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The purpose of this paper is to present result obtained from a developed technology selection framework and provide a detailed insight into the risk calculations and their implications in manufacturing technology selection process.

The results illustrated in the paper are the outcome of an action research study that was conducted in an aerospace company.

The paper highlights the role of risk calculations in manufacturing technology selection process by elaborating the contribution of risk associated with manufacturing technology alternatives in the shape of opportunities and threats in different decision‐making environments.

The research quantifies the risk associated with different available manufacturing technology alternatives. This quantification of risk crystallises the process of technology selection decision making and supports an industrial manager in achieving objective and comprehensive decisions regarding selection of a manufacturing technology.

The paper explains the process of risk calculation in manufacturing technology selection by dividing the decision‐making environment into manufacturing and supply chain environment. The evaluation of a manufacturing technology considering supply chain opportunities and threats provides a broader perspective to the technology evaluation process. The inclusion of supply chain dimension in technology selection process facilitates an organisation to select a manufacturing technology not only according to its own requirements, but also according to the interest of its constituent supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe how calculations are used in the early phase of strategic capital investment projects (SCIPs) in the mining context and thereby create an understanding of what calculations do in these situations.

The authors conducted a case study based on interviews with project managers, controllers and top-level managers, as well as documents and observations.

The empirical evidence provides key insights into the different uses of calculations in the early phase of SCIPs in the mining industry. The authors found evidence that calculations in the early phase of SCIPs are used to generate ideas, support learning and discussions, evaluate decisions and act as a mediating device.

The paper is based on a single organization, and therefore, the findings of the paper are limited to theoretical generalization.

The study has practical implications directed toward top management, controllers and project managers working with SCIPs. This study suggests that calculations in the early phase are used to unite and create a shared view in the early phase rather than to present rational answers to different investment decision. Calculations can also be used to direct attention toward important areas, sort out and prioritize among ideas, communicate a shared view and function as a template. Thus, calculations are essential in the early phase as they help to transform activities into actions.

This paper contributes to the accounting literature in which it has been emphasized that we still know little of strategic capital budgeting processes, with insights into the multiple uses of calculations in the early phase of SCIPs. We also argue that calculations act as mediating devices in the early phase of SCIPs as they provide a common frame of reference and a basis for action.

This paper aims to illustrate the role of management devices in enacting strategy and strategic decisions, resulting in the development of a Shared Service Centre (SSC) in a Danish municipality. It shows how devices interact in defending, rejecting and reframing strategy, leading to the closure of the SSC to pave the way for new strategic ideas.

It uses a longitudinal case-based approach, which draws on actor-network theory, particularly Callon’s (1998) notions of framing and overflowing. These notions help describe strategic events and processes by highlighting the active role of non-human entities, such as management devices, in enacting and reformulating strategy.

Different devices have become key actants in shaping and formulating the new strategy in the municipality and the strategic decision to construct an SSC. However, different devices mobilise different localities that protest, reject and participate in the closure of the SSC through a reframing strategy.

The study is subject to the general limitations of case-based research. Thus, the propositions should be further investigated to elaborate the performative role of management devices.

The findings facilitate a deeper understanding of factors triggering strategic development in the public sector. Also, it identifies aspects leading to failures by investigating how different devices allow local actors to stay connected and affect the SSC’s creation.

This study is the first to use a performative method to highlight the temporary and local nature of enacting strategic decisions to construct an SSC in the public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual approach to determining an optimal strategy development process and controlling of the defence spending, by utilizing the decision‐making system adopted in the Republic of Estonia.

The author offers a part of the Balanced Scorecard model named “Management and Control Perspective” as one of the improvement tools for the system of planning military expenditures and effective utilization of budgetary funds.

The results show that the Balanced Scorecard application, using the “utility function”, will allow the Estonian Defence Forces to overcome important barriers to strategy implementation by interrelation of military planning and budgeting processes.

One suggestion for further research might be established as a way of improvement and development of methods directed to application of the utility function in the decision‐making process. This approach will improve calculations of strategic perspective plans and will reveal the essence of the budgetary policy on the whole by taking into consideration expenses features of the business and non‐profit organizations.

By using the Balanced Scorecard the paper offers a new strategic method of planning and controlling the military expenditure in the Estonian Defence Forces.

