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The purpose of this paper is to conduct a structured review of the literature on the factors affecting the strategic thinking of an organization. This study offers some theoretical insights by analysing the divergent or analogous views of authors on these factors by analysing the empirical studies carried out in the literature.

An empirical method of conducting a structured literature review has been adopted in this study. Theory context characteristic methodology framework and meta-analysis are the methodologies applied to analyse the different empirical studies conducted in the literature and determine the variation or similarities in the views of authors over the same factor based on their effect sizes. This study analyses over 45 different empirical studies in the literature conducted on the factors affecting strategic thinking.

This study explains how the factors have been similarly or differently explained by the authors in the literature. This analysis gives a better understanding of the factors affecting strategic thinking and quantitatively amalgamates the current empirical studies carried out in the literature. The effects sizes generated for each factor helps in determining the homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the factor.

The study is limited only to analyse the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the factors affecting strategic thinking at an organisational level. This study can be further extended by analysing the type of effect these factors have on the strategic thinking of the organisation.

The findings of this study identify the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the factors affecting strategic thinking in an organisation. This helps the top management to concentrate on these factors, which might develop a strategic thinking nature in the organisation, leading to the better formation of strategies, and successfully implement them in their businesses.

The study fills the unattended gaps in the literature by analysing the homogeneous and heterogeneous nature of the factors affecting the strategic thinking of an organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to implement the strategies selection process in a proposed formulated mathematical framework to prioritize selected strategies with the interaction of other groups of strategies, known as the strategies interaction model (SIM).

SWOT analysis is a popular useful strategic planning tool, which analyzes organizations internal and external factors. The traditional SWOT procedure lists internal and external factors and derives four groups of strategies based on the organization’s strategic position. SWOT is easy to use as a business analyzing tool, while it is not competent enough for strategic formulation. With the emergence of the economy’s vicissitudes, undulations in the markets and multiple changes, and various variables in the industrial competitive environment, selection of the organization strategies confront uncertainty in decision making. The SIM framework presents a solution to select alternative strategies for organizations in unpredictable situations.

The findings show that SIM is a reliable approach to evaluate, select and rank organization’ strategies. SIM proposes alternative strategies due to the uncertainty of the organization’ environment with respect to the four strategic positions. The SIM’ proposed ranking process is in accordance with the highest impact of each strategy on each other. Furthermore, it possesses advantages of AHP, ANP and other applied multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques in SWOT analysis.

In this paper SIM is applied within a dairy company located in the north of Iran.

SIM has the advantages of the classic SWOT and fills the gaps of MCDM methods application in the SWOT analysis. Moreover, it provides a formulated algorithm for the organizations to face the uncertainty of the environment. SIM philosophy can be widely used in the decision and managerial implications.

This paper aims to fill the existing gaps in literature which deal with both the application of a socially oriented philosophy to the theme of strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) integration and to the systematic analysis of the processes of strategic CSR management, and to create a connection between social management philosophy and the dynamic approach to CSR integration based on the strategic management processes. In particular, this study aims at creating a conceptual model to highlight, in a structured and organic way, the dynamic relationships, based on a social management philosophy, characterizing the integration of CSR in the different strategic management processes: formulation and implementation of both intended and emergent strategies. In relation to these goals, the following research questions are formulated: What are the most important strategic management processes in which to integrate CSR following a social management philosophy? How does integration (strategic CSR) based on social management philosophy impact these processes? How do strategic CSR processes based on social management philosophy determine strategic change? Which are the management tools which support integration based on social management philosophy?

The work is a conceptual paper. The paper has been developed as follows: the identification of the theoretical gaps; the definition of the research objectives; the literature review about both CSR integration and strategic management in a dynamic perspective; the formulation of the research questions; the conceptual analysis, based on social management philosophy, of the relevant propositions related to the dynamic approach to CSR integration; the building of the conceptual model based on the propositions; and the description and the analysis of the model.

In this model, three circles of change that are able to describe the integration of CSR into strategic management have been identified: A, the circle for achieving the strategic intent; B, the circle for formulating the strategic intent; and C, the circle of bottom-up innovations.

