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Can (and should) strategy scholarship attempt to find general prescriptions for business strategy that are applicable to all firms across all business conditions? We suggest that a universal theory of business strategy is a chimera: attractive but completely illusory. Our argument is based on two fundamental insights namely, organizations do not automatically adopt all practices and activities that could benefit them (even if knowledge about those activities is in the public domain), and theories and empirical work can address portions of the strategy problem usefully without attempting or achieving a general theory of strategy. Based on this, we believe strategy scholarship can fruitfully build on a variety of mid-range theories to offer three things from a prescriptive standpoint: (1) understanding the structure and processes inherent in organizations and markets; (2) offering productive ways to frame and analyze problems; and (3) offering recommendations for stratagems that appear successful. More generally, organizations might find immense value in strategy scholarship that offers specific tools, prescriptions, and alternative ways of looking at a problem, and that raise performance, on average.

Reference departments across North America have been struggling in recent years with a “reference crisis.” This crisis is characterized by too much demand for service, too many low‐level and repetitive questions, not enough time to answer more challenging questions properly, too few staff to give service at all hours when it is needed, and so on. At the same time, there is a growing concern with the quality of reference service being provided. Reference departments are being exhorted to evaluate the quality of their reference service and to take measures, if necessary, to bring it up to an acceptable standard. But these two issues, the reference crisis and reference evaluation, are related. No amount of staff training or job rotation can improve the standard of reference if the problems associated with the reference crisis are not addressed as well.

The knowledge that human rationality is itself an area of active inquiry should be a sobering thought for those who confidently peddle simple remedies to contemporary managerial, political and economic concerns. Yet mainstream strategic management, as a body of theory and practices, has so far absorbed only a few of the elements of the rapidly evolving general theory of rationality.

In this paper we extend established concepts of product and process architectures to propose a concept of organization architecture that defines the essential features of the system design of an organization needed to achieve an effective strategic alignment of an organization with its competitive and/or cooperative environment. Adopting a work process view of organization, we draw on concepts of product and process architectures to elaborate fundamental elements in the design of an organization architecture. We suggest that organization architectures may be designed to support four basic types of change in organization resources, capabilities, and coordination, which we characterize as convergence, reconfiguration, absorptive integration, and architectural transformation. We also suggest the kinds of strategic flexibilities that an organization must have to create and implement each type of organization architecture. We identify four basic types of strategic environments and consider the kinds of changes in resources, capabilities, and coordination that need to be designed into an organization's architecture to maintain effective strategic alignment with its type of environment. We then propose a typology that identifies four basic ways in which organizational architectures may be effectively aligned with strategic environments. Extending the reasoning underlying the proposed alignments of organization architectures with strategic environments, we propose a strategic principle of architectural isomorphism, which holds that maintaining effective strategic alignment of an organization with its environment requires achieving isomorphism across a firm's product, process, and organization architectures. We conclude by considering some implications of the analyses undertaken here for competence theory, general and mid-range strategy theory, and organization theory.

The aim of this paper is to describe the development and validation of a two-dimensional scale measuring prescription drug brand personality as identified by consumers.

A total of 483 US respondents rated a subset of 15 well-known prescription medications on 22 different personality traits. A total of 2,245 individual brand evaluations were generated and subsequently analyzed using exploratory factor analysis.

The findings revealed that consumers are in fact able to attribute human personality traits to prescription drugs. A stable and generalizable two-dimensional (competence and innovativeness) scale was established: the Prescription Brand Personality Scale (PBPS).

The “stacked” data structure required to aggregate data across subjects discounts the variation between brands and subjects. The brands included in the study are relatively few compared to consumer brands.

This research has important implications for the expansion of pharmaceutical branding strategies and demonstrates the potential of using brand personality as an effective positioning and differentiation tool.

This is the first study to investigate the existence of prescription drug brand personalities as perceived by consumers as well as the development of the PBPS, specifically for prescription drug brands. The findings have important implications for the development of innovative marketing strategies, and this study lays the groundwork for further investigation into the antecedents and consequences of prescription drug brand personality.

This research paper aims to investigate the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on the prescription behavior of physicians. It further examines whether the use of various promotional techniques including advertisements, sales promotions, personal selling and direct marketing by pharmaceutical companies influences the prescription behavior of doctors. Based on the increasing ethical concerns regarding the promotion of specific drugs for personal gains, the research also investigated the moderating role of ethical ideology in the above relationship.

To accomplish the research goals, quantitative research methods were used. Using the online questionnaire, data were collected from 93 doctors working in government and private hospitals in Pakistan, and structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the impact of pharmaceutical marketing techniques on the prescription decisions of physicians.

The findings suggested that marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies positively influences the prescription behavior of doctors. Further, physicians having weak ethical standards are likely to be strongly influenced by the marketing and promotional practices of companies.

The research is pivotal in understanding the perspective of doctors and the ethical considerations that need to be addressed while devising the marketing campaigns by pharmaceutical companies. Further, these findings provide important implications regarding the essential linkage between ethical values and the development of right marketing tools.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first few to empirically develop and test the role of moral values followed by physicians when they take prescription decisions. Based on the findings, future researchers are encouraged to further investigate the need of setting boundaries for pharmaceutical companies and restricting their usage regarding the promotional tactics.

Although different facets of managerial third‐party intervention in organizations have been explored, we know little about how managers should intervene in different disputes for resolving them successfully. In this study, a prescriptive model of intervention strategy selection proposed by Elangovan (1995) is tested. Data on successful and unsuccessful interventions were collected from senior managers in different organizations. The results show that following the prescriptions of the model leads to a significant increase in the likelihood that an intervention would be successful as well as in the degree of success of the intervention, thereby supporting a contingency view of dispute intervention.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of direct-to-physician promotion on physicians’ prescription behaviour. There were very few studies which have investigated to what extent the pharmaceutical promotion directed towards physicians influences physicians’ prescription behaviour in the Malaysian context.

A research framework has been developed based on the buyer behaviour stimulus-response model. A survey method has been used to collect data from 154 medical practitioners from private health-care facilities located at Klang valley in Malaysia. IBM SPSS and SmartPLS statistical programs have been used to analyse the data and validate the model.

This study found that personal selling is the most significant promotional tool for physicians’ prescription behaviour, whereas advertising is the least significant one. Sales promotion and public relations are the second and third most significant promotional tools. Direct marketing is found to be not significant.

This paper will help the pharmaceutical companies develop more effective plans to gain a competitive advantage for their business by having a guideline for pharmaceutical marketers as an input to the more efficient allocation of their promotional budgets.

This study has introduced a comprehensive understanding of all the factors in the pharmaceutical promotion that influence physicians’ prescription behaviour in Malaysia and how these factors are interrelated, influencing physicians’ prescribing medicines for patients.

While extant entry theory has long prescribed a niche approach for new ventures, a preponderance of empirical research has found that broad strategies may be the key to new venture success. This study examines the difference between entry theory and empirical evidence by considering the moderating impact of initial financial resources on the effectiveness of venture strategy. Examining new, independent firms at the point of inception, we find that initial financial resources moderate the relationship between strategic breadth and performance, implying that the returns to a broad initial strategy increase with the level of initial capital. Contrary to popular niche prescriptions for new ventures, we did not find support for the belief that firms with low initial financial resources should pursue niche strategies and suggest that it may be time to re-examine theory on the nature of the relationship between entry strategies and performance.