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The globalisation of markets, emerging concepts of sustainable development, and circular economy have defined the boundaries within which organisations must compete and address the needs of key stakeholders. As circumstances change, boundaries are often replaced by the relationships between companies and the communities they serve. Consequently, strategy has become a central aspect of sustainable leadership and the foundation for implementing strategic management in a dynamic system of relationships. Every company is born and grows within social and economic ecosystems. Drawing on the metaphor of biology, ecosystems are described as dynamic interconnections among various elements that influence and foster entrepreneurship. Interconnections between players (such as marketplaces, organisations, governments, and universities) create a flow of expertise, abilities, knowledge, experience, and tangible resources. Economic and social ecosystems involve various actors and components that continuously coexist and interact, leading to the creation of numerous mutual relationships. Consequently, it is crucial for managers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the internal and external environments. Various decision-making tools and strategies can be used to achieve this goal. These tools were developed to assist managers, researchers, and consultants in making informed decisions under complex scenarios. This chapter presents several decision-making strategies and tools, including the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix, General Electric (GE) matrix, Balanced Scorecard (BSC), PEST, PESTEL analysis, and SWOT analysis.

Adapting to external and internal transformations is a difficult task that managers and scholars must face while attempting to keep their organisations alive and well-established. This chapter explores the various decision-making tools that can assist practitioners and scholars to improve their understanding of the external scenario to determine the contemporary appropriateness of these approaches for analysing the environment and their implications for various types of organisations. The chapter investigates the barriers and drivers of these methods and proposes existing alternative paradigms created by academics and practitioners to analyse and comprehend the context. It demonstrates how these decision-making tools can be implemented by providing examples and case studies.

The case deals with the issue of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) in the solar energy market. After completing the case, the student will be able to– develop and apply conventional models of competitive advantage and core competency;– comprehend each step of the business process from a core competency viewpoint;– consider the value of sustainability solutions from a strategic standpoint; and– offer practical templates for creating and implementing a strategy.

This case depicts the challenges faced by Exalta in gaining a SCA because of the imitation of its products by competitors. Exalta, formed in 2008, was among the well-known innovative companies in the solar energy industry in India. In the first 12 years, the company focused primarily on unmet customer demand and developed innovative solar products to address those demands. Overall, over 300 products were launched in the initial years to address the new emerging customer demands. Solar AC, bikes and ventilators were among the popular ones. However, all of its product technology was copied by competitors. In 2021, troubled Exalta was incubated at IIT-Kanpur primarily for a single product, “Magic Inverter,” with substantial funding and IP protection. Despite attempts, Exalta could not capture a recognized market share. In this case, the company’s founder and CEO, Ashutosh Verma, is contemplating two options to gain an SCA: hold the existing and new products or fold the old ones and continue with one or two flagship products, i.e. Magic Inverter and Solar AC.

Graduate, postgraduate level and executive-level courses.

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CSS 11: Strategy.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/EEMCS-12-2022-0526/

Since the introduction of balanced scorecard by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, it garnered considerable research and practice attention across disciplines. Using bibliometric analysis, this study examines trends in balanced scorecard research in last 20 years and identifies future areas of research.

The Web of Science database was used to extract research papers from the 2003 to 2023 period with “Balanced Scorecard” as topic. The final sample consisted of 445 articles. Trends and patterns were analyzed using bibliometric analysis through research profiling and thematic analysis.

The findings reveal that BSC, spanning across disciplines, including business and operations, has enriched the theory and practice of BSC research. Analytical and survey methods were more prevalent than primary studies. Scholars from the USA and the UK have made noteworthy contributions to balanced scorecard research. Emerging themes include integrating human resources, sustainability, subjectivity in performance evaluation and non-financial performance indicators in BSC for better strategic decision-making.

The study would inspire researchers to generate new research questions and hypotheses and help in identifying gaps in the current knowledge base and areas where further investigation is needed. Managers would gain useful insights into performance management by studying the BSC research evolution to find a fit for modern-day industry needs.

The authors’ contribution fills the void by providing useful account of extent research over last 20 years using bibliometric analysis and motivate future research directions.

Drawing on Foa and Foa’s elaboration of social exchange theory, the authors propose that buyers reciprocate perceived commitment on the part of the salesperson and supplier with commitment on their own parts because of strengthening of the relationship’s tacit governance mechanism – cooperative norms.

This study uses data from 155 buyers doing business with a multinational supplier. The buyers were from firms generating less than $100,000 in billings. The salesforce of the supplier firm sponsoring the research is responsible for account management and communicating directly with buyers.

Buyers, who feel that their suppliers are providing a symbolic, long-term, particularistic benefit (commitment), respond with their own strengthened commitment to the relationship; this mutualism is explained entirely by the mediating effect of the relationship’s cooperative norms. Where buyers perceive generally favorable treatment (satisfaction), without these three qualities, their own reciprocal commitment increases directly and cooperative norms play no part. The results also demonstrate the transition of buyer perceptions of the salesperson as they develop into beliefs about the selling firm as a whole.

Drawing on the “reciprocation-in-kind” principle, supplier firms seeking long-term, open-ended commitment from their customers should cultivate it via similarly long-term and open-ended commitments of their own. Attention must be given to the unwritten, often unstated “rules of the road” for business relationships, as these rules represent the mechanism through which investments in long-term, profitable partnerships bear fruit.

