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The purpose of this paper is to attempt to develop a measure of competitive advantage by identifying a stipulative definition, composing an operational definition and constructing a measurement variable.

The paper undertakes critical literature review, cognitive interviews as well as a pilot and full study, which were carried out by applying a cross-sectional, self-administered e-mail survey with questionnaire in a fillable text-processing file, in order to develop a valid and reliable measure of competitive advantage.

The results have led to the identification of a conceptually robust stipulative definition, the composition of a comprehensive operational definition and the construction of a qualified variable, making the development of a valid and reliable measure of competitive advantage possible.

The newly developed measure of competitive advantage, exempt from past conceptual problems, could be used for valid measurements in future empirical studies in the field of strategic management. At the same time, authors encourage future tests of the newly developed measure's reliability and validity.

The provision of a conceptually clear stipulating definition and a comprehensive operational definition for competitive advantage could increase practicing managers’ awareness relating to the conceptual nature as well as the latent expressions of competitive advantage.

The findings contribute to the evolution of the strategic management field by providing a valid and reliable measure of competitive advantage that is applicable under any leading theoretical perspective in strategic management and it could better serve the needs of both empirical research and management practice.

The purpose of this paper is to create actionable knowledge, thereby supporting and stimulating practitioners to improve processes in the financial services sector.

This paper is based on a case base of improvement projects in financial service organizations. The data consist of 181 improvement projects of processes in 14 financial service organizations executed between 2004 and 2010. Following the case‐based reasoning approach, based on retrospective analysis of the documentation of these improvement projects, this paper aims to structure this knowledge in a way that supports practitioners in defining improvement projects in their own organizations.

Identification of eight generic project definition templates, along with their critical to quality flowdowns and operational definitions. An overview of the distribution of improvement projects of each generic template over different departments and the average benefit per project for each department. The generic templates give people with knowledge about the process under improvement the ability to use their knowledge effectively in the form of an improvement project.

Due to increasing international competition, financial service organizations must continuously improve in order to secure a competitive advantage. This paper turns continuous improvement from an abstract concept into something tangible and achievable, by giving practitioners with local knowledge tried and tested templates to identify promising themes for process improvement, and to make effective project definitions.

The purpose of this paper is to present a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change, to address the conceptual confusion around vulnerability and related concepts.

The framework was developed using the method of formalisation – making structure explicit. While mathematics as a precise and general language revealed common structures in a large number of vulnerability definitions and assessments, the framework is here presented by diagrams for a non‐mathematical audience.

Vulnerability, in ordinary language, is a measure of possible future harm. Scientific vulnerability definitions from the fields of climate change, poverty, and natural hazards share and refine this structure. While theoretical definitions remain vague, operational definitions, that is, methodologies for assessing vulnerability, occur in three distinct types: evaluate harm for projected future evolutions, evaluate the current capacity to reduce harm, or combine the two. The framework identifies a lack of systematic relationship between theoretical and operational definitions.

While much conceptual literature tries to clarify vulnerability, formalisation is a new method in this interdisciplinary field. The resulting framework is an analytical tool which supports clear communication: it helps when making assumptions explicit. The mismatch between theoretical and operational definitions is not made explicit in previous work.

This article discusses the three approaches for setting capital charges for operational risk as proposed by the New Basel Accord. The article addresses a series of questions raised by the Basel proposal related to defining, measuring, and reserving for operational risk. The author suggests that capital reserves may actually serve as a deterrent to reducing operational losses.

This paper has two purposes: to identify and explain the major forces that are causing the increasing need for operational reporting and intellectual capital (IC) reporting for European companies; and to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for operational and intellectual capital reporting if such reporting is to be meaningful for information users.

The approach for this paper has been to examine relevant papers, reports, guidelines, compendiums, annual reports, opinions, submissions and legislation.

Eight determining forces are identified that make the basis of the case for the provision of operating and IC information: the long‐standing global dominance and growth of the US economy; the emergence of business models other than the value chain (especially the emergence of network businesses); the changing nature of stock exchanges; the influence of different investment fund types (mutual, pension and hedge funds); the roles of buy‐side and sell‐side analysts; global and European investment index development; rating agency activity; and financial reporting and corporate governance regime development.

The eight forces are interdependent and immutable. Comprehensive operational and IC reporting are unavoidable. Accordingly, the authors propose that the necessary and sufficient conditions for adequate enterprise information reporting are: a legal requirement for mandatory operational and IC reporting and attendant regulatory framework(s) where the legal framework is based on the concept of neglect; key operating and IC resource status and activity performance definitions and metrics that reflect the enterprise's underlying business model(s); and (3) a mapping of the capitalized operational and IC investments that are by definition normally expensed to the financial report accounts.

The authors believe that no one has previously formally proposed a mandatory operational and IC reporting requirement; a legal reference frame of reference based on the legal concept of neglect; standard definitions for operational and IC performance metrics; a reference framework for information quality that is, inter alia, based on the consistency, comparability and comprehensiveness of reported metrics; and the requirement to map all capitalized IC resources back to the financial reports of the company.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a theory-based approach to defining the corporate reputation construct.

The approach taken is to describe how to create a well-formed nominal definition of a construct and then show how this definition is translated into an operational definition that guides the selection of an appropriate measure. New definitions of corporate social reputation and appropriate measures of this construct are provided to illustrate this framework.

