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The manner in which a business strategy was formulated ten or even as little as five years ago, no longer applies. This phenomenon can to a great extent be attributed to a shift in the strategic importance of information and knowledge. The aim of this paper is to supply strategic thinkers with a holistic “bird’s eye view” of the interdependency between strategic management and strategic knowledge management. By analyzing the different perspectives with regard to strategy formulation from a business point of view, as well as a knowledge management perspective, a generic model incorporating knowledge management strategy formulation within business strategy formulation has been developed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a greater understanding of organisational learning in connection with assessment of Six Sigma readiness. Different forms that a possible deployment can take in the organisation's context based on the degree of readiness are explored.

The empirical data are derived from 12 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews of selected employees having different functions in the studied organisation, a global distribution system and information technology (IT) solutions provider to the travel and tourism industry. In addition, they include participant observation and documentation. The interview questions were built based on a modified version of Kettinger and Grover readiness assessment framework.

The study shows that organisational learning can provide a useful framework for assessing Six Sigma readiness in an IT organisation. A synthesized model is proposed combining the frameworks of an adapted Kettinger and Grover model and the core disciplines of the learning organisation. Further, the results suggest that having Six Sigma as a company‐wide strategy may not prove useful or suitable in the current context. However, the analysis shows that having Six Sigma as an improvement programme provides a structure for the improvement work and the define, measure, analyze, improve and control methodology is needed to address some current inefficiencies and problems.

This is a single case study and the possibility of generalising this finding to other contexts remains uncertain. Therefore, more research is needed. The procedure of using organisational learning as an assessment framework for Six Sigma readiness has been shown to be useful.

Implementing Six Sigma means a large investment and therefore it is important to make the right deployment approach. Having one integrated readiness assessment model should be useful for companies when assessing their readiness.

Knowledge of a Six Sigma readiness evaluation in an organisational learning context should be valuable for many organisations. In addition, research regarding Six Sigma in software companies is limited.

When managed poorly, e‐business initiatives may actually transform once promising opportunities into dangerous threats. In this article, the authors outline the environmental threats posed by the Internet and e‐business practices and present a series of propositions on the relationship between managerial perceptions of e‐business’s impact on industry structure and the prevalence of a formal e‐business strategy.

This “masterclass” article explains how modern value investing analysis can guide corporate strategists and corporate development departments. It shows how executives can use some key insights from the recently published book by Martin J. Whitman and Fernando Diz, Modern Security Analysis (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013).

This masterclass includes an interview with the lead author of the book, value investor Martin J. Whitman.

The insights contained within Modern Security Analysis can and should be leveraged by corporate executives and strategists to create value for their firms.

This article supports earlier work published in Strategy & Leadership that shows Graham and Dodd-based valuation and analysis is a viable avenue of academic research and a viable method with which to assess corporate strategic initiatives (such as mergers and acquisitions, share buy-backs, risk management, etc.).

This analysis provides senior executives with a guide to the assessment tools used by the most successful value investors and an explanation of their relevance to corporate strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept of ecological sustainability is attracting attention of global business community as neoclassical approach continues to fail in delivery. There is now an emerging need to explore new approaches towards balancing ecological and economic returns. The paper extends the philosophy of Permaculture into business domain and explores its compatibility to be integrated with strategic management perspectives.

The study primarily conducts a review of Permaculture and Strategic Management domains and uncovers the compatibility between the two domains while arguing that the integration of Permaculture philosophy in business strategy would achieve sustainability.

Permaculture philosophy is compatible with Strategic Management process for developing business strategies. It can incorporate ecological and social aspects for developing integrated strategy process for sustainability in organizations.

Focusing on financial and non-financial value addition contributed by organizations towards community would lead to long-term sustainability of the organization and the community which supports it.

The study extends the emerging philosophy of Permaculture into the established domain of Strategic Management. Arguing that simultaneous equilibrium of capacities, resources and demands of stakeholders must be maintained for sustained economic success in business world.

