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The purpose of this paper is to assess the feasibility of strategic planning in times of turbulent economic conditions.

This paper discusses how various Zimbabwean organizations incorporated the aspect of strategic planning during the period 2007‐2009 in order to establish its relevance in different economic situations.

Strategic planning process is very difficult to carry out during turbulent economic conditions though there are some aspects of the process that are indispensible.

Organizations can survive without sticking to their strategic plans in times of turbulent economic environment.

The situation that prevailed in Zimbabwe in 2007‐2009 was unique and this paper endeavours to analyse the feasibility of strategic planning in a turbulent economic environment.

Recent studies have reflected the need to investigate the development of market orientation in the transitional economies under conditions of economic decline and great systemic change. However, the relationship between the level of market orientation and firm’s competitiveness in a turbulent environment has not been analysed. Personal interviews conducted with 221 managers of Ukrainian enterprises provided data to investigate the level of the development of market orientation and competitiveness. Managers’ attitudes toward marketing are used to create a typology of marketing approaches in the Ukraine. Competitiveness is measured as a multi‐dimensional concept using variables of organisational adaptability to the changes in business environment, advantages across the marketing mix and performance indicators as the dimensions. The results of the study suggest that the level of a firm’s competitiveness in the turbulent environment of a transitional economy is associated with the level of the development of market orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the range of realignment strategies employed by retailers in the USA in response to the 2008 economic recession.

Following the grounded theory approach, National Retail Federation News Briefs published between 2008 and 2011 were analyzed by sorting them into thematic categories and comparing trends in strategic decisions during the recession (2008-2009) and after the recession (2010-2011). Based on the emergent categories, propositions were developed to provide theoretical explanations of the findings.

The authors found five thematic categories of realignment strategies: promotional, organizational, price, operational, and product realignments. In line with contingency theories, retailers used these strategies to achieve a greater fit with the altered business environment and consumer consumption patterns. While promotional realignment was most prevalent, followed by organizational realignment, different realignment strategies were pursued based on the strategic focus and long-term vs short-term orientation of the retailers.

The contribution of the findings is twofold: filling a critical gap in the literature examining the range of realignment decisions of the US retail industry in response to the recent economic recession; and enhancing the theoretical understanding of underlying factors or mechanisms of specific realignment decisions in the context of a turbulent economic environment.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of internationalisation processes in transition economies, and to make an attempt to conceptualise a new model of entrepreneurial internationalisation.

A theoretical model of entrepreneurial internationalisation is developed, which is then tested in a case analysis of a Lithuanian company. The paper draws on Uppsala internationalisation theory, network theory and theories of international entrepreneurship.

Analysis shows that knowledge, to be a tool for decision making in the internationalisation process, is used to create beliefs or “images” of markets. Second, it is argued that incomplete, fragmented, and even contradictory knowledge results in a system of assumptions about international environment. Under the conditions of a highly turbulent business environment, risk and uncertainty could be handled once they are interpreted by creating a set of beliefs. These beliefs serve as a basis for international opportunity perception and recognition. Findings indicate that in the process of entrepreneurial internationalisation, opportunity plays a crucial role, since it shapes the mode and direction of further actions. Entrepreneurs perceive international opportunity as a future picture of reality, and their actions are organised according to this picture.

The paper is based upon a single case study of a company from a transition economy. Further, research development through many case studies in different countries with transition economies may enhance one's understanding of international entrepreneurship.

The study provides valuable knowledge for organizations intending to operate in turbulent economic environments.

The internationalisation process of the companies from transition economies is scarcely discussed in international entrepreneurship theory – and hence the paper addresses an important research gap. The study introduces new elements in the chain “knowledge – internationalisation event”. It is argued in the paper that those elements are beliefs and opportunities. The model shows how these elements interact in the process of internationalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of total reward practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the South-Eastern European (SEE) region and the reward elements positively affecting organisational performance.

The sample consists of 199 SMEs operating in SEE countries which are either under economic crisis or transition: Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

SMEs in the SEE region are implementing a total rewards model which is characterised by a weaker application of individual aspects and by a stronger application of transactional, relational and communal aspects. Within the communal aspects of the model, the study found three elements of the work environment that positively affect organisational performance; work-life balance, employee involvement voice mechanisms, and organisational culture supporting personal and professional development.

The study contributes to HR practice; the authors found that a better work environment is positively related to improved organisational performance in these SMEs. This means that in times of economic crisis or transition when HR budgets are limited such non-financial strategies can be a viable alternative to costly financial rewards to such organisations.

The study contributes to both theory and HR practice by shedding light on how employee rewards are affected in economies under crisis and transition, how SMEs can motivate their employees when faced with significant financial limitations, as well as explores which reward elements can lead to enhanced organisational performance in such organisations.

This study argues that strategic information systems (SISs) are necessary for organizations’ survival and corporate performance in turbulent economic environments. Applying Miles and Snow’s strategy typology, the purpose of this paper is to explore how SIS supports business strategy and corporate performance.

This study uses quantitative survey data from 389 Brazilian companies during economic crises and analyzes them using structural equation modeling.

There is strong evidence that SIS promotes capacity and flexibility to create competitive strategies in response to environmental changes. SIS significantly and positively predicts firms’ use of prospector strategies, reducing the need to sacrifice efficiency for innovation. SIS can predict corporate performance more strongly than firms’ strategic orientations can.

The results provide organizations insights on how SIS enables strategic planning processes to create competitive strategy and improve performance during economic turbulence.

