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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to review and categorize how photographs have been used in management research and to provide strategic management researchers with suggestions about how to use photographs to enhance their qualitative research methodologies.

Methodology/approach – We develop a typology of photographic uses in management research by reviewing several scholarly journals.

Findings – We identify two dimensions that differentiate how photographs have been used in management journals. First, photographs can be used to illustrate scenes from a field setting or they can be interpreted as data. Second, the role of field participants can be one of active collaboration or no involvement in the photographic aspect of the qualitative research project. For instance, field subjects can collaborate in research by aiding in the photo-documentation process and/or aiding in the photo-elicitation process. Choosing which of our four identified photographic approaches represents a critical decision for qualitative researchers interested in incorporating photographs in their research.

Practical implications – We suggest ideas for strategic management researchers related to use of photographs in their research. Also, we describe how specific strategic management research projects can be approached with photography, which we argue can lead to enhanced theoretical contributions.

Originality/value of paper – To date, little has been written in the strategic management field about the use of photography. This chapter provides a succinct review of photographic methods in management research. Moreover, this chapter provides suggestions for how strategy researchers, study participants, and interested readers of management research could benefit from incorporating photographs into research accounts.

Change in ownership among U.S. community hospitals has been frequent and, not surprisingly, remains an important issue for both researchers and public policy makers. In the past, investor-owned hospitals were long suspected of pursuing financial over other goals, culminating in several reviews that found few differences between for-profit and nonprofit forms (Gray, 1986; Sloan, 2000; Sloan, Picone, Taylor, & Chou, 2001). Nevertheless, continuing to the present day, several states prohibit investor-ownership of community hospitals. Conversions to investor-ownership are only one of six types of ownership change, however, with relatively less attention paid to the other types (e.g., for-profit to nonprofit, public to nonprofit). This study has two parts. We first review the literature on the various types of ownership conversion among community hospitals. This review includes the rate at which conversions occur over time, the relative frequency in conversions between specific ownership categories and the observed effects of conversion on hospital operations (e.g., strategic direction and decision-making processes) and performance (e.g., access, quality, and cost). Overall, we find that the impact of ownership conversion on the different measures is mixed, with slightly greater evidence for positive effects on hospital efficiency. As one explanation for these findings, we suggest that the impact of ownership conversion on hospital performance may be mediated by changes in the hospital's strategic content and process. Such a hypothesis has not been proposed or examined in the literature. To address this gap, we next study the role of strategic reorientation following hospital conversion in a field study. We conceptualize ownership conversion within a strategic adaptation framework, and then analyze the changes in strategy content and process across sixteen hospitals that have undergone ownership conversions from nonprofit to for-profit, public to for-profit, public to nonprofit, and for-profit to nonprofit. The field study findings delineate the strategic paths and processes implemented by new owners post-conversion. We find remarkable similarity in the content of strategies undertaken but differences in the process of strategic decision making associated with different types of ownership changes. We also find three main performance effects: hospitals change ownership for financial reasons, experience increases in revenues and capital investment post-conversion, and pursue labor force reductions post-conversion. Membership in a multi-hospital system, however, may be a major determinant of both strategy content and decision-making process that is confounded with ownership change. That is, ownership conversion may mask the impact of system membership on a hospital's strategic actions. These findings may explain the pattern of performance effects observed in the literature on ownership conversions.

Research on strategic industry groups provides numerous examples of the tensions between theory and methodology in strategic management research. After an initial explosion of largely non-theoretical, methods-driven studies led to mounting criticisms, researchers recognized the need for more theoretical guidance concerning the nature of groups and their potential influences on firm performance. This refocusing on theory has produced different research streams, each with its own methodological concerns. This chapter reviews these developments with the objective of understanding how researchers balance theory and methods in current research.

To expose strategic management scholars in Africa, particularly graduate students and new faculty members, to bibliometrics, a fast-growing approach for examining the impact of individual and collective scholarly.

We review the bibliographic analysis approach by discussing its origin, development, and process. We then advance to a dynamic multilevel model that can be used to examine strategic management contributions at the individual and collective levels. Bibliometric analysis is being used extensively in such fields as library science, agriculture, economics, medicine, psychology, and more recently in management areas such as entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business. In addition to its wide application, bibliometric analysis has relevance for strategic management research in Africa which is characterized by major research constrains.

Illustrations are provided with procedures for conducting bibliometric analysis. We conclude by making recommendations on what to consider in using the approach for the study of strategic management in Africa.