There is a widely accepted myth in New Zealand that the Elam School of Fine Arts in the University of Auckland is an organised anarchy, internally divided and cantankerously unbiddable, and further, that this is largely inevitable given the nature of artists and designers. Its unique culture, however, is shown in this paper to have been generated and reinforced over decades by the exigencies of environment, partitioned and media‐based curricular structures, intense and volatile relationships, and, occasionally, inappropriate leadership services. Despite this history, Elam has sustained a major role in shaping New Zealand’s cultural identity, and continues to produce some of the country’s most outstanding visual artists and designers. The paradox involved is partially explained by persistent evidence of self‐managing teams, creative problem‐solving, and independent excellence, that suggest deep and plural commitments to a virtue ethic.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an agile approach to academic analytics that is currently being applied on one of the campuses of a leading higher educational institution in the Caribbean. This agile approach enables the rapid development of a strategic analytics roadmap and proof-of-concept analytics applications for the institution.

The approach was developed using Design Science which involves the development and rigorous evaluation of an artifact. The agile approach is the artifact and the design evaluation was done using the observational method of primary cases studies where the artifact is studied in depth in a business environment, in this case this was a leading higher educational institution in the Caribbean.

The final output, the roadmap, highlights the importance of a balanced portfolio of analytics initiatives, relevant and tailored to the institution’s specific context that includes technology and applications projects, as well as capacity building, organizational structures and policy initiatives.

The approach that was used and the specific techniques proposed can be extended by other researchers and in so doing will increase the body of research as it relates to agile analytics.

The approach will be beneficial to educational institutions that are considering how best to harness the strategic value of its data. The analytics roadmap will allow the institution to be clear about the path they should take to maximize their investments in analytics initiatives.

A number of existing well-accepted research techniques have been synthesized in the development and application of this agile approach. The approach and final roadmap consider the institution’s readiness for and understanding of what is involved in analytics before investing significant resources in its adoption.

This work explores the potential benefits of aligning the strategic planning process with a BPM program in a clinical research center (CRC). The purpose of this paper is to define a process for executing strategic planning oriented towards the promotion of a BPM program.

The method applied is action research. This allowed the solution of a practical problem and at the same time the proposition of a new approach to promote BPM in alignment with strategy, which was synthesized in the model presented.

The analysis and structuring of the strategic planning process, with the assessment of the as-is situation, were adequate as a preparation step for the first cycle of a BPM program in the CRC. Based on lessons learned along the research project, a model was proposed for the strategic planning process oriented towards promoting BPM.

The model was conceived from a single application at a CRC, through a cycle of action research. This is one of the limitations of this work. The model was not yet sufficiently tested in other contexts. This represents opportunities for future research.

The evaluation step in the action research cycle revealed that the organization in focus was satisfied with the results. New management practices in the organizations in focus were implemented as a result of this work.

Process improvement initiatives are a novelty in the CRC context, and this work may serve as a reference for CRC managers seeking to improve overall performance. The proposed model in this work indicates that a BPM program should start with strategic planning. An initial assessment of the as-is situation of the organization in focus was performed based on the analysis of the undesirable effects in the organization’s management practices, using a technique of the Theory of Constraints. The use of this technique facilitated the identification of solutions to the root causes identified in the assessment. The level of the assessment was deeper in comparison to results obtained with traditional tools used in strategic planning processes. The assessment supports the definition of actions oriented to solving the majority of the management dysfunctions of the organization in focus.

Funding agencies such as the Office of Naval Research, Department of Homeland Security, and others, have reduced funding for non‐tactical operations. Simultaneously, organizations are squeezing their overhead budgets (where security initiatives fall) and are focusing more on revenue generation given current economic climates. Thus, in both governmental sectors and in commercial settings, there are reasons to believe that strategic security initiatives are being sacrificed, and those that survive must be compelling. To assist organizational leaders with these difficult choices, it is critical to understand biases that affect decisions about strategic security initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to validate and empirically test the predictability of a theoretical model, from which implications can be made for research and practice.

Using behavioral decision theory, a randomized longitudinal study was conducted over three years with a multinational corporation with headquarter‐offices in the UK and the USA, and regional offices in India, Germany and France. From these data, a model was developed and tested for fit with a confirmatory factor analysis and its predictive ability was tested using structured equation modeling.

It was found that risk aversion, overconfidence, adjustment of cognitive anchors, and expected utility biases affected whether managers and other stakeholders continued or terminated strategic security initiatives.

Prematurely terminating or over commitment to a strategic initiative can be costly if not significantly damaging to an organization or government military or intelligence agency. Understanding how biases factor into these decisions can help strategic initiative decision makers improve their decisions and assist them in recognizing normative rules or optimal (straddle point) solutions.