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The purpose of this study is to review the literature on strategic management in Africa with special emphasis on how strategy constructs have been measured and present a roadmap to help improve strategy research in Africa.

A content analysis of empirical research on strategic management published in journals using data from Africa from 2000 to 2013 is conducted to examine construct measurement practices.

The findings indicate that the average sample sizes in strategy research in Africa is not large as strategy research in general, and have low statistical power. While the studies rely heavily on single-indicator measures, there were also several studies using scale or multiple measures that report reliabilities.

Limitations of the research include small number of studies used, inability to examine journal effects’ of the findings due to few numbers of papers from many of the journals, and lack of examination of the influence of the context and topical areas of the articles on the use of the construct measurement techniques.

The study provides information about the use of construct measurement techniques and power analysis in strategy research in Africa. It further encourages the use of larger sample sizes, the examination of power, and more focus on variables which allow the assessment of reliabilities and validity.

Little is known about construct measurement practices of the empirical research in and about Africa in the discipline of strategic management. This chapter builds on extant research on construct measurement issues in strategic management research, but with the unique value-added contribution of focusing on the African environment where the discipline is beginning to take hold.

Today Lionel Penrose is recognised as the co-author of one of the two leading indices of power in voting legislatures – a field of study that game theory in general, and cooperative game theory in particular, has been reclaiming from sociology and political science since the 1950s. The main claim of this paper is that Penrose developed his index so as to tackle questions that go vastly beyond the narrow domain of voting; namely, acute social issues during the Cold War such as the outburst and propagation of panics, the ideological susceptibility of populations, the escalation of military conflict and the successful installation of authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, by revisiting the history of the Penrose power index, the paper re-evaluates some of its key underlying assumptions: assumptions that have been heavily – and unfairly, as the paper argues – criticised over the last decade.

While organization theories acknowledge the influence of specific assets on dependence and increasingly represent the latter as a structure of mutual dependence (dependence of A on B and dependence of B on A), there is, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical test concerning the impact of specific assets on a structure of dependence. Our chapter aims to fill this gap. It is all the more original in that it considers a case study where dependence changes sides according to the characteristics of the transaction. We examine the dependence between Chilean exporters and European importers when trading fresh produce. Such dependence originates with the need for just-in-time coordination and compliance with a compelling demand in a context of high price uncertainty.

Using a unique dataset from international trade in fresh produce between Chile and the rest of the world, we justify the use of a concentration sales ratio as a proxy for dependence and test the influence of a variety of specific assets on the side of dependence by using both categorical and dimensional approaches. Original findings show that certain transaction attributes have a strong influence on the side of dependence. In particular, the higher the frequency and the level of specific assets such as volume, niche varieties, and joint sales with other products, in the transaction, the greater the likelihood of a higher ratio of dependence for the importer rather than the exporter. Conversely, in the event of low levels of specific assets and less frequent operations, dependence tends to be greater on the side of the exporter.

To operate with high efficiency and minimise the risks of power failures, power systems require careful monitoring. The availability of real-time data is crucial for assessing the performance of the grid and assisting operators in gauging the present security of the grid. Traditional supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)-based systems actually employed provides steady-state measurement values which are the calculation premise of State Estimation. More often, however, the power grid operates under dynamic state and SCADA measurements can lead to erroneous and inaccurate calculation results. The introduction of the phasor measurement unit (PMU) which provides real-time synchronised voltage and current phasors with very high accuracy is universally recognised as an important aspect of delivering a secure and sustainable power system. PMUs are a relatively new technology and because of their high procurement and installation costs, it is imperative to develop appropriate methodologies to determine the minimum number of PMUs as well as their strategic placements to guarantee full observability of a power system. Thus, the problem of the optimal PMU placement (OPP) is formulated as an optimisation problem subject to various constraints to minimise the number of PMUs while ensuring complete observability of the grid. In this chapter, integer linear programming (ILP), genetic algorithm (GA) and non-linear programming (NLP) constrained models of the OPP problem are presented. A new methodology is proposed to incorporate several constraints using the NLP. The optimisation methods have been written in Matlab software and verified on the standard Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 14-bus test system to authenticate their effectiveness. This chapter targets United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7.

