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The purpose of this paper is to warn managers of the common missteps that can trip up strategy making and suggest how such pitfalls can be avoided.

Based on their experience and research, the authors identify seven key mistakes and describe the best practices that companies can follow.

The article offers a sophisticated how‐to process managers can use to seek a basis for advantage, say “no” to trying to do everything, focus on long‐term‐value creation, factor in competitor reactions, balance ambitious bets with caution, understand the organization's capabilities, and link vision to execution.

By avoiding these seven basic missteps managers can stay on the path to strategic success.

The authors highlight the best practices for making more effective strategic choices in an easy‐to‐remember and easy‐to‐teach format.

The manner in which a business strategy was formulated ten or even as little as five years ago, no longer applies. This phenomenon can to a great extent be attributed to a shift in the strategic importance of information and knowledge. The aim of this paper is to supply strategic thinkers with a holistic “bird’s eye view” of the interdependency between strategic management and strategic knowledge management. By analyzing the different perspectives with regard to strategy formulation from a business point of view, as well as a knowledge management perspective, a generic model incorporating knowledge management strategy formulation within business strategy formulation has been developed.

As the COVID-19 epidemic ravages the world in the fourth industrial revolution era, the manufacturing sector faces its worst situation in a century. Lean philosophy, renowned as a “warrior philosophy,” can be an able rescuer to these industries. This study aims to identify the hurdles to lean strategy implementation and conduct an analysis to provide cognizance to policymakers, practitioners and decision-makers.

This study aims to identify the obstacles that obstruct lean implementation into seven primary barriers/components, with the fuzzy DEMATEL approach being used to evaluate the critical factors as well as the cause and effect factors among them. Expert opinions are sought to obtain the relevant data for evaluation purposes.

The results reveal that a firm should focus on firm cultural conflict scenario, resources–responses incapability, improve on suppliers’ attitude and execute a proper planning and logistics equation to alleviate the hindrances of implementing lean. As these causal factors influence the effect factors, namely, top management vision, management–employee relationship and human resource building, focusing on them automatically improves the effect factors; thus, the surge to overcome resistance to lean implementation is alleviated.

This research aids in identifying and analyzing lean implementation issues in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. The observations, results and insights drawn can act as a guiding force to rupture the resistance envelope covering the domain of lean implementation and possibly reinstating industries to survive and excel in the business post-COVID era.

This research introduces barriers to lean implementation in a unique way, as it articulates all sections of an industry and group the barriers based on the classification. It further prioritizes the barriers for their importance in the Indian industrial scenario. This would help the industry professionals and managers access the barriers and generate insight on how and where to start implementing lean.

The ideas expressed in this work are based on those put into practice at the Okuma Corporation of Japan, one of the world′s leading machine tool manufacturers. In common with many other large organizations, Okuma Corporation has to meet the new challenges posed by globalization, keener domestic and international competition, shorter business cycles and an increasingly volatile environment. Intelligent corporate strategy (ICS), as practised at Okuma, is a unified theory of strategic corporate management based on five levels of win‐win relationships for profit/market share, namely: ,1. Loyalty from customers (value for money) – right focus., 2. Commitment from workers (meeting hierarchy of needs) – right attitude., 3. Co‐operation from suppliers (expanding and reliable business) – right connections., 4. Co‐operation from distributors (expanding and reliable business) – right channels., 5. Respect from competitors (setting standards for business excellence) – right strategies. The aim is to create values for all stakeholders. This holistic people‐oriented approach recognizes that, although the world is increasingly driven by high technology, it continues to be influenced and managed by people (customers, workers, suppliers, distributors, competitors). The philosophical core of ICS is action learning and teamwork based on principle‐centred relationships of sincerity, trust and integrity. In the real world, these are the roots of success in relationships and in the bottom‐line results of business. ICS is, in essence, relationship management for synergy. It is based on the premiss that domestic and international commerce is a positive sum game: in the long run everyone wins. Finally, ICS is a paradigm for manufacturing companies coping with change and uncertainty in their search for profit/market share. Time‐honoured values give definition to corporate character; circumstances change, values remain. Poor business operations generally result from human frailty. ICS is predicated on the belief that the quality of human relationships determines the bottom‐line results. ICS attempts to make manifest and explicit the intangible psychological factors for value‐added partnerships. ICS is a dynamic, living, and heuristic‐learning model. There is intelligence in the corporate strategy because it applies commonsense, wisdom, creative systems thinking and synergy to ensure longevity in its corporate life for sustainable competitive advantage.

