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Trade openness plays a significant role in the growth process of countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of macroeconomic determinants on the trade openness of countries.

The study focuses on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries and the data used were from 1971 to 2011. Panel data econometrics techniques and two stages least square method (TSLS) are used to carry out empirical analysis and robustness testing.

The main finding of the paper is that macroeconomic determinants such as investment both in physical and human capital and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) positively affect trade openness. Further, the size of labour force and currency exchange rate has also impacted trade openness negatively and significantly.

It implies that efficient macroeconomic management matters for higher trade openness. The sampled developing countries are suggested to pay favourable attention to macroeconomic variables if they want to grow in the long run through outward-oriented policies.

This paper is an original contribution in the context of SAARC countries by focusing on the relationship between macroeconomic determinants and trade openness.

Strategic typologies are applied to investigate strategy–performance relationship. The typology of Miles and Snow (1978) is one of them, but the methodology applied for identification of strategic types for archival financial data is questionable on three grounds: no standard procedure for categorization of strategic types; identification of reactor strategy is always ignored; and the behavior of firms’ strategic orientation over time is under-researched. Besides, the assumptions that viable strategies are expected to perform equally well, outperform reactors and distributed evenly are not overwhelmingly supported. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

A refined scoring methodology is developed and used for identification of all strategic types, including reactors, by investigating the consistency of the firms over time. Empirical analysis using seven years of data of 121 joint stock firms of the textile sector in Pakistan is performed to test the assumptions regarding presence, distribution and performance of strategic types.

There is significant difference in the distribution of the strategic types. Pure defenders and pure prospectors are non-existing, whereas a reasonable number of reactors are present. Overall difference in performance among strategies is generally insignificant and viable strategies outperformed reactors. The effect of size on performance is also insignificant. However, there is variation in performance of strategies with variation in size. Strategy is the better predictor of performance than size.

The transition of strategic stance of the firms over time and the identification of reactor strategy from archived financial data are the important outcomes of the proposed methodology. The proposed methodology can be used for any longitudinal study for identification of all possible strategic types and can also be used for any other typological research.

Firms face the paradox of adapting change and remaining stable to control uncertainty simultaneously to maintain their competitive position because both aspects are essential for the firm’s effectiveness. This has raised a debate in the contemporary literature that whether firms should remain consistent or adapt flexibility in their strategic choice to produce better performance? The supporters of both the arguments provide substantial evidence in their favor. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategy-performance relationship in this context along with contingent effect of firm size and industry.

Empirical analysis using seven years financial data of 307 joint stock firms from 12 industries is done by applying Miles and Snow strategic typology. Scoring method is used to classify the strategic orientation of the firms. Univariate and multivariate regression models are applied to investigate the influence of strategy, firm size, and industry on firm performance both individually and collectively.

The results show that most of the firms in Pakistan are consistent in their strategic stance (43 percent) followed by flexible (40 percent) and reactors (17 percent). The mean differences in the performance of consistent, flexible, and reactor strategies show that both consistent and flexible strategies performed equally well and outperformed the reactors. However, there is significant variation in the performance of the strategic types due to the variation in firm size and industries whereas the contingent effect of firm size, industry, and strategy is statistically insignificant.

The methodology used for the identification of transition of strategic stance of the firms over time to know the consistent, flexible, and reacting behavior of the firms from archived data is the important contribution to the literature. The methodology can be replicated in longitudinal studies for identification of strategic groups in typological research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of internationalization of investment on corporate policies through multinational firms (MNFs) and thereby variation in financial performances when compared to domestic firms (DFs) using 10 years’ (2004-2013) secondary data of 153 firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange.

This study applies regression and ratio analyses for testing of hypotheses and other statistics.

The results indicate that the performance of MNFs is better than that of DFs primarily because of internationalization of investments and inventory utilization. The rest of the factors included in the model, namely, cash conversion cycle and corporate governance (CG) indices, have less prominent role in determining firms’ performance.

Sample size was restricted to 153 firms, as complete data for the period selected to carry out the study were available only for these firms. For determining the quality of CG, only sample average has been used as bench mark due to non-availability of industrial average.

The recommendations of the research can be used by economic planners and corporate experts as policy guidelines and bench mark for improving the corporate and economic performance of the country. Besides, these recommendations are beneficial for emerging economies particularly and developed economies generally across the globe.

Economic and financial regulators can get guidance from the findings of the study to adjust national-level corporate planning. For example, State Bank of Pakistan (the central bank of the country) can amend its prudential regulations with regard to maintaining liquidity by corporate units according to the results of the study. Corporate units can directly get guidance and adopt the findings of the study in their corporate planning to improve their performance. The findings and methodology of the research can also be used by research students on further exploring the field.

Splitting the sample into domestic and multinationals firms, separately and jointly analyzing these firms and then comparing corporate strategies of these firms based on location are unique.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategy-performance relationship in a multi-industry setting for joint stock firms operating in Pakistan using Miles and Snow typology. The impact of firm size and industry on performance along with strategy is also investigated. The empirical research evidence on strategy-performance relationship for Miles and Snow typology is updated as well.

Scoring methodology is applied for identification of strategic types, including the reactor strategy. The consistency of the firms over time is also checked. Seven year archived financial data of 320 Pakistani joint stock firms from 12 industries are used for analysis. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance is used for analysis.

Hybrid strategies are practiced by firms rather than pure strategies. The distribution of strategic types is uneven. There are mixed results for performance difference among strategic types for different industries and firm size. Defending and analyzing strategies are better than the prospecting strategies. Reactors performed better in some industries as well.

Proposed scoring methodology can be applied to identify all strategic types including reactors in the longitudinal studies. This can be replicated for other typologies or strategic group classifications. The process for identification of reactor strategy through a consistency check is a unique contribution to the literature, especially when archived financial data are used.

Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.