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Using a state of the art CIMO literature review the paper develops a framework of the relationship between strategy making in the small tourism firm context and four performance outcomes.

The paper uses the CIMO literature review method, adapted from the wider management literature to structure and integrate the existing fragmented literature base.

Premised on the literature review, a framework of the relationship between strategy making and firm performance in context is posited. Emerging from a dominant owner/manager in a deeply embedded context strategy making influences firm performance across four dimensions. The influence is dynamic, continually subject to modification in a changing environment often mediated through emerging technology.

The CIMO method provides an integrated framework of the relationship between strategy making and small firm performance in context hence overcoming limitations of the fragmented nature of the research landscape. Emerging from the review key future research trajectories is posited.

While highlighting the relationship between strategy making and performance, the proposed framework implies owner/managers play the key role in strategy making with opportunities and challenges in modifying existing strategy making emerging from owner/manager embeddedness. Opportunities for improved policy interventions are posited.

The paper applies the systematic review to the relationship between strategy making and the small tourism firm.

The paper aims to establish the role of enterprise information systems strategies (ISS) enabled by business strategies for attaining organizational innovativeness (ORIN) mediated by performance (decision-making and business processes) under environmental turbulence.

The research framework is developed based on theoretical grounding and validated with the help of 408 responses from Brazil using SmartPLS path modeling.

The results of the research suggest that the resource orchestra of enterprise information systems strategy-enabled strategy-making can be a viable alternative to enhance innovation activities in the organizations through the mediated role of performance (decision-making and business process).

The research demonstrates the role of business function (information systems) strategy enabled overall business strategy-making for achieving innovations in the organization. Fortune organizations are exploiting the information systems strategy enabled business strategy for innovations in the organization; such as Amazon, Walmart, Costco, etc.

The proposed and validated model is a contribution to the enterprise information systems strategy theory. This model presents the role of resource orchestras in achieving innovations in organizations.

This study aims to systematically review strategy making in the seaport context during a period of hyper uncertainty.

A systematic review using the context, intervention, method and outcome (CIMO) framework is conducted in the domains of strategy making and the port sector taking account of hyper uncertainty caused by Brexit.

Strategy making (under conditions of hyper uncertainty) is shown to evolve from both stakeholder/supply chain embedded relationships and from chief executive officer and extra organisational inputs. Through an iterative process of internal resourcing, stakeholder engagement strategy development can be seen to impact five key outcomes of an emerging strategy making under hyper uncertainty: economic returns; societal and regional impacts; deeper improved market engagement; improved environmental sensing and potential for dynamic capability development.

The systematic review integrates the existing fragmented research landscape regarding strategy making under hyper uncertainty, provides future research trajectories and develops a framework emerging from the review.

The framework offers port management and policymakers a tool to improve their engagement with strategy making under hyper uncertainty and associated outcomes.

The systematic review consolidates the fragmented literature and presents future research trajectories. The framework of strategy making under hyper uncertainty developed from the CIMO framework develops existing knowledge and contributes to academic theory.

Enduring scholarly interest in the process of strategy-making stems from an abiding assumption that some ways of strategizing are more efficacious than others, and thus lead to higher firm performance in the long run; higher than luck alone would bring. Expressions of interest in and endorsements of the strategy process are abundant in the academic literature. As Pettigrew (1992) points out, Hofer and Schendel's pioneering definition of strategic management is processual in character emphasizing the development and utilization of strategy. Rumelt, Schendel, and Teece (1994) list the policy process question – how does policy process matter? – as a fundamental question of the strategic management field. Porter (1996) expresses preoccupation with the leadership and organizational challenges of managing the process. And, Hamel (1988) exhorts the field to devote as much attention to the conduct of strategy, i.e., the task of strategy making, as they have to its content. For senior managers and leaders, the question of how to make effective strategies stands usually at the top of their agenda. Not surprisingly then, the quest to uncover stable principles of good strategy making has attracted much support and interest over the years.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a solution that helps reduce confusion about choice and usage of tools for strategy-making.

The approach is to present a classroom-tested system that integrates new methods for applying a parsimonious set of six widely used tools, within one, comprehensive, yet succinct, procedure for strategy-making.

Findings, based on years of development and use of the procedure as the basis for teaching MBA capstone courses in strategy, reveal that it facilitates rapid mastery of the underlying theory and practical application of the essential tools of strategy-making.

Practical implications include decreased tendencies for ad hoc or disjointed use of random sets of tools for strategy-making and increased capabilities to connect strategy-making and strategy-executing in an iterative process, as previous iterations of strategies that were executed by organizations are used to determine new strategies.

Characteristics of the procedure which are original include: merging outside-in and inside-out perspectives on strategy-making in one, succinct procedure; providing an approach with general applicability to diverse types of organizations; providing a systematic process for identifying and rating environmental characteristics, using shared, theory-based scales, applied to fully-cited, real-world data, thereby reducing reliance on unsubstantiated opinion, providing full traceability, and facilitating knowledge transfer across users and time; and linking strategy analysis to formulation. The procedure described in this article has value for professors, students, managers, consultants, and the broad spectrum of people throughout organizations who are engaged in strategy-making.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong that is different from the notion of “Yin-Yang balancing” and apply it to understand the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making.

