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In this chapter we examine various human resource management (HRM) implications involved in the leadership of fluid teams. Leadership of fluid teams, which are distinguished by their dynamic composition, requires consideration of issues that may not be as pertinent for stable teams. In particular, we focus on the concept of familiarity. Composing and leading teams with members exhibiting varying degrees of familiarity with one another creates obstacles to effective and efficient functioning and may ultimately lead to poor performance. With this in mind, leaders must pay particular attention to issues of coordination, and composition such that a broad range of generalizable teamwork skills exists within the team. Within this chapter, we explain the concepts of fluid teams, team leadership within fluid teams, and other relevant concepts related to the formation of familiarity. Next, we thoroughly review extant empirical and theoretical research within these areas. We identify areas of correspondence among the various concepts and findings of the reviewed studies and generate an integrated model of fluid team leadership. To conclude, we highlight the distinct HRM implications associated with the use, and leadership, of fluid teams.

In this chapter, we assume the following: (1) the root cause of most organizational problems is culture and leadership, (2) executives seldom want to deal with these root causes, (3) because life is uncertain, organizational change is an emergent process, (4) most change processes unfold by reconstructing social reality, (5) the change process is inherently relational, (6) effective change efforts are enhanced by increasing the virtue of the actors, (7) change is embedded in the learning that flows from high-quality relationships, and (8) change agents may have to transcend conventional, economic exchange norms in order to demonstrate integrity and to build trust and openness. Drawing on the field of positive organizational scholarship, we focus on the change agent. We review the literature on self-change and offer several paths for becoming a positive leader.

To examine issues of standardization and adaptation in global marketing strategy and to explain the dynamics of standardization.

This is a conceptual research paper that has been developed based on gaps in prior frameworks of standardization/adaptation. A three‐factor model of standardization/adaptation of global marketing strategy was developed. The three factors include homogeneity of customer response to the marketing mix, transferability of competitive advantage, and similarities in the degree of economic freedom.

The model through the use of feedback effects explains the dynamics of standardization.

Future research needs to empirically test the model. To enable empirical validation, reliable and valid measures of the three factors proposed in the model need to be developed. Additionally, the model may be used in future research to delineate the impact a variable may have on the ability of a firm to follow a standardized global marketing strategy.

The three‐factor model aids decisions relating to standardization in a global marketing context.

The paper furthers the discussion on the issue of standardization. Through the identification of three factors that impact standardization/adaptation decisions, and the consideration of feedback effects, the paper provides a foundation for future research addressing the issue.

The study here helps to fill the gap between the current practices of management performance audits for firms and government agencies. The study advances recent theories of program evaluation and marketing management auditing. While the application in this chapter refers to government agencies managing destination marketing programs (tourism agencies), the algorithmic model construction is applicable for all management audits. The study applies the perspectives from two streams of theory to describe five relevant activities for managing destination marketing programs: scanning, planning, implementation, assessing, and administering. The analysis proposes impact assessments to improve management performances of DMOs via checklists for assessing the quality of information in tourism-management performance audits. Checklists can serve as a management tool by management performance auditors and by DMO executives to enhance the quality in executing destination marketing programs. A meta-evaluation of 10 tourism management audit reports identifies good and bad practices. The findings indicate that substantial improvements are possible in the practice of DMO’s management performance auditing, and the proposed checklist may ensure both high quality performance audit reports and improved performances in DMO practices.

To create and sustain a resource-based competitive advantage, managers acquire and develop specialized resources as they grow their firms. The authors argue that an important part of committing to a resource-based strategy is a willingness to keep spending on specialized resources during periods when sales and profits are down. The authors seek to validate this conjecture by examining whether such resource-based commitment to a customer-centered strategy results in improved customer satisfaction. The authors use the stickiness of selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses to capture this commitment empirically. The authors first document that future customer satisfaction is positively associated with SG&A cost stickiness, consistent with the premise that the retention of specialized SG&A resources during low demand periods helps firms to build and maintain relationships with customers over time. Next, the authors test whether expected future benefits of customer satisfaction are enhanced when SG&A cost stickiness is higher. The authors find that the positive relation between Tobin’s Q and customer satisfaction is positively moderated by SG&A cost stickiness. Finally, the authors test whether earnings persistence, a quality of earnings associated with sustained performance over time, is positively associated with the interaction between customer satisfaction and SG&A cost stickiness. The authors find that it is. Their evidence supporting these predictions is consistent with the conjecture that resource-based commitment reflected in cost stickiness is an important dimension of creating and sustaining a resource-based competitive advantage.

