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Discusses how interrelationships can be developed for synergy. Also focuses on horizontal strategy as a way to achieve competitive advantage. Organizational context can determine a firm’s motivation and ability to develop interrelationships that result in overall competitive advantage. Corporate strategy must move beyond the idea that the primary way of creating synergy is the combination of related businesses (by buying and selling businesses). Corporate strategy must focus on creating value that is independent of business unit value. This means developing horizontal strategies that have the objective of coordinating activities and developing programs that encourage the sharing of resources and skills. An understanding of the horizontal organization helps to emphasize that organizational structure and processes are significant in developing interrelationships with the potential to reach the goals of synergy and competitive advantage.

This paper aims to theoretically investigate an online company’s optimal decision on its offline expansion strategy. In the past five years, many large online retailers and internet-based companies such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com have expanded their offline market but it was observed that they adopted different expansion strategies. Specifically, some of them expand the offline market by acquiring offline retailers, while some do so by purchasing a portion of offline retailer’s stake. This difference leads to a quite different structure in post-expansion market, having an impact on profit, consumer surplus and social welfare. The goal of this paper is to model such expansion strategies in a general way and complete studies on profits and welfare.

By constructing a Salop model with two offline retailers and one online company, this paper analyzes the case where the online company can expand its offline market by either acquiring or jointing (e.g. stakeholding) with one offline retailer. The former strategy (named Strategy A) allows the online company to fully control and capture residual claims of the offline retailer. With the adoption of the latter strategy (named Strategy C), on the other hand, the online company can obtain a fixed proportion of its offline partner’s quasi rent. In the price competition, the online company chooses its optimal offline expansion strategy by predicting its profit in the post-expansion market.

This paper found that the equilibrium crucially depends on the synergy effect due to online–offline integration, and such synergy also influences both consumer and social welfare. This study shows the various conditions on the synergy that affect an online company moves toward offline markets. Accordingly, this finding can assist online companies with or without retailing business to choose an optimal strategy when expanding offline markets. Moreover, by doing some necessary welfare analysis, this study shows that the online company’s offline expansion is not always benefiting consumers nor be socially desirable, which may shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion.

Different from conventional wisdom in online-offline integration, the theory indicates that the offline expectation of online company may not always benefit consumers nor be socially desirable. Moreover, the findings also shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are an important strategic tool for continuous adaptation, sustainable corporate development and external growth. At the same time, M&As involve high levels of risk with mixed performance results even under normal circumstances. Even though the M&A market was continuously growing for the last decade, it was abruptly ended by the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as executives were more concerned about liquidity than with long-term growth strategies. This raises the question how M&A behaviour is affected by the economic fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The mixed method research design was employed in this study.

The authors particularly investigate how target selection as well as synergy management are affected by the pandemic. The study analysis reveals four archetypical responses to the COVID-19 crisis. The authors describe those responses in detail and analyse antecedents that seem to influence firms' acquisition behaviour during the pandemic.

The paper draws on survey and interview data of M&A practitioners.

This paper takes the manufacturing cluster supply chain as the research object and explores the evaluation and enhancement strategy of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy. The purpose of this study was to (1) analyze the mechanism of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy; (2) construct manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation model; (3) algorithm realization of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation and (4) propose manufacturing cluster-based supply chain synergy enhancement strategy.

Breaking through the limitations of traditional manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation, we take horizontal synergy and vertical synergy as coupled synergy subsystems, use the complex system synergy model to explore the horizontal synergy between core enterprises and cluster enterprises and the vertical synergy of supply chain enterprises and use the coupling coordination model to construct the coupled synergy evaluation model of manufacturing cluster supply chain, which is an innovation of the evaluation perspective of previous cluster supply chain synergy and also an enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation methodology. This is not only the innovation of the evaluation perspective but also the enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation method.

Using Python software to conduct empirical analysis on the evaluation model, the research shows that the horizontal and vertical synergies of the manufacturing cluster supply chain interact with each other and jointly affect the coupling synergy. On this basis, targeted strategies are proposed to enhance the synergy of the manufacturing cluster supply chain.

