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The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically, an industry development paradox, using embryonic literature in the area of strategic supply chain management, together with innovation management literature. This study seeks to understand how, forming strategic supply chain relationships, and developing strategic supply chain capability, influences beneficial supply chain outcomes expected from utilizing industry-led innovation, in the form of electronic business solutions using the internet, in the Australian beef industry. Findings should add valuable insights to both academics and practitioners in the fields of supply chain innovation management and strategic supply chain management, and expand knowledge to current literature.

This is a quantitative study comparing innovative and non-innovative supply chain operatives in the Australian beef industry, through factor analysis and structural equation modeling using PAWS Statistical V18 and AMOS V18 to analyze survey data from 412 respondents from the Australian beef supply chain.

Key findings are that both innovative and non-innovative supply chain operators attribute supply chain synchronization as only a minor indicator of strategic supply chain capability, contrary to the literature; and they also indicate strategic supply chain capability has a minor influence in achieving beneficial outcomes from utilizing industry-led innovation. These results suggest a lack of coordination between supply chain operatives in the industry. They also suggest a lack of understanding of the benefits of developing a strategic supply chain management competence, particularly in relation to innovation agendas, and provides valuable insights as to why an industry paradox exists in terms of the level of investment in industry-led innovation, vs the level of corresponding benefit achieved.

Results are not generalized due to the single agribusiness industry studied and the single research method employed. However, this provides opportunity for further agribusiness studies in this area and also studies using alternate methods, such as qualitative, in-depth analysis of these factors and their relationships, which may confirm results or produce different results. Further, this study empirically extends existing theoretical contributions and insights into the roles of strategic supply chain management and innovation management in improving supply chain and ultimately industry performance while providing practical insights to supply chain practitioners in this and other similar agribusiness industries.

These findings confirm results from a 2007 research (Ketchen et al., 2007) which suggests supply chain practice and teachings need to take a strategic direction in the twenty-first century. To date, competence in supply chain management has built up from functional and process orientations rather than from a strategic perspective. This study confirms that there is a need for more generalists that can integrate with various disciplines, particularly those who can understand and implement strategic supply chain management.

Possible social implications accrue through the development of responsible government policy in terms of industry supply chains. Strategic supply chain management and supply chain innovation management have impacts to the social fabric of nations through the sustainability of their industries, especially agribusiness industries which deal with food safety and security. If supply chains are now the competitive weapon of nations then funding innovation and managing their supply chain competitiveness in global markets requires a strategic approach from everyone, not just the industry participants.

This is original empirical research, seeking to add value to embryonic and important developing literature concerned with adopting a strategic approach to supply chain management. It also seeks to add to existing literature in the area of innovation management, particularly through greater understanding of the implications of nations developing industry-wide, industry-led innovation agendas, and their ramifications to industry supply chains.

The paper seeks to combine the uses of the balanced scorecard and hoshin kanri as integrative dynamic capabilities for the entire strategic management process. It aims to posit a model for the combination of these long‐ and short‐term organisational activities as a framework for a senior level to manage a firm's strategic fit as an integrated organisation‐wide system that links top management goals to daily management.

The resource‐based view of strategy is explored for its relevance to how a combined balanced scorecard and hoshin kanri approach serves as a high‐order dynamic capability. Examples are given from Canon, Toyota and Nissan, of how core capabilities are managed to show how strategy is executed cross‐functionally across a firm's functional hierarchy.

The study finds that strategic management of the organisation should consider the long‐term strategy as well as the short‐term capability. Important to this are core capabilities and core competences, cross‐functional management, and top executive audits, which, when managed properly, explicate a new view of strategic fit, as a form of nested hierarchies of dynamic capabilities.

The paper is the first exposition of how balanced scorecard and hoshin kanri practices may usefully complement each other in strategic management. It is a useful framework for dynamically managing sustained competitive advantage.

Part I of this chapter applies the principles of the philosophy of science and the derived scientific method to analyze the foundational concepts and core proposition of the Resource-Base View (RBV) as popularized by Barney (1986, 1991, 1997). This analysis identifies seven fundamental conceptual deficiencies and logic problems in Barney's conceptualization of “strategically valuable resources” and in Barney's VRIO framework for identifying strategically valuable resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. Three problems – the Value Conundrum, the Tautology Problem in the Identification of Resources, and the Absence of a Chain of Causality – relate to the RBV's and VRIO's failure to provide an adequate conceptual basis for identifying strategically valuable resources. The Uniqueness Dilemma, the Cognitive Impossibility Dilemma, and an Asymmetry in Assumptions about Resource Factor Markets result in an inability of the VRIO framework to support identification of resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. More fundamentally, the core proposition of the RBV – that resources that are strategically valuable, rare, inimitable, and organizationally embedded are sources of sustainable competitive advantage – is argued to result directly in the Epistemological Impossibility Problem that precludes use of the scientific method in RBV research. This chapter argues that until these conceptual deficiencies and logic problems are recognized and remedied, the RBV – in spite of its current popularity – is and will remain theoretically sterile and incapable of contributing in any systematic way to the development of strategy theory.

Part II of this chapter then suggests how foundational concepts developed within the competence perspective on strategy provide essential remedies for the identified deficiencies and problems in the RBV – and thereby provide a more conceptually adequate basis for representing the nature of firms in the scientific study of their interactions and competitive outcomes.