This research demonstrates SIS’s positive effects during economic turbulence on competitive strategy and performance, revealing that corporate performance is influenced more by SIS (strategic process) than strategic orientation (content). Hence, this study fills a research gap in the information systems strategy literature by contributing new insights about SIS.

The history of Organizational Development (OD) reveals a much older tradition of organizational science than the conventional wisdom would suggest. By the 1960s and 1970s OD became self‐confident and dynamic. This period was not only highly experimental but established the principles of OD for much of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century new images of OD had occurred and much of the earlier thinking had been transformed. This review illustrates some examples under a series of themes that have had a major impact on the discipline of OD and on the wider thinking of organizational theorists and researchers.

With the evolution of the turbulent environment constantly triggering the emergence of a trust crisis between organizations, how can university–industry (U–I) alliances respond to the trust crisis when conducting green technology innovation (GTI) activities? This paper aims to address this issue.

The authors examined the process of trust crisis damage, including trust first suffering instantaneous impair as well as subsequently indirectly affecting GTI level, and ultimately hurting the profitability of green innovations. In this paper, a piecewise deterministic dynamic model is deployed to portray the trust and the GTI levels in GTI activities of U–I alliances.

The authors analyze the equilibrium results under decentralized and centralized decision-making modes to obtain the following conclusions: Trust levels are affected by a combination of hazard and damage (short and long term) rates, shifting from steady growth to decline in the presence of low hazard and damage rates. However, the GTI level has been growing steadily. It is essential to consider factors such as the hazard rate, the damage rate in the short and long terms, and the change in marginal profit in determining whether to pursue an efficiency- or recovery-friendly strategy in the face of a trust crisis. The authors found that two approaches can mitigate trust crisis losses: implementing a centralized decision-making mode (i.e. shared governance) and reducing pre-crisis trust-building investments. This study offers several insights for businesses and academics to respond to a trust crisis.

The present research can be extended in several directions. Instead of distinguishing attribution of trust crisis, the authors use hazard rate, short- and long-term damage rates and change in marginal profitability to distinguish the scale of trust crises. Future scholars can further add an attribution approach to enrich the classification of trust crises. Moreover, the authors only consider trust crises because of unexpected events in a turbulent environment; in fact, a trust crisis may also be a plateauing process, yet the authors do not study this situation.

First, the authors explore what factors affect the level of trust and the level of GTI when a trust crisis occurs. Second, the authors provide guidelines on how businesses and academics can coordinate their trust-building and GTI efforts when faced with a trust crisis in a turbulent environment.

First, the interaction between psychology and innovation management is explored in this paper. Although empirical studies have shown that trust in U–I alliances is related to innovation performance, and scholars have developed differential game models to portray the GTI process, building a differential game model to explore such an interaction is still scarce. Second, the authors incorporate inter-organizational trust level into the GTI level in university–industry collaboration, applying differential equations to portray the trust building and GTI processes, respectively, to reveal the importance of trust in CTI activities. Third, the authors establish a piecewise deterministic dynamic game model wherein the impact of crisis shocks is not equal to zero, which is inconsistent with most previous studies of Brownian motion.

Strategy.

MBA level. The case can be used primarily for the following courses: strategic management, competitive strategy. It can also be used for courses on: international business, international business environment, business marketing.

Intense competition and a turbulent economic environment posed problems for Infosys, a leading information technology (IT) company in India. Infosys lost market share and its second position in the IT industry to Cognizant. An adverse economic environment affected its clients' IT spending and introduced severe price-based competition in the market. Infosys' business model operated on charging price premium from clients, and the company never compromised on its margins. The company was forced to revaluate, as outsourcing, the main revenue earner for Infosys was experiencing commoditization, and other players were willing to compromise on margins. The Indian IT industry had moved up the value chain and competitors were offering consulting services, where there was huge scope for differentiation. Infosys did not have the requisite resources to compete in this domain. Decline in share prices, negative investor sentiments, downward revision of revenue guidance targets, loss of large clients, higher attrition rates, and visa problems in the US market (Infosys earned more than 60 percent revenues from this market) added worries for the company. In response to these challenges, Infosys initiated Strategy 3.0, wherein the company planned to move up the value chain and offer consulting services and other high-end solutions to clients. This was a shift from its predominantly outsourcing-based revenue model. The company acquired Lodestone to hasten implementation of Strategy 3.0. Initial analysis, however, suggested that Infosys was merely aping Cognizant's well-established strategy. Infosys also needed to tackle perceptual issues regarding its competencies.

The instructor can use this case to facilitate the understanding of: the impact of an intensely competitive environment on a company's strategy, how changes in the competitive landscape and business environment can erode sources of competitive advantage for an incumbent, the impact of a client's business environment on the vendor's business, the concept of value chain and analyze how companies in an industry move up in the value chain, the concept of business model, and how environmental changes can impact a hitherto robust business model of a company, evolution of business model over a period of time with changes in the business environment, the internal conflict between ideals and values versus revenues and market share for a company, key resources and capabilities that shape the differential advantage for an IT company, designing and implementing strategic solutions, the evolution of the Indian IT industry.

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This paper revisits a typical bricks and mortar company that had successfully applied strategy development and deployment methodologies such as Hoshin and QFD to their transformation process. With the explosive growth of the Internet, and the increasingly turbulent economic environment, the viability of current business models is threatened. In the process, it is calling into question the methodologies that worked so well in the past when long‐cycle environments prevailed. This paper explores the impact of this on a company’s strategic process and concludes with the hypothesis that a robust strategic process is needed now more than ever and that this should ride over the top of the turbulence. It also identifies where some traditional tools and methodologies may evolve to be effective in the new economy.