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Today, industrial firms need to cope with competitive challenges related to innovation, dynamic responses, knowledge sharing, etc. by means of effective and dynamic strategy formulation. In light of these challenges, the purpose of the paper is to present and evaluate an assessment tool for strategy formulation processes that ensures high quality in process and outcome.

A literature review was conducted to identify success criteria for strategy formulation processes. Then, a simple questionnaire and assessment tool was developed and used to test the validity of the success criteria through face‐to‐face interviews with 46 managers, workshops involving 40 managers, and two in‐depth case studies. The success criteria have been slightly modified due to the empirical results, to yield the assessment tool.

The resulting assessment tool integrates three generic approaches to strategy assessment, namely the goal‐centred, comparative and improvement approaches, as found in the literature. Furthermore, it encompasses three phases of strategy formulation processes: strategic thinking, strategic planning and embedding of strategy. The tool reflects that the different approaches to assessment are relevant in all phases of strategy formulation, but weighted differently. Managerial perceptions expressed in particular that learning from experience should be accommodated in strategic thinking. The strategic planning stage is mainly assessed based on the goal‐centred approach, but cases and managerial perceptions indicate that the need for accurate and detailed plans might be overrated in the literature, as implementation relies heavily on continuous improvement and empowerment. Concerning embedding, key aspects relate both to the goal‐centred and improvement approaches, while the comparative approach appears to play a more modest role, related to monitoring external changes and enabling the organization to respond adaptively.

The proposed assessment tool is general in the sense that it does not take into account relationships between the strategic context and the assessment of strategy formulation processes. The investigated cases indicate that contingencies matter, and call for further investigation of particular applications. The present research maintained a focus on formal and relatively top‐down‐oriented strategy formulation processes.

The integration of three different strategy assessment approaches has been made to obtain a holistic, multi‐perspective reflection on strategy formulation. Such reflection is assumed to enable managers to proactively evaluate the potential outcome and performance of their chosen strategy.

The originality of the paper lies in the combination and compilation of multiple approaches to strategy assessment, which draws on a wide range of literature, and in the proactive perspective on strategy assessment. Furthermore, the validity of the proposed assessment tool or checklist is based on multiple sources of empirical evidence.

The strategies to assess potential and realized customer value have received surprisingly little attention in management literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine potential customer value assessment strategies for business-to-business (B2B) firms and their special characteristics.

The empirical part of the study draws from an exploratory, two-part field study involving three pilot firms, and seven best practice firms in customer value assessment. The research design followed an inductive, discovery-oriented grounded theory approach. Primary data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 35 business managers from ten B2B firms.

The study identifies three customer value assessment strategies adopted by firms in business markets: Emergent value sales strategy; Life-cycle value management strategy; and Dedicated value specialist strategy. These strategies highlight different ways of managing and coordinating organizational units in different phases of the customer value assessment process.

The study was conducted from the supplier's perspective and is context-bound to firms operating in B2B markets.

Managers need to select an appropriate strategy for customer value assessment depending on market and offering characteristics, and assign clear responsibilities for value potential identification, baseline assessment, and long-term value realization.

The extant literature on customer value lacks understanding on customer value assessment strategies. The present study identifies three strategies that illuminate the required resources and organizational units at different phases of the customer value assessment process.

In this study, the performance assessment of credit unions is developed, seeking to demonstrate how the content of their operations strategy is present in the structuring of unique models of organisational performance assessment. The main objective is to compare sources of knowledge through the content analysis of the service operations strategy as proposed by the literature and validated by specialists.

This research is a qualitative study that uses the knowledge of specialists to frame a performance assessment structure applied to credit unions. The research strategy is based on multicriteria analysis, and the selected techniques are based on the MCDA-C procedure, that is, the processes of structuring, evaluating and recommending improvements.

The research results provided: a data set external to the context that serves as theoretical support for the comparisons made; the structuring of 4 unique organisational performance assessment models carried out through the MCDA-C procedure; conceptual interpretation using the lens of the operations strategy in the cognitive maps of the assessment models, which identifies the operations strategy carried out; and comparison of the result models that show their uniqueness.

The comparison between the origins of knowledge is highlighted, and the demonstration of the content was proposed by the literature and by specialists to evaluate the performance in operations. This was then compared with the content constructed with credit union managers in structuring models based on the singularities of the respective contexts. The theory was compared to practice, and it was demonstrated how the content of the operations regarding the performance could be used in decision contexts.