From a managerial perspective, it is possible to point out the following implications related to the integration of CSR into strategic management and the achievement of a strategic CSR: as for change dynamics which are linked to the formulations of the intended strategy, it is fundamental to develop a social management philosophy; to achieve the strategic intent, it is necessary to incorporate CSR actions into core activity of value chain; to favour the socially oriented bottom-up innovations, it is necessary to define a favourable organizational context; the strategic CSR must be supported by integrated tools and methodologies that make the rationalization of processes of change possible; and the application of tools and processes, even sophisticated ones, which are not based on social management philosophy may lead, in the long run, to negative tensions among stakeholders, as well as to serious repercussions on the firm’s management and its performance.

It is possible to pinpoint other implications for the society: the circle for achieving the strategic intents, with the aim of improving the execution phase, increases the positive externalities and reduces the negative externalities of the economic activities; the circle for formulating strategic intents allows to identify a win–win solution for CSR issues; and the bottom-up entrepreneurship increases the chances to find innovative solutions which combine social aspects and competitive aspects.

The analyses provide an integrated approach, connecting strategic management and CSR in a dynamic perspective.

Traditional feasibility analysis is focused on the immediate and urgent needs of a new venture start-up. All four parts of the feasibility analysis (product/service, industry/market, organizational, and financial) are valuable and essential, but what is missed is a part that provided attention to the longer-term requirements for success and sustainability. A fifth strategic feasibility analysis is needed, focused on the long-term sustainability of the new venture. This strategic/contingent context-dependency lens considers the organization's long-term survival, confirming that organizational success depends on the new venture's ability to emphasize its uniqueness and fit with its external environment.

This paper takes advantage of the decades-long literature review in Strategy to combine known data with entrepreneurial practice in undertaking the feasibility analysis.

This enhanced feasibility analysis adds a strategic lens beyond the traditional four-part feasibility analysis, resulting in identifiable value-added benefits and awareness of potential opportunities or threats in the longer term.

This research is conceptual and theoretical at this point, without field implementation.

New venture failure is an ongoing concern for many. This suggested strategic lens, especially the sustainability aspect (beyond the “what-do-we-need-to-do-to-open-the-doors” of much feasibility analysis) may prove very useful. Competitive advantage is examined in the traditional feasibility analysis, but this strategic lens suggests a longer term examination, and engages with competitor response.

If adopted, this enhanced analysis may lead to greater success for new venture start-ups, thus less wasted time, energy and money.

This is the first attempt at adding a focused strategic lens to the traditional entrepreneurial feasibility analysis. This may seem like a simple and elementary shift of perspective, but the implications are huge, and take advantage of the decades-long research stream in strategic thinking and planning.

This paper aims to help scholars to know the frontiers in the strategic management field. On studying, it was noted that business strategic management originated from America in the 1960s and has experienced more than half a century. However, strategic management development lacks systematical summary in the twenty-first century. The scientometric method was appliedto find out the frontiers and progress of the research of strategic management in the twenty-first century, based on the literature from 2001 to 2012 in the Strategic Management Journal.

In the paper, the authors mainly used the scientometric method and applied keywords, co-occurrence method combined with multistatistical methods and mutation words analysis, author co-citation, literature co-citation and keywords co-occurrence (national).

The findings show that the strategic management research focuses on the following theories and academic thoughts: knowledge-based view, network organization research and dynamic capability are the mainstream; besides, strategy risk, the stakeholders analysis of strategy management, corporate reputation and strategic concept also attract the attention of researchers; Barney, Teece and Porter have made significant contributions to strategy management research since the twenty-first century.

The findings in the paper will help scholars in the field of strategic management to know the main frontiers of the theory, as well as the main contributors.

This analysis relates to the strategic orientation of public, private and not‐for‐profit festivals and the adoption of stakeholder, financial, marketing and management strategies that enable them to achieve their organisational objectives. The paper aims to address these issues.

In order to test the effectiveness of this new strategic SWOT approach, data from the four‐country study of festivals were employed to investigate how a strategic approach can be adopted by festival managers in the public, private and not‐for‐profit sector. The strategic issues that confront all festivals, including, financial management and related issues of costs, revenue, sponsorship and support are the subject of analysis.

The findings indicate that among festival managers there are some interesting and significant differences between the three ownership types in terms of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Private and non‐profit festivals are comparatively more strategic in responding to financial opportunities, threats and weaknesses and public festivals are more dependent on a single stakeholder and source of revenue. Other significant differences exist in terms of stakeholder management and sponsorship strategies, which can be explained with reference to resource dependency theory.

