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The purpose of this paper is to explore the patterns of service strategy changes in manufacturing firms and indicates how each pattern is interrelated with modifications in organizational design elements.

The paper draws on a longitudinal study using a survey of 97 manufacturers of capital goods. In addition, 15 case studies have been conducted. Survey and qualitative data are obtained in 1997, 2001, and 2004.

The findings highlight four patterns of service strategy changes: from customer service strategy to after‐sales service provider, from after‐sales service provider to customer‐support service provider, from customer‐support service provider to development partner, and from customer‐support service provider to the outsourcing partner. Evidence of specific alignment between service strategy and organizational design elements is provided.

The main limitation of this paper is the purposive sample.

Managers should follow the patterns of service strategy changes by extending the service offerings and modifying the organizational design elements.

Previous studies investigate service strategies and organizational design elements only at a specific time, which leads to a static perspective. This paper offers insights into interrelations among service strategy changes and organizational design elements.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effective taxonomies of airline green operations strategy.

To this end, a sample of 23 airlines from five regions (North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East) was surveyed. The annual sustainability reports of the surveyed airlines for the period 2013‒2016 were retrieved from the Global Reporting Initiatives website. K-means clustering analysis was used to generate taxonomic clusters of airline green operations strategy. A special data analysis technique, called rank analysis, was also adopted to identify the significant green actions and develop indicative models.

This study revealed that three effective taxonomies were adopted by airlines: a low-effect strategic pattern, a low-to-moderate effect strategic pattern and a high-effect strategic pattern. A different combination of green operation actions characterized each strategic pattern.

The research contribution of taxonomies of green operations strategy has so far been limited, country focused and concentrated on the manufacturing sector. This study reported the taxonomies and performed an in-depth analysis of the categories of effective actions taken to promote green performance. Moreover, this study developed indicative models for the relationship between categories of action and green performance for each strategic pattern, an action that has seldom been reported by previous studies of green operations strategies for airlines.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of strategies for information searching and seeking by reviewing the conceptualizations on this topic in the field of library and information science (LIS).

The study draws on Henry Mintzberg’s idea of strategy as plan and strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. Conceptual analysis of 57 LIS investigations was conducted to find out how researchers have approached the above aspects in the characterizations of information search and seeking strategies.

In the conceptualizations of information search and information seeking strategies, the aspect of strategy as plan is explicated most clearly in text-book approaches describing the steps of rational web searching. Most conceptualizations focus on the aspect of strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. This approach places the main emphasis on realized strategies, either deliberate or emergent. Deliberate strategies indicate how information search or information seeking processes were oriented by intentions that existed previously. Emergent strategies indicate how patterns in information seeking and seeking developed in the absence of intentions, or despite them.

The conceptualizations of the shifts in information seeking and searching strategies were excluded from the study. Similarly, conceptualizations of information search or information retrieval tactics were not examined.

The study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the key aspects of strategy are conceptualized in the classifications and typologies of information seeking and searching strategies. The findings contribute to the elaboration of the conceptual space of information behaviour research.

Tourist destinations are constantly changing products, evolving as per the controls exerted by the stakeholders. The study aims to map the pattern of tourism development and identify the strategies formed at the destination over a seven-decade period for a state as a unit of analysis.

The paper evaluates tourism development through the tourism area life cycle (TALC) model and uses Mintzberg's strategy analysis process to identify strategies. The study involves time series analysis, pattern matching and explanation-building techniques. The TALC is plotted for the number of tourist arrivals from 1947 to 2019, and strategies are mapped for each stage.

The TALC shows a cycle-recycle pattern of tourism development. The research revealed several strategies at different stages. Both the central and state governments and entrepreneurs, distinctively and in conjunction, have formed strategies. The pattern shows the period of piecemeal and global strategic changes contributing to tourism development.

The research unearths the strategies that drive the development curves of TALC, emphasising the integration of TALC with other theories. The research also assesses the strategy formed in the pre-tourism stage.

The research brings to light the use of TALC as a strategic road-mapping tool. In addition, the study emphasises the significance of global and piecemeal strategic periods and stakeholder's regulatory and operational roles.

The research uses a unique methodology that maps the strategies, periods of strategic changes and incremental strategies for each stage of TALC, along with identifying the stakeholders.

In competitive labor markets, promoting employees’ learning becomes a key challenge for companies. However, in small German craft companies, employee development is always connected with worries about employee turnover. This study aims to investigate the current informal learning strategies of craft workers and how they use the strategies, the effect of learning on employees’ internal and external marketability and beneficial workplace characteristics (autonomy, feedback).

An online prestudy (N = 131) explored current informal learning strategies. In the main study (N = 526), cluster analysis was applied to identify patterns of informal learning strategies. The relations of these patterns to workplace characteristics and marketability were investigated.

Four informal learning strategies were found (informal learning from oneself, from others, from other sources and from new media). Craft workers used combinations of the strategies (i.e. patterns): three learning patterns (balanced high, person-oriented and balanced low) differed in intensity and combination with the learning strategy use. More intense learning patterns were positively related to internal marketability but were not related to external marketability. Higher autonomy and feedback availability were related to higher learning engagement.