Despite over 30 years of focus on supply chain collaboration, companies continue to struggle to achieve collaborative advantage. To better understand why some companies are able to collaborate for competitive advantage and others can't, the authors explore how managerial commitment enables collaborative capabilities.

The authors employed a longitudinal inductive study, interviewing companies with reputations for intense supply chain collaboration at four different times over 20 years.

The authors identified managerial commitment as a super-ordinate enabler. They describe the dynamics of commitment development and explore three types of commitment: instrumental, normative and transformative. The authors document key antecedents and outcomes of each type of commitment.

Theory regarding the antecedents to commitment to collaborative capability is underdeveloped. The authors elaborate these antecedents and the dynamics that enable or undermine the commitment necessary to build effective collaboration capabilities.

The authors provide insight (i.e. a practical and actionable roadmap) into the process companies use to cultivate commitment to collaboration and value co-creation.

Collaboration is critical to value co-creation, including effective supply chain risk mitigation and lasting sustainability efforts. The authors elaborate a theory of commitment dynamics that explains why most companies never go beyond basic levels of collaboration. At the same time, the authors provide a roadmap for deep, transformative collaboration.

The dependency of academic information services on information technology is growing, particularly as information technology is the primary infrastructure of a digital library. This is compound by the fast changing/developing nature of information technology and the trend towards digitisation. The changing nature of information technology contributes to the need to manage it. The focus of this article is on the management of information technology with specific reference to the changing nature of this resource. To find a suitable model with which to manage information technology the management of change as well the management of technology was studied. In doing so 11 variables (which should be included in a management model) were distilled for literature. Directors of academic information services in the South African territory sector were approached to rank the variables. Of these 11 variables, the first six were identified as key criteria. When existing information technology models were evaluated, these key criteria were used as the most important measured of effectiveness. However, attempts to find suitable existing model that accommodates all six key criteria were unsuccessful. Ultimately, a new model was designed which could be implemented by academic information services (i.e. university libraries).

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize corporate entrepreneurial strategy using collaborative dynamics of contingency and agency theories, and to demonstrate how some constructs of these two theories are integrated to support long-term strategies of entrepreneurial firms in sustaining their competitive advantages and enhancing their performance.

Review of literature on strategic entrepreneurship, firm growth, contingency and agency theories were explored to support the conceptualized framework of the entrepreneurial strategy developed in this paper. The authors adopt a vignette approach to problematize theoretical gaps identified. The vignette was also used to embody the entrepreneurial strategy matrix developed.

This paper suggests that the effectiveness of corporate entrepreneurial strategies is influenced by the impacts of contingent environment and agency problem of goal conflicts. It provides some propositions for qualitative and empirical research that will extend the rigours of strategic entrepreneurship literature.

This paper highlights the implications of understanding and adopting diverse competitive and sustenance strategies. It provides avenues for entrepreneurial firms to take cognizance and use of the contingency and agency approaches to influence their long-term strategic directions to stay competitive. Institutional authorities will also benefit from having a conceptual reference and guide to further improve their entrepreneurship policies.

The authors took three novel steps to address the existing gap in the literature. First, the theories of entrepreneurship, contingency and agency were bound together and unified as a single framework to conceptualize entrepreneurial strategy. Second, the identified gaps were embodied in a vignette to problematize the theoretical issues and lastly, some testable propositions were put forward to explain different forms of entrepreneurial strategy. The authors also developed a corporate entrepreneurial strategy matrix based on the Covin and Miles (1999) forms of corporate entrepreneurship. It forms the basis for the propositions.