This study aims to explore the relationship between IT and HRM in the context of manufacturing SMEs, more specifically the relationship between strategic HRM and e-HRM as well as the performance effects of this relationship. The conceptual framework is founded upon the resource-based view (RBV), specifically upon the strategic HRM and e-HRM capabilities of SMEs and upon the strategic alignment of these capabilities in the form of capability configurations or “gestalts.”

To answer the research questions, a questionnaire was constructed and mailed to 1854 manufacturing SMEs in the province of Quebec, Canada, producing 216 valid responses that were used for statistical analysis purposes. Capability configurations were identified through a cluster analysis of the e-HRM and strategic HRM capabilities developed by these firms.

Using structural equation modeling to validate the research model, a causal analysis confirmed a positive influence of the sampled SMEs’ strategic orientation upon their development of strategic HRM capabilities. More importantly, a higher level of alignment between the SMEs’ strategic HRM and e-HRM capabilities was associated to a higher level of strategic HRM performance.

To our knowledge, ours is the first study to show interest in the effect of the strategic alignment of HRM and IT capabilities upon HRM performance, by adopting a configurational perspective and considering organizational IT from a functional point of view. Given the specific context of SMEs, the focus was on e-HRM capabilities related to the IT infrastructure of these organizations and the IT competencies of individuals related to HRM.

Based on the theory of bounded rationality, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by top managerial management cognition in firms' efforts to obtain and maintain competitive advantage in a dynamic environment.

A research framework of the relations between environment changes, management cognition, strategic actions, organizational capability evolution and organizational performance is built. Data are collected through interviews, internal documents, and external documents and consequently a qualitative database is built to construct a causal map between environment, cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability. Then by applying this causal map, a case study analysis of Vanward Group is carried out to explore its management cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability in a dynamic environment.

The research propositions were tested and confirmed that top managerial management cognition is of bounded rationality and in dynamic environment it exerts direct and critical effect on their firms' strategic actions and organizational capability. Further discussion is extended to the roles played by institutional factors in organizational strategic decision process and the roles of top management in organizational dynamic capability.

The generalizability of this paper's conclusions to other firms is to be tested by large sample quantitative research.

The research confirms the bounded rationality perspective in strategic management, and explores in depth the formation, evolution, and functions of top management cognition in a dynamic environment. It also emphasizes the non‐economic factors related to the continuous acquisition and maintenance of competitive advantages in a dynamic environment.

The paper releases the economic assumptions underlying industrial structure theory and resource‐based views by emphasizing the effect of top management cognition on organizational strategic actions and organizational capabilities. It further enriches the institution‐based view by illustrating how institutional environment affects top management cognition and consequently affects the changes in organizational strategic actions and organizational capability. Thus, the institutional context for organizational strategic decision making is emphasized. The paper contributes to research in dynamic capability by emphasizing top management roles in developing dynamic capability.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

As a company that has continuously achieved business innovation, Apple in the United States has successfully applied strategic knowledge creation to produce a series of products that integrate various digital devices as well as diverse contents and applications, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, based on a corporate vision of a digital hub concept. At the same time, the redefining of corporate boundaries that expanded Apple’s business in a horizontal direction from the Macintosh PC business to the delivery of music, smartphones, and tablets is also an indication of the evolution of a corporate vision involving Apple’s strategic transformation. This chapter presents the strategic and creative processes that enabled practitioners, including the late Steve Jobs, to demonstrate “strategic innovation capability” by “holistic leadership” at every level of management at Apple and successfully achieve a business ecosystem strategy through “creative collaboration” across diverse boundaries within and outside the company.

Competence-Based Management (CBM) theory and research suggest that a firm’s competence building and leveraging processes are key factors influencing its competitive success. To achieve sustained competitive success, a firm’s competence building processes must continuously renew and extend the competences a firm has and can leverage. However, the ability of a firm to sustain strategically adequate levels of competence building – while also maintaining strategically successful competence leveraging – may be limited by various self-reinforcing managerial and organizational mechanisms that can arise from competence leveraging processes. In this paper we focus on certain managerial behaviors that may create path dependencies that lead an organization to become “locked-in” to its current competence leveraging processes and to neglect essential competence building, resulting in an inability to renew competences at a strategically adequate level and eventually in competitive failure.

In order to avoid such consequences, the management literature suggests that organizations must cultivate dynamic capabilities to overcome tendencies toward lock-in and to sustain ongoing competence building. This study investigates ways in which firms can maintain healthy competence building processes by avoiding lock-ins, especially those resulting from self-reinforcing managerial behaviors. A case study of successful competence-renewing processes in a home improvement retailing company helps to amplify the components of dynamic capabilities and to illustrate the insights that emerge from our study.

Our study proposes a resource environment view (REV) of competitive advantage by unpacking the environmental origins of a firm’s competitive advantage. The key tenet of the REV is that the heterogeneity and imperfect mobility of strategic factor markets and institutions across countries explain how firms based in different countries would likely both create and sustain a competitive advantage. In particular, our study introduces the notion of “the paradox of environmental embeddedness.” The paradox lies in the fact that the same environmental conditions – in terms of strategic factor markets and institutions – that enable firms to create a competitive advantage can paradoxically also create a situation in which it is more difficult for these firms to sustain an advantage. Another important aspect of our study is that, to enhance our understanding of how firms manage the paradox of environmental embeddedness, our study specifies the resource environmental conditions under which firms’ internal and external resource-oriented strategies – that is, the development of dynamic capabilities and interventions in the country resource environment – are more beneficial when managing the environmental paradox. Overall, our theorizing has important implications for strategic management theory and practice.