Studies should have a broader view of informal learning strategies concerning different learning patterns. The use of new media is a learning strategy that might increase in the future.

Craft companies could promote different informal learning strategies without worries about employee turnover.

The study reveals how German small- and medium-sized enterprise employees use informal learning strategies in digitalized times and how human resources development can use informal learning strategies.

This study aims to identify the effective operational strategies for airlines in a pandemic that allow them to recover and bounce back smoothly.

This study adopted quantitative methodology based on secondary data published by the airlines related to operational and performance indicators. The total number of airlines surveyed was 145. The sample of study covers all the following regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America. The data analysis of this research passed through several phases to compare the situation before and during pandemic period.

The effective operational strategy patterns during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic comprise three hybrid strategies and one scheduling strategy. It appears from these strategy models that four strategic alternatives are available for international airlines to adopt, while two strategic alternatives are available for regional airlines. The strategy alternatives for regional and international airlines are all effective, but those of the international airlines are the more effective ones.

Previous studies rarely adopted the theory of operations strategy configuration (emphasizing taxonomies-based perspective) and the organizational resilience theory (emphasizing capability-based perspective) to identify the effective airlines operations strategy patterns in a pandemic, that allow airlines to recover and bounce back smoothly by analyzing the practices of airlines from different geographic regions worldwide.

Purpose – Taking a configurational perspective, this study explores if there are different market entry strategies used and if there are ideal configurations of subsidiary strategy in different types of foreign countries.

Methodology – The study is based on a sample of 238 subsidiaries of German companies that are located in 38 different countries. Capturing many different facets of the subsidiary strategy, the configuration of top performers in different environments is identified. With a ‘fit as profile deviation’ approach, it is investigated whether the strategy of the top performers indeed constitutes an ideal strategy.

Findings – The host countries of the subsidiaries can be clustered in four types: BRICs, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the USA. Chosen market entry modes differ significantly between those four host country types. The top performing subsidiaries in each of the country types have distinct strategy patterns. However, deviation from the strategy profile of the top performers only explains the lower performance of subsidiaries in country types BRICs and Eastern Europe. Performance differences between subsidiaries in Western Europe and the USA cannot be explained with the variables captured in this study.

Research limitations/implications – Taking a configurational approach on subsidiary strategy proves to be a promising path to create new insights. But subsidiary strategy pattern alone is insufficient to explain performance in two country types. Thus, other influence factors must be investigated. Furthermore, the study did explore subsidiary strategy patterns with a cluster analysis, without ex ante hypotheses about the patterns. Hence, further studies are needed to re-investigate these patterns.

The purpose of this research is to provide insights into the daily search strategies of users, which can inform the enhancement of search experiences across multiple applications. By understanding how users navigate and interact with different apps during their search processes, the study seeks to contribute to the design of more intuitive and user-friendly app systems.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach to analyze users' daily search strategies in a natural cross-app interactive environment. Data collection was conducted using the Critical Incident Technique and the Micro-Moment Time Line, involving 204 participants to capture their real-time search experiences. Open coding techniques were utilized to categorize sequential search tactics, while the PrefixSpan algorithm was applied to identify patterns in frequently applied search strategies.

The study findings unveil a comprehensive framework that includes a variety of intra-app search tactics and inter-app switching tactics. Five predominant search strategies were identified: Iterative querying, Selective results adoption, Share-related, Recommended browsing, and Organizational results strategies. These strategies reflect the nuanced ways in which users engage with apps to fulfill their information needs.

This research represents a pioneering effort in systematically identifying and categorizing daily search strategies within a natural cross-app interaction context. It offers original contributions to the field by combining intra-app and inter-app tactics, providing a holistic view of user behavior. The implications of these findings are significant for app developers and designers, as they can leverage this knowledge to improve app functionality and user manuals, ultimately enhancing the overall search experience for users.

This study intends to reveal how to manage the dynamic process of information technology business (IT-business) strategic alignment; managing this alignment is an unknown yet critical issue that must be addressed by any firm trying to unleash the business value of their IT investments.

This study presents our case study of a healthcare organization after healthcare information systems (HIS) implementation and investigates the strategic alignment between the implemented HIS and the organizational strategy from a dynamic perspective.

Two different patterns of alignment (i.e. an IT-strategy–driven pattern and a business-strategy–driven pattern) are identified, and a process model of the IT-business strategic alignment is developed. Moreover, this study focuses on the social dimension of strategic alignment and examines the role of this dimension, which is critical and fundamental with respect to other dimensions, in achieving strategic alignment.

This paper makes important theoretical contributions to the understanding of strategic alignment by taking a dynamic view of alignment, identifying different patterns of alignment, emphasizing the role of social alignment and developing a comprehensive process model.

From a managerial perspective, managers should periodically scrutinize the IT-business alignment patterns of their organizations and develop dynamic capabilities for strategic alignment.

While most of the literature on the dynamics of strategic alignment have focused on confirming the dynamics of strategic alignment and identifying the factors that create dynamics in alignment, this study examines IT-business alignment as a continuous process over time, thus providing a novel perspective. Moreover, while the role of social alignment and its impact on downstream performance remain unclear in the current literature, this study incorporates the social dimension of alignment to investigate the role of this dimension in achieving IT-business strategic alignment.