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate current government policies in combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought. This paper discusses the menace of desertification, the extent and the impact of drought in Nigeria.

The research reported in this paper was undertaken through review of existing literature, personal observations and interview with some of the residents in the affected areas as well as government officials in charge of programs in combating desertification.

The paper observes that the failure of current government policies include among others the top‐down approach, inconsistencies of government policies, neglect of indigenous knowledge, use of inappropriate technology, sectoral approach, inadequate funding, and inadequate awareness. Having identified the causes of the problem, this paper proposes that the national policy for drought and desertification should ensure sustainable development based on proper management of human‐environment interactions in the affected areas.

The evaluation method performed in this paper allows us to analyze the factors responsible for the failure of government policies in combating desertification in Nigeria. This paper suggests that a number of complementary policies, strategies and management approaches be put in place and such must take cognizance of the existing institutional settings and professional groupings as well as the complex historical, social, cultural, and legal considerations.

The paper provides a rational, holistic, practicable and comprehensive approach for finding solutions to the problems of drought and desertification in Nigeria.

Development theory emerged as an important concern during the post‐World War II era. Though the 1950s witnessed the demise of colonialism, Western hegemony continued to exercise an overbearing influence not only on global economic and political affairs but also on ideas, theories and cultural patterns. Thus, the initial phase of development theory was dominated by a pronounced Eurocentric bias. Notwithstanding the fact that the Western model of development grew out of a specific historical and cultural experience, it came to be posited as a universal project. For over two decades it held sway over the fortunates of both the developed and the developing countries. However, from the 1970s onwards the magical aura surrounding the Western model began to wear off. The adverse consequences of the project of modernity and development in the technologically advanced countries of the West as well as in the Third World countries became too glaring to be covered up. The disenchantment with the Western model of development led to a search for alternative perspectives and strategies. Furthermore, the whole notion of development has come to be subjected to a thorough‐going critique.

This paper aims to investigate the subject matter of Islamic economics that will be the object of a study as a discipline by classifying and unifying different approaches proposed by Islamic economists.

The paper is a conceptual paper using discursive analysis analysing the perspective and approaches proposed by Islamic economists in defining economic problems from an Islamic perspective. The perspective and approaches proposed are classified and analysed for their implications in constructing the subject matter of discipline.

Islamic economics, as a new body of knowledge, needs to clarify the economic problems that will be its subject matter. The paper brings an insight into the subject matter of Islamic economics as conceived by scholars in two approaches, namely, economic problems “as they are” and economic problems “as they should be”. The paper also proposes a unified perspective in defining the subject matter of Islamic economics for further development of the discipline.

This paper only provides philosophical guidance for researchers in mapping the problems and the goals of the policy being studied, although it does not offer any practical use for policymaking as each policy is faced with different and specific cases. This paper may be used to assist future researchers in shaping other unexplored fields in Islamic economics as a body of knowledge.

Islamic economics as a discipline will be strengthened if it has a clear subject matter that will be the object of study. However, the conception of economic problems proposed by Islamic economists is based on life-reality, i.e. of what human beings face in their life (practical-type economic problems as they are) and based on life guidance from the Qur’an on how human beings should live as well as life-objectives, i.e. of what goals he should strive for (ideal-type economic problems as they ought to be) brings implication that there are differences in determining the object of study of Islamic economics.

This paper promotes the unification of two conceptions of economic problems proposed by scholars by defining Islamic economics as “a study of resource appropriation to realize human well-being (maslahah)”. This suggests that economic problems as manifested in life reality will be studied within the grand objective of life in Islam (maqasid al-Shariah), and economic problems as perceived in life goals will be studied in the context of life reality. Islamic economic theory will be formulated not only to solve the apparent problem of “what is” but also formulated in a way that refers to goals (ideals) of “what ought to be” that will provide solutions to current economic problems according to certain vision and to take steps to move in that visionary direction.