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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.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.