This study takes manufacturers, suppliers and sellers in the three-level supply chain as the research object and does not consider the synergistic evaluation between distributors and consumers in the supply chain, which can be further explored in this direction in the future.

Advanced manufacturing clusters, as the main force of manufacturing development, and the synergistic development of supply chain are one of the important driving forces for the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. As a new type of network organization coupling industrial clusters and supply chains, cluster supply chain is conducive not only to improving the competitiveness of cluster supply chains but also to upgrading cluster supply chains through horizontal synergy within the cluster and vertical synergy in the supply chain.

Research can help accelerate the transformation and upgrading of clustered supply chains in the manufacturing industry, promote high-quality development of the manufacturing industry and accelerate the rise of the global value chain position of the manufacturing industry.

(1) Innovation of research perspective. Starting from two perspectives of horizontal synergy and vertical synergy, we take a core enterprise in the cluster supply chain as the starting point, horizontally explore the main enterprises of the cluster as the research object of horizontal synergy, vertically explore the upstream and downstream enterprises of the supply chain as the research object of vertical synergy and explore the coupling synergy of cluster supply chain as two subsystems, which provides new perspectives of evaluation of the degree of synergy and synergy evaluation. (2) Innovation of research content. Nine manufacturing clusters are selected as research samples, and through data collection and model analysis, it is verified that the evaluation model and implementation algorithm designed in this paper have strong practicability, which not only provides methodological reference for the evaluation of manufacturing cluster-type supply chain synergy but also reduces the loss caused by the instability of clusters and supply chains and then provides a theoretical basis for improving the overall performance of cluster-type supply chains.

This article explores the theme of synergy in relation to business strategy, with specific reference to e‐business. After exploring the extent to which e‐business strategy needs to be integrated with corporate and functional area strategies, the article continues the theme of synergy by viewing the extent of integration between the functions of multiple channels. Another dimension of synergy arises in the context of the supply chain. Issues such as alliances, and disintermediation and re‐intermediation contribute to the debate concerning synergy between companies. The central role of alliances in e‐business is such that businesses need to consider the concept of the virtual organisation, and the implications of strategy formulation and delivery not only within an organisation, but also across the alliances that make the virtual organisation. The article is interspersed with short case vignettes that elucidate some of the challenges for strategy and synergy.

Previous studies on international competitive strategies identify a number of loosely defined strategy types and suggest that the choice among them is based on their relative productive efficiency (i.e. ability to exploit such factors as economies of scale, economies of scope, and location economies). Our analysis highlights the additional role of motivational efficiency. We propose that the proportion of available productive efficiency that is actually realized under each strategy depends on the motivational efficiency of the best possible incentive system for implementing the strategy. Our conceptual framework allows the identification of precise theoretical relationships for empirical measurement and testing.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a quantitative model to help managers diagnose what dynamic capabilities a firm needs to address the demands of a rapidly changing environment.

A two-firm model based on the VRIO framework is built using quantitative techniques to assist top management in formulating and implementing strategies regarding when and how to develop a firm’s dynamic capabilities for achieving a competitive advantage. This model is developed by considering both internal and external competences, with the former measured by the features of the organizational capabilities of the focal firm and latter evaluated by comparing the relative utilities of the dynamic capabilities of the two competing firms.

Three resource allocation strategies are introduced to guide a firm to leverage dynamic capability that generates strong organizational performance. The first two strategies are, respectively, synergy oriented, focussing on acquiring various knowledge or experiences of a capability, and uniqueness oriented, emphasizing the depth of knowledge and technology of the capabilities. The third one is a hybrid of the first two strategies.

The proposed model is useful to help top management determine how and when to renew, bundle, and leverage resources and capabilities in a dynamic environment. It enables decision makers to detect changes in the competitive environment and take corrective action in a timely and appropriate manner.

