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Campaign contributions are typically seen as a strategic investment for firms; recent empirical evidence, however, has shown few connections between firms’ contributions and regulatory or performance improvements, prompting researchers to explore agency-based explanations for corporate politics. By studying intrafirm campaign contributions of CEOs and political action committees (PACs), we investigate two hypotheses related to public politics and demonstrate that strategic and agency-based motivations may hold simultaneously. Exploiting transaction-level data, with over 6.8 million observations, we show that (i) when PACs give to specific candidates, executives give to the same candidates, especially those who are strategically important to the firm; and (ii) when executives give to candidates who are not strategically important, PACs give to the same candidates potentially due to agency problems within the firm.

The present document presents the possible contributions of strategic design to organizational transformation, as a part of business intellectual capital.

A case study from a Colombian family business group, with three business units, industrial, commercial and service, were used. Interviews regarding critical events and semi-structured interviews were employed. Data were processed with NVivo software.

It was found that abductive, empathetic and creative competencies (human capital) that may facilitate the comprehension of nature, needs and alternatives to be employed in organizational change processes. Further, the importance of the participative design approach in co-creation, with interest groups, transformation projects (relational capital), and design thought, as a methodology for the implementation of the preceding (structural capital), was identified.

The results revealed, in this case, suggest several future investigative routes. Firstly, increased empirical research, based on this proposal, is suggested. Specifically, it would be relevant to perform causal studies that report the contribution of each of the components of strategic design to the diverse organizational transformation processes. A third line of investigation might include delving into certain relationships that have already been identified, but require further comparison. One of these might be the role of design thought as a method to perform specific organizational transformation projects.

As a result of the present investigation, a model is established (see Figure 2) which may be useful to companies to address organizational transformation, capitalizing on the benefits offered by strategic design. In summary, the proposal considers four phases (see the central circle in Figure 2). Phase 1: understanding organizational occurrences and situations, the basis upon which to determine the nature of an organizational transformation. This activity alludes to the work that is collaboratively managed with different interest groups, in the systematic comprehension of the business organizational transformation chain of events. Phase 2: determining the path to be followed or the route for collaborative action. Doing so in participative fashion permits the representation of a diversity of ideas and opinions on a given problem/potential identified in the preceding process. This stimulates and strengthens the creative competency in company personnel (Jeffries, 2007). If this competency is incorporated into the corporate culture, differential factors may be established, in an environment with broad competency, thus achieving transformations appropriate for a competitive environment.

Co-creation, the central axis of the organizational transformation process. At the base of all organizational transformation processes is an approach focused on human beings, whose principal questions include: What place do individuals have in strategic problem resolution, like those of organizational transformation, in companies? How are human competencies strengthened when applied to organizational transformation processes? What types of ties are made, beyond the establishment of natural relationships (work, purchase, sell), with interest groups? And most importantly: How do they achieve the construction of new business realities together? To do this, participative and co-creative methods must be employed as a scenario to jointly achieve multiple satisfaction realities, in which understanding the essence of the participative design approach becomes meaningful (Jones, 2015).

Design thought, as a methodological proposal for organizational transformation projects. The use of inspiration, ideation, and implementation stages, iteratively and permanently, is suggested. Continuous review of the point of departure, the path trodden and the goals to be achieved should be prioritized, such that they may act as compasses for organizational transformation, considering strategic design to be a key motor (Yee et al., 2017).

This paper aims to discuss the contribution that strategic human resourcing (HR) makes to organizational success and the crucial conversations that HR must orchestrate to truly fulfill its strategic role.

Strategic HR has the potential to modernize management practice, bringing it into line with the needs of the twenty‐first century organization. The paper acknowledges that while the role of strategic HR is understood, there is often a difference between this understanding and what happens in practice – the “knowing‐doing” gap. To show how this gap can be addressed it presents a case study of building strategic HR capability in a leading retailer. This case study defines strategic HR's role in the case organization and charts its evolution. The process of building strategic HR capability is described in detail, and components of the resulting strategic development plan demonstrate a staged process for embedding strategic capability in the HR team.

Strategic HR balances business demands with the needs of the organization and its workforce to adapt to change. Effective strategy builders facilitate conversations beyond the bounds of the HR team. They hold the organization's vision and work in the space between this and the organization's “current reality” to create a more sustainable future for all of the organization's stakeholders.

Building strategic HR capability is building HR business leadership. To lead their organizations, HR people must first lead themselves. The case study shows how HR people can build confidence and strategic leadership capability through a planned change process. It also shows how to build appetite and expectation for a strategic HR contribution among line colleagues.

The paper shows the critical importance of strategic HR leadership to today's organizations. It acknowledges that there is often a knowing‐doing gap for HR professionals and an “appetite” gap for line colleagues. Triumpha's strategic HR development framework shows how capability can be developed and put into practice to create a more sustainable future for all of an organization's stakeholders.

We show that, in the US telecommunications industry, market participants have a sophisticated understanding of the political process, and behave strategically in their allocation of contributions to state legislators as if seeking to purchase influence over regulatory policy. We find that interests respond defensively to contributions from rivals, take into account the configuration of support available to them in both the legislature and the regulatory commission, and vary their contributions according to variations in relative costs for influence by different legislatures. This strategic behavior supports a theory that commercially motivated interests contribute campaign resources in order to mobilize legislators to influence the decisions of regulatory agencies. We also report evidence that restrictions on campaign finance do not affect all interests equally. The paper therefore provides positive evidence on the nature and effects of campaign contributions in regulated industries where interest group competition may be sharp.