The conceptual model draws on and empirically tests Foa and Foa’s framework within social exchange theory to predict what form of buyer reciprocation will result, based on the characteristics of perceived seller-provided benefits. This study illustrates that the tacit governance structure of a B2B relationship – its cooperative norms – plays a critical role in the strength of a buyer’s commitment to its supplier.

The paper aims to examine literature on the issues of the pilot shortage in the United States Air Force and the demographic diversity dilemma within the United States Air Force pilot community and how it relates to the National Defense Strategy. In addition, there is an examination of current initiatives designed to combat these issues.

The paper opted for an exploratory review of 90 sources from 2012 to 2023 to examine the pilot shortage and pilot diversity issues within the United States Air Force. Three theories, the theory of generative interactions, the theory of cognitive diversity and the identity theory, were examined in relation to the barriers to the pilot diversity issue.

The paper provides emergent insights from the literature into the growing pilot shortage and diversity disparity found within the United States Air Force pilot community. These issues were associated with many barriers, including geographic disparity, socioeconomic status, culture, education, mentorship and life balance.

The current initiatives examined are new and, as such, warrant future research. In particular, what are the long-term projections for the youth flight programs? An examination of the effectiveness of improving the pilot shortage and pilot diversity within the Air Force should be further scrutinized in the coming years as new cadets enter pilot training after accession.

This paper highlights a need to further study the effectiveness of youth flight programs and other United States Air Force initiatives in improving pilot numbers and diversity.

Effective project learning can prevent projects from repeating the same mistakes; however, knowledge codification is required for project-to-project learning to be up-scaled across the temporal, geographical and organisational barriers that constrain personalised learning. This paper explores the state of practice for the structuring of codified project learnings as concrete boundary objects with the capacity to enable externalised project-to-project learning across complex boundaries. Cross-domain reconceptualisation is proposed to enable further research and support the future development of standardised recommendations for boundary objects that can enable project-to-project learning at scale.

An integrative literature review method has been applied, considering knowledge, project learning and boundary object scholarship as state-of-practice sources.

It is found that the extensive body of boundary object literature developed over the last three decades has not yet examined the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning and boundary-spanning capacity. Through a synthesis of the dispersed structural characteristic recommendations that have been made across examined domains, a reconceptualised schema of 30 discrete characteristics associated with boundary-spanning capacity for project-to-project learning is proposed to support further investigation.

This review makes a novel contribution as a first cross-domain examination of the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning. The authors provide directions for future research through the reconceptualisation of a novel schema and the identification of important and previously unidentified research gaps.

At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public health) and other industry sectors, began to recognize the limitations of the current fragmented healthcare system paradigm. Primary stakeholders, including employers, insurance companies, and healthcare professional organizations, also voiced dissatisfaction with unacceptable health outcomes and rising costs. Grand challenges and wicked problems threatened the viability of the health sector. American health systems responded with innovations and advances in healthcare delivery frameworks that encouraged shifts from intra- and inter-sector arrangements to multi-sector, lasting relationships that emphasized patient centrality along with long-term commitments to sustainability and accountability. This pathway, leading to a population health approach, also generated the need for transformative business models. The coproduction of health framework, with its emphasis on cross-sector alignments, nontraditional partner relationships, sustainable missions, and accountability capable of yielding return on investments, has emerged as a unique strategy for facing disruptive threats and challenges from nonhealth sector corporations. This chapter presents a coproduction of health framework, goals and criteria, examples of boundary spanning network alliance models, and operational (integrator, convener, aggregator) strategies. A comparison of important organizational science theories, including institutional theory, network/network analysis theory, and resource dependency theory, provides suggestions for future research directions necessary to validate the utility of the coproduction of health framework as a precursor for paradigm change.

In this chapter, we reflect on cognitive aids and their role in strategy work. Strategy research and practice abound with frameworks, models, tools, and processes meant to describe and guide the strategy work of managers. These are all examples of cognitive aids. These aids guide and support managerial cognition, the way managers make sense of the world. What we collectively call the cognitive aids of strategy have a profound impact on the way managers learn about, conceptualize, share, and enact strategy work and strategies in their organizations. Despite the importance of their cognitive role, many cognitive aids in strategy are presented without reference to the underlying cognitive theory that explains why and how the aid might be useful. Tools are presented as useful for management thinking, but without any substantive reflection or exploration of the cognitive reasons. In this chapter, we provide a definition of cognitive aids in strategy and begin exploring the landscape of cognitive theories that can explain why something might be a cognitive aid. We then briefly outline the contributions to the edited volume “Cognitive Aids in Strategy,” and end with an invitation to expand your exploration beyond.

Scenarios are cognitive aids for thinking about the future in a sustained and disciplined manner. Because scenarios must be facilitated, scenarios must be considered in the context of their practice. In the strategic management literature, there has been a considerable conversation on the practical difference between “hot” and “cold” cognition. Thinking in this conventional literature demonstrates how the facilitators of scenario planning workshops establish and channel the productive cognition of their clients away from hot cognition and toward cold cognition. But how? As a thought experiment, we examine whether the sociological concept of “emotional labor” helps explain the cognition management of clients by facilitators during scenario planning. We end by considering how a deeper practical understanding of emotional labor might help facilitators identify mechanisms and adapt their tools to better manage the cognitive-affective dimensions of scenario planning in practice.