While the strategic management literature extols the virtues of engaging in strategic planning for superior performance, how a dynamic strategic planning capability can be developed remains underexplored; a knowledge void addressed by the paper through applying knowledge-based theory.

A mail survey was sent to high technology firms randomly sampled from the Kompass Directory of UK businesses. Firms were sampled at the SBU level, given the focus on strategic planning capability.

An organization’s strategic planning capability derives from extensive information distribution and organizational memory. While learning values is non-significant, symbolic information use degrades the development of a strategic planning capability.

By investigating the contributory activities that lead to strategic planning capability development, the findings establish how strategic planning materializes in organizations. Further, the differential effects found for knowledge management activities on strategic planning capability development extend empirical studies that suggest knowledge is always a central tenet of strategic planning.

A set of key knowledge activities is identified that managers must address for strategic planning capability development: strategic planning routines and values of search, analysis and assessment should be appropriately informed by investments in knowledge dissemination and memory on a continual basis. Meanwhile, information misuse compromises strategic planning capabilities, and managers must protect against out-of-context or manipulated information from infiltrating into organizational memory.

Despite the advent of the knowledge-based theory and its core premise that capabilities derive from knowledge management activities, little research has been conducted into demonstrating the knowledge-based antecedents of a strategic planning capability.

Arguing that it is necessary to look into specific global leadership processes in specific contexts, this article focuses on collective global leadership in self-managed multicultural teams using an input-process-output model. Building on a study of nationally and culturally diverse self-managed teams, our work demonstrates that collective global leadership in these teams is critical for team performance (output). Our study also examines some of the affective or attitudinal antecedents of collective global leadership in self-managed multicultural teams (process) and their members’ goal orientations (input). Our findings suggest that a team learning orientation may greatly help multicultural teams overcome the liability of cultural diversity, create a positive intra-team environment, and enable collective global leadership. Our research also suggests that team performance orientation moderates the above effects.

Very little is known about why, how and to what effect firms deviate from intended marketing plans. The aim of this paper is to extend the understanding of this phenomenon, post plan improvisation (PPI), and begin to identify and categorize such deviations along with their apparent causes and outcomes.

Using the critical incident technique, 384 incidents of PPI were gathered and systematically classified from marketing planners (managers who use marketing planning software) on six different continents using an online survey.

The principal contributions of this study are: the systematic development of a taxonomy for post-plan improvisations; the reported frequencies associated with those categories; and tentative findings regarding relationships between the causes, deviations, and success of PPI. Improvisations that were prompted by changes in external market factors were more likely to be judged by planners as having been successful than those made for reasons internal to the firm. The results also suggest that there exists an optimal level of PPI, that improvisations in pricing are likely to result from changes in the external macro environment, that improvisations in promotion are likely to be responses to competitors, and that managers who are less experienced at planning are less successful than experienced planners at improvisation.

Due to the inherent unpredictability of improvisational decision making, few empirical studies have attempted to capture details regarding specific deviations from intended actions. This study is the first attempt to capture and categorize those data in order to allow for more meaningful future investigations.

This study aims to examine the relevance of strategic marketing planning in this agile era and its effect on firms’ international performance and explores conditions under which the influence of planning changes.

Based on contingency theory, a conceptual model is tested based on survey data from internationalizing firms. Data were analyzed using partial least squares -structural equation modeling.

Marketing strategy planning is (still) associated with enhanced performance, and depends on external and internal contingencies. While the planning−performance relationship is amplified by market sensing (external contingency), surprisingly, it is decreased in presence of high tolerance for failure (internal contingency).

Findings seek to transform marketing planning in international business practice by requiring that its implementation receives the attention of senior management.

Marketing strategy planning should not be deemphasized. While planning appears to be undergoing an identity crisis, practitioners’ attention to marketing planning is warranted.