We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach as well as suggestions on maximizing its potential.

The approach is an invaluable source particularly for graduate students of strategy. They can be used to supplement other approaches in the study of strategic management impact.

To our knowledge, this chapter seems to be the first to propose bibliometric analysis for the study of strategic management in the African context. In that regard, it fills a gap in the research methodology literature. It can therefore help graduate students and junior faculty improve their careers.

This article reflects on the lack of focus on history characterizing the strategic management field. Reasons and consequences of such a peculiar situation need to be pointed out in order to develop a better history-grounded research approach inside the field.

In terms of (the missing) history of thought, a fear of history seems to characterize the field, for a more aware historical understanding of strategic management and practices is likely to question not only notions and concepts, but the very perception of the field as a practically oriented discipline. A lack of historical reflection is usually preferred, wherein strategic management seems to come out of the blue, ignoring its inner evolution over time, and the relationships with previous bodies of knowledge in the business realm, such as for instance administrative sciences and accounting.

In terms of the history of practice the situation is – if possible – even worse, with an obscure understanding of contexts and features of managerial practices in the past. Archival research is called for here, drawing on two research projects on pre-industrial revolution context (the Spanish Royal Tobacco Factory in the XVIII century, and the Venice Arsenal in the turn of the XVI century), in order to examine how prior management practices can influence and inform our present understanding of the discipline of strategic management. A less simplistic view of managing practices in the past emerges, which challenges the commonly held cycle of innovation and discontinuity perpetually alleged in the strategic management field to legitimize its own existence as a research area.

While strategic management tools show a potential contribution to historical understanding in this archival research, a more historically aware understanding of the evolution of the field is thus intended as a way to falsify strategic management theory.

Destination management is in urgent need of analytical and policy tools, and even more so in the context of tourism for development programs. Understanding both structural elements and dynamic processes are essential. This chapter describes a model of destinations which considers three types of structural components: factors/resources, attractors (of tourism demand), and support systems. It analyzes as well the optimizing behavior of destination stakeholders, both endogenous and exogenous, as a way to understand destination dynamics. The model can be applied in the strategic positioning of destinations as well as in achieving competitiveness and sustainability—ultimately contributing to development—through tourism policy plans and governance processes. The model was born in the context of a European Eureka–ComTur research project, and has been tested in a variety of destinations.

This chapter develops a decision-making framework to analyze important dimensions of mergers and acquisitions. Using a PLS approach, we show that strategic deals’ performance – measured by means of synergy realization, relative performance (compared to the competition), and absolute performance – is determined by three dimensions: strategic logic, organizational behavior, as well as finance. We find that the following significant variables, which stem from each of these dimensions, should be taken into account to ensure a successful deal: market similarities, market complementarities, operational similarities, operational complementarities, market power, purchasing power, acquisition experience, relative size, and due diligence.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the accumulated research on a strategically important intangible asset – organizational reputation – and articulate promising research pathways forward. To do so, I first provide definitional clarity by comparing reputation to the related constructs of status, celebrity, legitimacy, and social approval and highlight the codifiable, cumulative, and beneficial nature of reputation. I then discuss three developments in reputation literature: (1) conceptualizing reputation as a multidimensional, rather than generalized, construct; (2) theorizing about reputational malleability rather than its path dependence; and (3) focusing on the costs of a high reputation in addition to its benefits. Based on these developments and the increasing role of social media in affecting and reflecting stakeholder perceptions, I discuss three pathways for future reputation research. Specifically, I focus on the decrease in credibility of powerful intermediaries and increase in stakeholder empowerment, conceptualization of reputation as a flow rather than a stock, and the role of strategic reticence. My hope is that this chapter will stimulate conceptual and empirical work on the role of reputation in the complex and dynamic era of social media.

A series of research experiences provoked this paper. In the spring of 2003, I was asked to act as an assessor, for the Island of Ireland Seed Corn competition¹. There I came across academic start-ups (ASUs), directly linked to Irish public sector science and technology (S&T) funding. Several of the competition teams consisted of young scientists, who presented business plans. Probing demonstrated that the teams appeared to possess little understanding of the business concepts these contained. Another consistent finding was that any market reference made was focused on multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries already located in the country. Intrigued by this, together with a colleague, we then began looking at ASUs, university-based funded S&T research centres and the activities of the newly created Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI).²