The authors adopt a “West meets East” mindset and approach to develop an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong, and then apply this perspective to understand the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making. There are three steps in the process of developing the alternative perspective. First, the authors argue that the essence of “Yin-Yang balancing” is a ratio-based solution to paradoxical balancing, which is in fact equivalent to Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and compatible with some western management scholars’ approaches to solving paradox. Second, the authors identify a different generic solution to paradoxical balancing implicit in the western management literature. Third, the authors find in the original text of Zhong-Yong equivalent ideas to the identified different generic solution and then propose an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong that is fundamentally different from the notion of “Yin-Yang balancing.”

Applied to the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making, the new perspective on Zhong-Yong provides us with the following prescriptive insights from the life-wisdom of eastern philosophy: first, top management (e.g. Shun as the sage-king) must listen to various views and opinions also from employees and low-level managers at the bottom of the organization to be better informed about complex issues. Second, top management must analyze the diverse elements of the various views and opinions they collect and synthesize by taking the good from the bad to find smarter solutions and make decisions with better outcomes. Third, abiding by a set of (more or less) cohesive values help top managers be open and receptive to information and insights from low-level organizational members and enhancing unbiased information.

This paper is mainly a theoretical perspective. Empirical work is needed to test the prescriptions offered in this paper.

Practitioners may learn new perspectives from ancient Chinese philosophies on how to balance.

This paper applies a new perspective on Zhong-Yong to an important paradox in strategic management.

This study develops the idea that resource orchestration (RO) of ISS-enabled strategy-making (ISS-SM) can influence dynamic and improvisational capabilities in innovation resulting in corporate performance (CP) gains under a hostile environment.

The structural equation modeling is applied to the data collected from 551 Brazilian firms.

The results suggest that ISS-SM facilitates dynamic and improvisational capabilities in innovation, consequently promoting CP. The research also showed that, under conditions of high environmental hostility, the impact of improvisational capabilities in innovation on CP is significantly amplified. Finally, in the specific case of high hostility, ISS-SM is especially important in enabling organizational capabilities on CP, for digital mastery firms, large firms in the manufacturing and services sectors.

The findings provide insights on how RO of ISS and resource management action enable strategy-making to leverage innovation and corporate performance during an uncertain environment.

This study developed an original contribution to resource orchestration, information systems strategies, and strategy-making literature through developing a novel construct of ISS-enabled strategy-making to enhance proximate and distal outcomes under a hostile environment.

The dual importance of centrally induced strategic intent and the ability to engage in autonomous strategic initiatives has been demonstrated in both qualitative and quantitative empirical studies over the past decades. However, the particular mechanisms required to facilitate the interaction between these strategy-making approaches and achieve better corporate performance are less clear. The authors argue that the commonly conceived but rarely examined role of the strategic control process is essential to the implied adaptive performance dynamic. Although the strategic control typically is conceived as the diagnostic monitoring of outcomes, the authors contend that an interactive control (IC) mechanism is conducive to superior performance outcomes. To examine this, the authors use the extant strategy literature to generate the basic hypothesized relationships and conduct an empirical study based on a large corporate sample to uncover the intricate strategy-making model. The analyses show that adherence to ICs is an essential mediator for the positive combined effects of strategic planning and autonomous strategy-making processes.

This study of a market-leader in a turbulent hostile telecommunications market uncovers how the competitive context influences strategy-making and cultivates central control that opposes autonomous initiatives. It shows how a highly competitive industry context reduces organizational slack that inhibits autonomy and drives central actions. Strategic initiatives primarily arise as deliberate actions induced by top management. This creates an information gap between ongoing experiences gained by employees operating in the periphery of the organization and the perceptions of decision-makers at the corporate center. In this organizational setting, the authors observe maverick behavior among entrepreneurial individuals that deliberately circumvent the formal rules to turn autonomous initiatives into viable strategic ventures in the best interest of the firm. Where conventional views presume that power delegation and organizational slack are necessary for autonomous strategic initiatives to emerge, the authors find that central control can provoke autonomous rule-breaking maverick behavior among resource-deprived entrepreneurial individuals inside the organization.

This chapter contends that the international business (IB) and strategic management (SM) fields have many commonalities that should be considered in a turbulent globalized business context. IB studies refer to the need for local integration and local adaptation whereas empirics in SM pinpoint the complementary effects of central planning and decentralized decision-making. We present and synthesize these rather field specific perspectives and try to synthesize insights from both fields in an adaptive strategy-making model including the effects of autonomous subsidiary initiatives and intended mandates from corporate headquarters. The model considers local subsidiary actions of both operational and strategic nature and we argue that it may be futile to distinguish between these effects as incremental operational responses can cumulate into more substantial changes over time with dimensions of strategic adaptation. The model provides a foundation for further considerations about how to combine central intent and direction with decentralization and autonomous initiatives in the multinational corporation.