The standard approach in measuring demand responses and consumer preferences assumes particular parametric models for the consumer preferences and demand functions, and subsequently fits these models to observed data. In principle, the estimated demand models can then be used (i) to test consistency of the data with the theory of consumer behavior, (ii) to infer consumer preferences, and (iii) to predict the consumer's response to, say, new prices following a policy reform. This chapter focuses on an alternative, nonparametric approach. More specifically, we review methods that tackle the earlier issues by merely starting from a minimal set of so-called revealed preference axioms. In contrast to the standard approach, this revealed preference approach avoids the use of parametric models for preferences or demand. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, we introduce the basic concepts of the revealed preference approach to model consumer demand. Next, we consider issues like goodness-of-fit, power, and measurement error, which are important in the context of empirical applications. Finally, we review a number of interesting extensions of the revealed preference approach, which deal with characteristics models, habit-formation, and the collective model.

On its way to develop a smart grid in Indonesia, one key enabler in the early stage of implementation is advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). Thus, Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), an electrical energy utility company owned by the government of the Republic of Indonesia as the only electricity utility company servicing customers from upstream to downstream in Indonesia, has started AMI program at some main cities. With AMI, real-time energy consumption profile, energy meter status and condition, and customer power quality can be acquired. Subsequently, these data collected by AMI can be used for further smart grid implementation by such IT systems and big data analysis. Instead of its function for smart grid backbone, AMI also significantly support smart energy on the city as a part of smart city initiatives. Nevertheless, its implementation requires more investment than the conventional metering system. This investment needs to be evaluated to define whether AMI is feasible and viable or not. This chapter is intended to observe the feasibility of AMI implementation in Indonesia using cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Two schemes were used as study objects, one scheme in which the communication infrastructure was managed by PLN itself, and the other one in which the communication infrastructure was managed by a third party. From the analysis, it appears that both schemes are proven to be feasible.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on performance management (PM) in former communist Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, to evaluate the state of knowledge in this area and suggest possible directions for future research.

An examination of the literature was undertaken to review the empirical studies treating on PM in ex-communist countries from CEE. A total of 96 journal articles, PhD thesis, and conference papers were identified, categorized, and analyzed according to research questions, methodology, and theoretical framework. Contributions are classified by countries, according to progress in transition process (post-transition/transition countries) and membership in the Soviet Union (Soviet/non-Soviet countries). The review examines publications in four languages (English, French, Romanian, and Russian).

The literature review identified various stages of development of PM research and practice in the different groups of CEE countries.

In post-transition CEE countries, PM research follows the trends settled up in the developed countries (quantitative studies examining the extent of usage of different PM tools, influence of contingent factors, relationship PM-strategy, and impact on company’s performance). Also, the findings illustrate the modernization of PM practices: increasing importance of nonfinancial indicators and integrated performance management systems (PMS), although financial indicators are prevailing.

On the contrary, in transition countries PM research and practices are at an early stage, the reviewed literature highlights some specific issues related to transition context: the dynamic aspect of PM, change management, importance of informal systems, cultural aspects, and business traditions.

Because of the large number of CEE countries and the diversity of their national languages, many studies conducted in native languages have not been addressed in this literature review, which is essentially based on publications in English and French. Only for three CEE countries (Russia, Romania, and Moldova) publications in national language were considered.

This literature review may be useful for practitioners, providing insights on the extent of diffusion and usage of different PM tools and identifying difficulties and pitfalls to avoid in their implementation.

The chapter represents one of the first contributions to the knowledge about PM research and practice in former communist CEE countries. The adopted framework for reviewing and classifying the literature allows identifying the differences in PM research and practices between post-transition/transition and Soviet/non-Soviet countries.

The SCP school prefers to use accounting data for the industry “average” profit rate to measure market power. This article emphasizes that over-reliance on average profit across all firms to infer excess profit might lead to incorrect inferences regarding market power. Based on the conventional insights of Mill, Fawcett, Hobson, and Friedman, this article recommends using the profit rate of the marginal firm (the least efficient firm) as an indicator to measure market power, rather than the industry average profit rate.

This study aims to investigate both market concentration and bank competition of banking across six emerging Asian countries (e.g., Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam) over pre and post the 2008 global financial crisis. The conduct parameter approach following the framework suggested by Uchida and Tsutsui (2005) is used to estimate bank competition in these countries. The study employs both seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) and three-stage least squares (3SLS) to estimate simultaneously the system of equations in our model. Generally we find a negative association between market concentration and bank competition across most of the countries in the study suggesting that banks in concentrated markets collude to generate higher profits. Monopolistic competition was the best description of competitive structure of banking across the majority of countries investigated by this study. The study fills the gap in the banking literature by investigating bank competition, concentration, and their relationship across emerging Asian economies over the 2008 global financial crisis. Moreover, several policy implications for banking industry are suggested.