method might produce substantial bias, yielding misleading inferences, this study is fitting Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimators with robust standard errors and instrumental variable/generalized method of moments estimation (IV/GMM) approach for comparative results. Secondarily, the research model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the relationship between five OI capacities and firm performance.

The findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between most OI capacities and firm performance, except for innovation, which did not show a statistically significant relationship with firm performance. Specifically, research and development (R&D), knowledge and coopetition are statistically significant and positively associated with firm performance, whereas transformation is statistically significant but negatively associated with firm performance. The IV/GMM estimations’ findings support the view that the firm performance is significantly affected by OI capacities, together with some control variables such as size, age, foreign ownership and year dummy to have a significant impact on firm performance.

This paper fills an identified gap in the literature by investigating the impact of OI on firm performance executed in the specific CEE and SEE country context.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between organizational learning (OL) and technology through the lens of strategic factors and to ascertain future research directions.

The systematic literature review method was applied in three stages to the 76 articles obtained from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and EBSCO databases.

This research revealed the evolution of the role of OL in innovation, performance, knowledge management and technological adoption and showcases a detailed conceptual model relating technology outcomes (technological innovation and capabilities) to OL outcomes (technology absorptive capacity, technological proactivity, as well as information technology [IT] and organization process alignment).

This review includes articles mainly in English and excludes conference proceedings.

This research attempts to guide managers and policymakers to foster an organizational culture conducive to technological adoption and OL. It helps organizations develop strategies for new product development, including strategic alliances and strategic leadership.

This review formalizes the linkages between technological absorptive capacity, technological proactivity and IT with technological innovation and capabilities. It identifies research gaps and elucidates future research directions.

Auxiliary power system is an indispensable part of the train; the auxiliary systems of both electric locomotives and EMUs mainly are powered by one of the two ways, which are either from auxiliary windings of traction transformers or from DC-link voltage of traction converters. Powered by DC-link voltage of traction converters, the auxiliary systems were maintained of uninterruptable power supply with energy from electric braking. Meanwhile, powered by traction transformers, the auxiliary systems were always out of power while passing the neutral section of power supply grid and control system is powered by battery at this time.

Uninterrupted power supply of auxiliary power system powered by auxiliary winding of traction transformer was studied. Failure reasons why previous solutions cannot be realized are analyzed. An uninterruptable power supply scheme for the auxiliary systems powered by auxiliary windings of traction transformers is proposed in this paper. The validity of the proposed scheme is verified by simulation and experimental results and on-site operation of an upgraded HXD3C type locomotive. This scheme is attractive for upgrading practical locomotives with the auxiliary systems powered by auxiliary windings of traction transformers.

This scheme regenerates braking power supplied to auxiliary windings of traction transformers while a locomotive runs in the neutral section of the power supply grid. Control objectives of uninterrupted power supply technology are proposed, which are no overvoltage, no overcurrent and uninterrupted power supply.

The control strategies of the scheme ensure both overvoltage free and inrush current free when a locomotive enters or leaves the neutral section. Furthermore, this scheme is cost low by employing updated control strategy of software and add both the two current sensors and two connection wires of hardware.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use networks to overcome knowledge deficiencies in pursuing innovation. However, balancing the cost and risk of growing networks, especially internationally, with potential gains in knowledge remains a critical challenge. Searching for innovation knowledge in international and domestic networks can be complementary when learning is compressed or as competing when the SMEs capacity to use the new knowledge is exceeded. This paper aims to investigate whether knowledge searches in domestic and international networks are complementary or conflicting in pursuit of innovation.

This study is based on firm-level data set comprising 426 SMEs located in New Zealand, an advanced small and open economy. Using multi-level modelling, this study tests competing hypotheses, asking whether domestic and international network searches are complements or substitutes when seeking ambidexterity.

The research finds that, in contrast to earlier research, which shows increasing network breadth drives innovation activity, SMEs benefit less from knowledge search across combined domestic and international networks for exploration innovation and ambidexterity. In contrast, exploitation shows no effect, suggesting that combined networks could support exploitation.

This paper highlights how SMEs mitigate the influence resource constraints have on the partnerships they form and how this translates to ambidexterity. Specifically, recognising that an opportunistic approach to network development may impose future constraints on SME ambidexterity. From a management perspective, the paper recognises that balancing knowledge search across domestic and international networks can facilitate ambidexterity; however, to prevent spreading resources too thinly, this likely requires exit from early domestic innovation network partnerships.

The purpose of the article is to explore the perceptions of Brazilian game developers about the power relations between them and the sponsors of digital game platforms. It also aims to identify forms of collective action that developers can use to counteract the asymmetry of power.

The research employed an abductive approach, seeking empirical evidence that would challenge consolidated theory. To achieve this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 Brazilian developers. The data were analyzed qualitatively using NVivo software. The aim was to resolve theoretical ambiguities identified in the literature review and to explore unexpected findings.

The study explores Brazilian game developers' perceptions through interviews, revealing their experiences within the industry’s concentrated structure and their use of collective action to navigate power dynamics.

The study's focus on Brazil limits the generalizability of its findings to the broader game development industry.

The study suggests Brazilian game devs can leverage collective action to counteract power imbalance with platforms, collaborate through events and projects and facilitate internationalization of their games.

The study suggests collective action could empower developers to challenge platform dominance and foster a stronger community among Brazilian game developers.

The article’s value lies in examining Brazilian devs' experiences within their specific industry context and highlighting collective action as a potential strategy for developers.