Companies coping with global business are called more and more to lead their transformation into intelligent organizations, i.e. organizations able to leverage their intellectual capital to achieve their business objectives and envision new development paths. This paper, assuming that the organizational intellectual capital corresponds to the knowledge assets attributed to a company, aims to discuss the organizational value, the processes, the approaches and the evaluation architectures of the knowledge asset assessment strategies.

On the basis of a literature review, first the sub‐processes of the assessment are discussed, highlighting the main features of the assessment of knowledge assets as well as the twofold nature of the knowledge asset assessment, distinguishing between stock and flow perspective of the evaluation. Second, the managerial reasons at the basis of the implementation of measurement systems for disclosing organizational knowledge resources are discussed. Finally, according to a distinction between the assessment approaches and the evaluation architectures, four main knowledge asset assessment strategies are defined.

Despite a number of models to assess intellectual capital being proposed, they highlighted a need for clarification of their strategic focus. With the aim of filling this gap, the main finding of the paper is to clarify relevant issues providing an organic, literature review‐based and coherent framework about the knowledge assets assessment strategies.

The identification of these strategies not only contributes to advance the theory of knowledge asset assessment, but also provides insights to managers to better define and implement models and approaches for measuring organizational knowledge resources. Especially they support managers in choosing and arranging critical information for defining the most suitable decisions and actions concerning the effective management and development of a company's intellectual capital.

This study compares the differences in instructional and assessment strategy use between instructors who teach undergraduate- and graduate-level face-to-face, academic credit-bearing leadership studies courses. Findings suggest that, overall, discussion-based pedagogies, case studies, and self-assessments are the most frequently used instructional strategies, while instructors attach the most weight in their courses to term papers, group projects, and class participation/attendance. Further, undergraduate-level instructors use service learning far more in their instruction, while graduate instructors attach much greater value to term papers.

This study aims to explore the effect of negotiating audit differences on auditors’ internal control deficiency (ICD) severity assessments, an ensuing, non-negotiated judgment, in an integrated audit.

The experiment manipulates the client’s concession timing strategy as either immediate or gradual, holding the outcome constant. A total of 34 auditors (primarily managers) resolve an audit difference with the client.

The client’s concession timing strategy during the negotiation of an audit difference spills over to affect auditors’ severity assessment of a related ICD. Auditors judged the ICD severity to be higher (lower) in the immediate (gradual) condition. Client retention risk inferences mediate this effect.

The effect on auditors’ ICD severity assessments may not ultimately affect the audit report. Participants did not control their negotiation strategy, allowing the client’s negotiation strategy and the outcome to be held constant; it is possible that interactive effects between the client and auditor’s strategy might affect the study’s implications.

Features of the auditor–client negotiation process may influence auditors’ downstream, post-negotiation judgments and may therefore help to explain empirical evidence and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspection findings that show auditors often fail to identify an internal control material weakness after identifying a financial statement misstatement.

This paper expands current negotiation research by exploring the impact of inferences made based on counterparty concession strategy for downstream, non-negotiated judgments and current integrated audit research by identifying client retention perceptions as a driving factor of lower ICD severity assessments.

This global, quantitative study explores the instructional and assessment strategy use of leadership educators who teach online, academic credit-bearing leadership studies courses at graduate- and undergraduate-levels. Participants include 81 graduate-level and 37 undergraduate- level instructors who taught an online leadership studies course within two years of completing the web-based survey used in this study. Findings suggest that discussion-based pedagogies, most commonly facilitated in online discussion boards, were the most widely used strategies. And, while reflection, case studies, and group or individual projects were also used frequently, instructors teaching graduate-level courses used ungraded formative quizzes significantly more often than undergraduate instructors. Findings also suggest that instructors attached the most weight to their students’ overall course grades to discussion boards, major writing projects or term papers, and participation.

Purpose: Many Internet users search for health information but they struggle with assessing the quality of the information they find. By drawing on a multi-modal approach to data collection, this study aims to understand further the nuanced cognitive processes that people utilize as they acquire and evaluate online health information.

Design: We used a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys, interviews, and observations of 76 diverse adults of all ages in the Chicago area completing various health information-seeking tasks.

Findings: Most participants begin their information-seeking process on search engines. We identified the most popular credibility-assessment strategies used on the search engine results’ pages (SERP) as well as on websites. We also explored how the process of executing such strategies reveals greater and lesser savvy among users.

Research Limitations: While the sample size and methods limit its generalizability, this study included a larger and more diverse group of participants than most observational work, which results in data about a wider range of behaviors than is typical of such research.

Social Implications: Our findings showed that most of our participants could use additional education regarding credibility assessment of online health information. Additionally, since a great deal of credibility assessment occurs on SERP, search companies bear a particular responsibility for ensuring the quality of the information their results highlight.