As the saying goes, “food is heaven of people” the development of agriculture is not only related to the quality of human life but also profoundly affects the efficiency of economic operation. However, under the background of rapid economic and technological development, China’s agricultural modernization process is very slow and incompatible with the development trend of economic modernization. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to innovate the traditional agricultural development model to break through the bottlenecks encountered in the transformation process of agricultural modernization. The proposal of the agricultural logistics ecosphere is to solve the problems of poor industrial linkage, low technical level and backward operation mode in the development process of traditional agriculture, and it is an important starting point for agricultural supply-side structural reform. This study aims to answer three questions in three aspects, namely, what is the agricultural logistics ecosphere, analyzes the general composition of the agricultural logistics ecosphere and how the subjects of the agricultural logistics ecosphere cooperate. It also puts forward suggestions for the coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere under the leadership of Taoxin. Also, it inspires the transformation of the agricultural development model in other regions and countries.

This study adopts a case study and a qualitative analysis method to collate the first-hand and secondary data obtained from the interview and form a tertiary coding. It explores the mechanism of coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere from four levels: goal synergy, resource synergy, ability synergy and benefit synergy.

First, the formation of the agricultural logistics ecosphere will not be achieved overnight, as operational management matures and ecosphere experiences the germination-development-mature evolution process. Second, target synergy is the foundation and premise for the formation of agricultural logistics ecosphere: to attract external resources with Taoxin characteristic core resources, to attract external resources to achieve synergy, to provide a guarantee for the realization of the maximum value of the agricultural logistics ecosphere and then to realize the interest synergy of internal and external subjects. Third, driving agricultural products upward in the “10 + 1” model: it is the core resource of the agricultural logistics ecosphere led by Taoxin and attracts external subjects to gather with core resources to further improve the value of the ecosphere. The improvement of the value of the ecosphere can broaden the ecosphere network. This is both an important construction of the ecosphere, and it is also the path choice of the coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere.

This study has a very important practical value and theoretical significance. In practical terms, the integration of “primary, secondary and tertiary industries” is helpful to foster new momentum for the development of agriculture and rural areas and promote the general framework of the agricultural logistics economy, the analysis of the general mechanism and extension of the transition of the new economy.

The purpose of this paper is to show how Nigeria's current Universal Basic Education on primary schooling targets Muslim Almajiri street boys for basic literacy acquisition. The paper examines the policy's management implementation practices and challenges, as well as provides policy options that may minimize discrepancies for effective management.

The discussion is guided by preliminary qualitative studies using phenomenology research philosophy to better understand the social realities of the boys' schooling. Using a descriptive case study approach, two schools in a major city of northern Nigeria served as research sites. Data collection process involved informal interviews, active observations, and discussions with a purpose with four boys, and two teachers as primary participants. Data analysis engaged the generation of themes from the transcribed interview and personal observation field notes, with major ones as challenges and policy options of the program implementation.

Major findings include the boys' adoption to the free lunch feeding policy as motivation to partial school attendance. Management shortcomings of the synergy include ineffective communication and collaboration, poor instructional supervision and cultural insensitivity to boys' school retention. Remedies to the shortcomings are reviewed as policy options in the article.

The paper concludes that effective management strategies as communication and collaboration with community stakeholders, frequencies of instructional supervision are vital to schooling inclusion of the boys in primary schools. The article provides workable data for future modification of the policy.

So far, no program assessment on this schooling synergy has been investigated. This article attempts to bridge the gap between ground level realities and policy implementation methodologies of the government on the schooling of Almajiris.

The telecom sector has changed dramatically during the last decade. In order to meet new regulations, fierce competition and a growing demand for cheap and high quality telecom services by multinationals, European public telecom operators have created pan‐European strategic alliances. This paper focuses on the question of how Unisource, an alliance of Swedish Telia, Dutch KPN Telecom, Swiss Telecom and Spanish Telefónica has coped with the control vs commitment dilemma. The four telecom providers wanted to merge their activities with Unisource. To create commitment and trust the parents used a synergy strategy to deal with cultural diversity. Unisource was started in 1992, but finally collapsed in 1999 due to lack of commitment. The crisis in Unisource shows the dilemma of control vs commitment in a dynamic transition process of organisations.