The definitional framework used suggests that many measures of corporate social responsibility and reputation are under specified. Thus, the measures derived from these definitions are poorly constructed. The strengths and weaknesses of three new types of measure of corporate social reputation are reviewed.

For scholars the advantages of creating a well-formed definition are that it will lead to a valid measure of the construct under investigation. This will then help to better interpret what are significant findings and non-findings of empirical research.

This paper is an extension of the author’s previous work on defining the corporate reputation construct. Because what is meant by corporate social responsibility is contested amongst scholars this and related constructs need more precise definition and measurement. This paper offers a theory-based approach to achieve this aim.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of configuration on supply network capability. It was believed that a configuration perspective might provide new insights on the capability and performance of supply networks, a gap in the literature, and provide a basis for the development of tools to aid their analysis and design.

The methodology involved the development of a configuration definition and mapping approach extending established strategic and firm level constructs to the network operational level. The resulting tools were tested and refined in a series of case studies across a range of sectors and value chain models. Supply network capability assessments, from the perspective of the focal firm, were then compared with their configuration profiles.

The configuration mapping tools were found to give new insights into the structure of supply networks and allow comparisons to be made across sectors and business models through the use of consistent and quantitative methods and common presentation. They provide the foundations for linking configuration to capability and performance, and contribute to supply network design and development by highlighting the intrinsic capabilities associated with different configurations.

Although multiple case networks have been investigated, the configuration exemplars remain suggestive models. The research suggests that a re‐evaluation of operational process excellence models is needed, where the link between process maturity and performance may require a configuration context.

Advantages of particular configurations have been identified with implications for supply network development and industrial policy.

The paper seeks to develop established strategic management configuration concepts to the analysis and design of supply networks by providing a robust operational definition of supply network configuration and novel tools for their mapping and assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically validate an instrument containing operational measures of lean service. The instrument is intended for use by both researchers and practitioners.

The instrument was developed and validated in an iterative process between theoretical and empirical insights. Drawing on a wide selection of frequently cited papers on lean service, a preliminary list of items was generated. These items were then vetted through four steps in order to achieve high validity. Empirical refinement and validation included workshops and semi‐structured interviews with expert practitioners, as well as testing the instrument's ability to discriminate between high and low adoption of lean and portray changes during lean service adoption.

The instrument contains 34 items that assess enablers of lean adoption, lean practices, and operational performance. Empirical validation suggested the instrument was able to discriminate between high and low adoption of lean service, as well as portray changes over time during lean adoption.

Practicing managers will be able to use the instrument in order to track progress during lean service adoption, thereby identifying and acting upon deviations from planned progress.

The paper represents the first comprehensive attempt to develop an instrument for assessing lean service adoption. Through this instrument, operational definitions of lean service will allow researchers to measure the level of lean service adoption, and using this information, to develop knowledge of for instance the contingencies to lean service adoption, the problems and pitfalls in lean service adoption and the feasibility of transferring practices to various service settings.

Despite extensive adoption of Simons’ Levers of Control (LoC) framework, there is still considerable diversity in its operationalization which impedes the coherent development of the literature and compromises its value to researchers. The purpose of this paper is to draw researchers back to the conceptual core of the framework as a basis for stable, consistent definitions of the domain of observables.

We derive the conceptual core of the framework from Simons’ writings. We highlight instability in existing operational definitions of the LoC, weaknesses in the extent to which these definitions reference this conceptual core, and inconsistencies in the restriction of LoC to formal information-based routines.

We draw on the inconsistencies identified to build the case for commensuration or a “common standard” for the framework’s use on two levels: the constructs within the framework (through reference to the conceptual core of the framework) and the framework itself (through explicit inclusion of informal controls).

We illustrate the benefits of commensuration through the potential to guide the scope of the domain of observables in empirical LoC studies, and to study LoC as complementary or competing with other management control theories.

Our approach to resolving tensions arising from inconsistencies in the empirical definitions of LoC differs from others in that we focus on the strategic variables underlying the framework to define the conceptual core. We believe this approach offers greater potential for commensuration at the level of the constructs within the framework and the framework itself.

Recent accounting research has connected the coercive and enabling types of formalisation (C/E) (Adler and Borys, 1996) with the distinction between diagnostic and interactive controls (D/I) proposed by Simons (1995, 2000) to tackle research questions on complex control situations involving both the degree of employee autonomy and patterns of management attention. The diverse conceptual approaches used for connecting C/E and D/I have led to fragmentation in the literature and raise concerns about their conceptual clarity. In this paper, we assess the conceptual clarity of various forms of connection between C/E and D/I. Firstly, we conduct an in-depth content analysis of 59 recent papers, and inductively identify three points of conceptual ambiguity and divergence in the literature (namely, the perspective from which a phenomenon is studied; whether categories capture choices driven by design or by style-of-use; and the properties of control systems). We also observe that the literature proposes various forms of connection (i.e. coexistence, inclusion, and combination approaches). Secondly, we use the three detected points of ambiguity and divergence as assessment criteria, and evaluate the extent to which conceptual clarity is at risk under each form of connection. Based on this assessment, we provide guidelines to enhance the conceptual clarity of the connections between C/E and D/I, propose several research models, and indicate opportunities for future research in this area.