The present paper provides direct evidence of the alternative methods forecast measures and the possibility of using mathematical models in the strategic planning process.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how China’s approach to a nuclear North Korea has changed and find key variables that explain the changes.

This paper adopts the traditional qualitative method, referring to different types of reliable and authoritative Chinese and English scholars, books and articles.

Although China has accumulated distrust of North Korea and reprimanded the regime for its nuclear program, it has never ignored the strategic value or balance – especially vis-à-vis the USA – the neighboring country provides for it. And for that matter, it has been keen to prevent North Korea from bypassing it and getting closer to the USA. With this strategic calculation in mind, China has mostly made gestures in implementing the UN sanctions against North Korea, though not always.

This paper proves that China’s strategic calculation has been a constant key variable that explains its approach toward a nuclear North Korea since the inception of the issue in the early 1990s.

This paper aims to provide a case study of complex conflict management within the arms race on the Korean Peninsula. Exploring the complex nexus of nuclear weapons, asymmetry and a qualitative arms race, the study explains how the arms race between Seoul and Pyongyang has promoted stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Presenting the limits of arguments that the US security guarantee is the factor that saved the two Koreas from going to war again, this paper explores the utility of the inter-Korean arms race as a stabilizer that promotes indirect negotiations. While presenting Korean anomalies, this paper analyzes the three stages of the inter-Korean arms race – especially its nuclear weapons, its asymmetry and the nature of arms races – and provides extant explanations on the causes and consequences of the qualitative arms race. These key elements drive the states’ strategic motives.

Using the case of the inter-Korean qualitative arms race and US extended nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, the study shows the complexities of conflict management today. This paper identifies three contributing factors – US nuclear weapons, asymmetry and the qualitative characteristic of the arms race – to explain the enduring stability on the peninsula despite the arms race’s intensification. The paper finds that although US nuclear-extended deterrence plays a critical role, it does not capture the full context of the ongoing, dynamic inter-Korean arms race; a prolonged arms race between the two Koreas has become a new regularity; the qualitative characteristic of the inter-Korean arms race, which is driven by technological advancement, contributes to stability in the arms race; and as the constant mismatch in priority technologies becomes more severe, the changes to the existing asymmetry could increase instability.

This paper offers a diverse perspective to the literature on conflict management and captures the complexities of 21^st-century conflict management. Through a thorough examination of the inter-Korean arms race, it brings readers’ attention to the nested dynamics within the arms race and shows how an intensifying arms race can promote stability. Furthermore, the paper explains the implications for potential instability – fueled by the comprehensive mix of a dynamic qualitative arms race and the US extended nuclear deterrence – in the Indo-Pacific region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the associated customer acquisition costs of public libraries. The intention of the paper is to develop awareness of the hidden costs associated with customer acquisition, and develop assessment tools or models to effectively manage the resources associated with customer acquisition to aid library administrators in strategic budgeting and planning.

The paper is prepared through review of the library and business literature associated with customer acquisitions. No definitive data on customer turnover rates or models of assessing customer acquisitions cost are identified in the review of the literature.

While not identified or managed systematically, the calculation of customer acquisition costs, customer turnover rates, and the effective management of associated customer acquisition cost is strategically imperative for public libraries. Public libraries generally do not track customer turnover or the associated costs of acquiring new or replacement customers that come about due to this turnover. There is not a definitive estimate of customer turnover in public libraries, so exact costs determination will vary by public library system. Public libraries can reduce their customer acquisition costs through the retention of current customers with high quality service and in effectively managing the customer acquisition process in the strategic budgeting and planning processes of the library.

Libraries that can effectively acquire new or replacement customers and manage the costs of this process will more effectively utilize resources and maximize customer value for the library. This paper proposes several cost assessment calculations to help guide library administrators in making strategic decisions.

To contribute the process perspective on strategy the systems theoretical concept of time binding and show how time, when unfolded and linked, is compressed or stretched, thereby demonstrating the motion of temporal spaces within organizations.

Case approach and with emphasis on communicative events.