To cope with the increasing challenges of globalisation, various manufacturing companies have established intra-company manufacturing networks. The purpose of this paper is to link the strategic network targets (i.e. accessibility, thriftiness represented by economies of scale and economies of scope, mobility, and learning) with the capabilities and characteristics of the constituting sites of the manufacturing network and thus facilitate the identification of mismatches and the discussion of possible development paths for the network.

The authors derive a conceptual framework from the literature which is tested with a single case; a manufacturing network consisting of eight manufacturing sites. Case data were collected based on 24 interviews with operations managers at network level and a standardised online survey among the sites’ management teams.

Results indicate that manufacturing network and site levels need to be related when striving for a fit between manufacturing strategy, network strategy, and site capabilities and characteristics.

Single case studies have only limited generalisability. Nevertheless, the case demonstrates the usefulness of several dimensions when analysing manufacturing networks on site and network level.

This paper represents the first attempt to link strategic targets of intra-company manufacturing networks with site capabilities and characteristics. Thereby, it provides a theoretical basis for future research on the relationship between strategic targets of manufacturing networks and their fulfilment. The developed manufacturing site portfolio, moreover, extends the site role typology discussion by a multi-dimensional perspective and represents a starting point for a multi-faceted discussion of site roles.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

Customer knowledge has not yet been recognized as a possible source of strategic competitive advantage in expansion of the knowledge-based view. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to gain initial insights into the strategic dimension of customers knowledge in order to enable companies to define, identify and motivate the right customers and work with them together on a strategically successful level.

The following single case study is based on semi-structured interviews with nine employees and strategic customers as well as a document analysis in an entrepreneurially oriented smaller firm equipped with limited resources.

The findings demonstrate that strategic customers take on a valuable position within the company. It appears that the strategic customer is more aware of his/her value than the company itself. A definition and first criteria of strategic customers could be determined and a systematic identification of strategic customers is possible with the help of this study.

The paper is an empirical contribution to the existing customer knowledge management literature and aids in gaining further insight into the definition, identification and motivation of strategic customers. A definition is derived based on a literature study and developed further through the results of the empirical analysis. An additional result of the empirical study showed that customer oriented knowledge management is a promising bridge between the knowledge- and market-based view.

The apparent lack of resources in entrepreneurially oriented smaller firms can be overcome through the addition of external knowledge resources, which the paper refers to as strategic customers.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to ongoing debates regarding the human resource management (HRM)-firm performance relationship. In seeking to provide a more complete picture of the relationship, the paper discusses the existing literature and proposes an integrative framework that draws upon different literatures and multiple theoretical perspectives.

This review includes nearly 100 research studies published in this field. The review includes papers published in mainstream HRM journals and broader management journals with strong ties to HRM literature. Importantly, the paper also identifies a gap – a missing link – that concerns the importance of incorporating insights from corporate governance (CG) literature when considering strategic HR decision-making.

A significant contribution of this paper to theory is to propose an integrative framework that conceptualises the elusive relationship between HRM and firm performance, and which draws on different literatures and multiple theoretical perspectives in to offer more holistic insights into the relationship. The paper discusses the implications of the integrative perspective for theory and practice.

This paper argues that one of the main stumbling blocks for developing a better understanding of the mechanisms through which HRM creates value in an organisation is the fragmentation of the HRM literature between “HR as practices” and “HR as the department/profession”, as well as a tendency to neglect insights from the CG literature.

Engaging with customers and addressing unmet value have become increasingly challenging within multi-stakeholder environments of service innovation. Therefore, this paper aims to address this challenge by studying how strategic design abilities address unmet value in service engagement strategies.

The authors conducted a qualitative inductive study at a multinational corporation and interviewed marketing and design professionals on their innovation practices in service engagement strategies.

From the inductive analysis, this study identified three strategic design abilities that effectively contribute to addressing unmet value throughout the co-evolving process of service engagement: envisioning value, modelling value and engaging value. Based on this, this study proposes the emerging co-evolving loop framework of service engagement strategies.

The limitation of this emerging theory is a lack of broad generalizability with mutual exclusivity or collective exhaustiveness across industries. A theoretical implication of the framework is the integration of strategic design and services marketing towards co-created engagement strategies.

The service engagement loop framework can be of great value to service innovation processes, for which an integrated, cross-functional approach is often missing.

The findings further suggest that next to a methodological skillset, strategic design abilities consist of a distinct mindset.

This paper introduces strategic design abilities to address unmet value and proposes a novel co-evolving loop framework of service engagement strategies.

This paper aims to outline important lessons for HR professionals who seek to ensure that investment in learning delivers strategic value to the organization.

Making use of data from semi‐structured interviews, the paper explores the extent to which perceptions of the strategic value of learning held by senior HR professionals are aligned with those of senior operational managers.

The data indicate what executives expect learning to deliver at an organizational level, the challenges of aligning learning to strategic priorities and the ways in which HR professionals are measuring and reporting on the value of learning. A trend away from “return on investment” approaches to “return on expectation” assessments of the value of learning is identified.

In addition to the views of senior managers, further research into the value expectations of line managers and other stakeholder groups is now required.

The article highlights the importance of identifying and communicating the alignment of learning strategy with organizational priorities, the need for proactive dialogue between HR professionals and senior decision makers to develop management trust in the learning value contribution and the development of a balanced range of value measures and assessments that are significant for the organization in its specific context.

Traditional measures of training effectiveness have focused on the functional interests of learners and trainers. This research shifts attention to expectations at a strategic level and the consequences of this for measuring and reporting on the value of learning.