Strategic SWOT analysis can provide a more rigorous and structured approach to researching the multiple challenges that festival managers face and the strategies they adopt. This paper demonstrates that it has some utility in identifying strategies in response to financial, stakeholder and sponsorship imperatives.

Strategic SWOT analysis provides event and festival managers with a new tool for understanding the range of challenges and opportunities that they can address through adopting a more strategic response.

The field of festival and event management studies is largely devoid of any literature with reference to analysis of strategies that different festivals adopt in response to identified weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This paper provides new insights into the strategic management of public, private and not‐for‐profit festival organisations using an original approach and an extensive four‐country dataset.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are arguably one of the CEOs greatest challenges, and there is a critical need to get these decisions right. It is clear that no single theory is adequate to describe or inform how M&A are evaluated in uncertain conditions, but there are several that offer partial explanations or at least contribute toward our understanding of how managers can deal with the uncertain environment and assess the likely risks associated with M&A. The literature suggests how relevant theories might be aggregated to make sense of strategic investment decision and investment appraisal techniques in an organizational context and considers the implications for further research in this important area of M&A. This chapter focuses on strategic investment appraisal, and draws together a variety of theoretical perspectives, especially from the field of psychology, which may be unfamiliar to both scholars in and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine national survey data of police agencies in the USA to explore the current state of crime analysis integration to patrol crime reduction work.

The data examined in this paper are from a national quantitative survey which sought to understand how crime analysis results are used by officers as well as higher ranking personnel in the patrol division and what types of strategies are implemented using crime analysis.

The findings show that the routine use of crime analysis is not well integrated. Despite the low integration, however, some differences were found. Management uses crime analysis the most overall, but officers and first-line supervisors use tactical crime analysis more routinely than management, where management personnel use evaluation most routinely. Tactical crime analysis is used most often for directed patrol, strategic for both directed patrol and general information, and evaluation for both general information and crime prevention. Analysis of using analysis proactively shows that agencies use tactical crime analysis most proactively, followed by the strategic crime analysis, then evaluation.

The study relies on self-report surveys, so the results may suffer from some of the general limitations of self-reports. Also, the study resulted in a lower response rate than surveys of police agencies typically achieve. Although responding and non-responding agencies were comparable in terms of population size, number of officers, and region of the country, the response rate was about 55 percent. However, it is a possibility based on the analysis results that non-responses may reflect a disinterest in the topic or the lack of integration of crime analysis.

This is the first national survey that focussed specifically on crime analysis integration in patrol work for crime reduction. The value of the results presented here are in the description of the current state of crime analysis integration in the USA which has not been investigated in such depth before and the identifications of gaps in both research in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate methods that are used for analyzing strategically various aspects of academic libraries in Oman.

A research framework was designed to explore various steps of conceptualizing, collecting, analyzing data, and reporting results. Data gathered through in‐depth interviews with participants represented different management levels of academic libraries in the country. The analysis process utilized content analysis to shape the relationship between categories that were subjected to formulate knowledge.

The results indicate that strategic analysis process has been practiced in 40 percent of academic libraries in Oman, utilizing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis technique. However, all respondents identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of their libraries under one or more of the following factors: information resources; administrative support; human resources; financial resources; building and space; facilities and equipment; and cooperation and communication. Yet, the priority and importance of each issue to each library varies from one institution to another, according to size and history of each university.

The great differences in history, size, and infrastructure between the institutions investigated had affected the selection of the research population. Moreover, reports, statistics, existed in some libraries found unable to provide the necessary data, which forced the researcher to depend on the data gathered from respondents in building the research knowledge.

This research fills part of the gap that exists in the strategic management of information services. It is the first study shedding light on the application of strategic analysis in academic libraries in Oman.

Argues in favour of the convenience of using strategic groups analysis (SGA) as a business management tool that is especially useful for strategic marketing planning. To illustrate the great versatility offered by SGA, we take as a reference the results obtained from a study of the Spanish retail grocery sector. By way of this empirical work, we analyse how SGA responds to some of the information demands considered as essential for the design of the marketing strategy of every firm (the analysis of the environment and the main alternative strategies, the attractiveness of each strategy, the analysis of rivalry, the strengths and weaknesses of firms, the threats and opportunities offered by the market, etc.). In summary, the paper shows that SGA is a powerful tool which could help managers to concentrate the activity of their firms in solid strategic options.