The finding of three different time bindings in strategy work showing not only how time is unfolded and multiplied but also how these bindings were unexpectedly found to be experienced simultaneously, thus turning a seemingly linear strategy based on goal achievement into a complex of interrelated motions driven by performativity, potentiality and reiteration.

The research implications are significant to the process perspective on strategy as time should not only be understood and investigated as different unfoldings and time-links within organizations, but also on the motion of these temporal spaces, which is to say, how they move the organization ahead.

From a practical perspective, when taking both the existing and future research on strategy into account, one notices that most management literature and the mainstream courses held at business schools tend to draw on one-dimensional casualities and chronological timelines in order to combine accurate forecasts with predicted end-results. Such attempts reflect one unfolding, one binding, one temporal space and one way of moving, but if managers want to improve knowledge on deliberate change, temporal awareness should be part of their strategic change repertoire alongside the ability to match different motions to the skills and capacity of an organization.

The concept of time binding is a way to extend the ways by which we seek to comprehend the temporal nature of social relations and structures within organizations and in particular those practices that are considered strategic. In particular, it offers ways of understanding how strategy is a temporal exercise that provides organizations with different temporal spaces within single events and hence different motions – all of which simultaneously move the organization differently ahead in time.

By providing the system theoretical concept of time binding it brings new and original value into the process and practice field of strategy research. The empirical findings demonstrate how unusual and not yet seen unfoldings and bindings between before and after appears and how such bindings take the form of temporal spaces that simultaneously and differently moves the organizations ahead in time.

In today's societies, work environment and customers' expectations change on a daily manner. Consequently, it is crucial for companies to find a way for adapting themselves to new requirements. For this purpose, reengineering projects have been introduced and evolved in different companies with different responsibilities over the past decades. However, the risk associated with these projects is inevitable and is a huge obstacle on the way of their implementation. This study, in line with previous studies, contributed in this context by proposing a new methodology for selecting suitable processes and adopted best practices candidate for business process reengineering (BPR). The proposed methodology aims to achieve lower risk and higher probability of success for BPR projects.

This objective is achieved by integration of the concept of portfolio selection problems (PSP) into the organizational decision making concerning BPR project. A model for selection of most appropriate reengineering scenarios, which is a combination of processes and best practices, is adopted and proposed. This model by putting additional constraints on risks associated with a BPR project and increasing its return identifies the most prosperous portfolio of scenarios for a reengineering project. The proposed model is tested step-by-step through a case study in order to validate its outcome and justify its practicality.

In this paper, a new methodology is proposed containing a model as a managerial tool for conducting more successful reengineering projects. The applicability of the methodology is tested in one of the largest metallurgical laboratory and research centers of Iran. Four strategic processes were selected and several best practices customized, after screening all processes of the case study. Accordingly, in total, 15 different scenarios were explored for the reengineering project in which four of them identified by the model as the processes with the highest possibility of success through the BPR project.

This methodology suggests a novel way to benefit from PSP for process selection problems by putting additional control on implementation risk of reengineering project. While the urge of using reengineering project exists within the current companies, the high level of risk of these projects is considered as a huge obstacle in conducting this project. This study, by proposing a new method, aims to address this issue as well as point to the practicality of integrating PSP model in organizational contexts.

This paper aims to analyse the longitudinal performative effects of accounting, focusing on how accounting shapes the stability/instability of economic frames over time.

To explore the performative effects of accounting over time, a longitudinal case study narrates the transformation of a large, listed manufacturing company's financial strategy over 20 years. Using extensive document collection, the authors trace the shift from an “industrial” frame to a “shareholder value” frame in the mid-1990s, followed by the gradual entrenchment of this shareholder value frame until its decline in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008.

Our findings show how accounting has different performative temporalities, capable of precipitating sudden shifts between different economic frames and stabilising an ever-more entrenched and narrowly defined enactment of a specific frame. We conceptualise these different temporalities as performative moments and performative momentum respectively, explaining how accounting produces these performative effects over time. Moreover, in contrast to extant accounting research, the authors provide insight into the performative role of accounting not only in contested but also “cold” situations marked by consensus regarding the overarching economic frame.

Our paper draws attention to the longitudinal performative effects of accounting. In particular, the analysis of how accounting entrenches and refines economic frames over time adds to prior research, which has focused mainly on the contestation and instability of framing processes.