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Firms face high velocity conditions today that render product market strategies increasingly temporal. Strategic flexibility is critical for enabling rapid adaptation to a changing environment. At the same time, managerial commitment to product‐market strategy signifies the extent to which a manager comprehends and supports the strategy and reflects a necessary sense of ownership for any chosen product‐market strategy. The purpose of this paper, then, is to examine strategically ambidextrous firms through the twin lenses of flexibility and commitment to determine whether performance benefits accrue from such characteristics.

While traditional research streams examine strategic flexibility and commitment to product‐market strategy as opposing ends of a continuum, this paper adopts a broader perspective and examines strategic flexibility and commitment to product‐market strategy as elements of strategically ambidextrous firms. Cluster analysis is used to identify groups of high and low strategically ambidextrous firms.

Strategically ambidextrous firms exhibit commitment to product‐market strategy, which enables the effective realisation of selected strategies through focusing managerial attention and firm resources, and strategic flexibility, which enables adaptation of the planned product‐market strategy based on feedback received, or abandonment followed by new strategic choices and impetus. The paper reveals that firms with high strategic ambidexterity exhibit significantly greater levels of strategic resources, decentralisation, product‐market strategy process effectiveness, and implementation effectiveness compared with low ambidexterity firms. Thus, strategic ambidexterity is revealed to endow significant performance benefits.

This paper addresses the need to examine ambidexterity as “flexible commitment”.

This work develops a new methodological process that attempts to test the contingent and universalistic arguments regarding the influence of human resources management on firm performance. Using moderator regression analysis, we analyze how economic results associated with a policy of human resources management committed to employees depend on the strategic profile adopted by the company. The results obtained support the contingent proposition, since competitive strategy moderates both the intensity and the direction of this effect. In addition, it is shown that commitment management is especially beneficial when a cost focus strategy is adopted.

This study examines the relationships among trust, commitment, logistics outsourcing relationship quality (LORQ), relationship satisfaction, strategy alignment and logistics performance considering selected manufacturing firms in a developing country, Uganda.

Drawing on insights from the commitment-trust theory and strategy alignment literature, and using a cross-sectional survey design with a self-administered questionnaire, and applying the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach to analyze quantifiable data obtained from managers of 103 manufacturing firms in Uganda outsourcing logistics operations, the study examined the logistics performance effects of trust, through commitment, LORQ and relationship satisfaction.

The study findings reveal that trust influences logistics performance, indirectly through its effects on commitment, LORQ and relationship satisfaction, sequentially, and that the positive effects of relationship satisfaction on logistics performance strengthen with improvements in LORQ. Strategy alignment exerted a strong positive influence on LORQ.

The study findings have important implications for theory development and literature. The study applies the commitment-trust view to both theoretically and empirically examine logistics outsourcing as a competitive strategy to enhance logistics performance, and thereby providing a theoretical base for future research. However, this research is confined to manufacturing firms in Uganda, and the results are not necessarily generalizable to other contexts.

The study findings provide insights for logistics managers regarding the role of trust, commitment, LORQ, relationship satisfaction and strategy alignment in enabling successful logistics outsourcing relationships, and how drawing on these, managers can improve firm logistics performance.

This study contributes to logistics management literature by empirically examining the relationship of trust, commitment, LORQ, relationship satisfaction and strategy alignment with logistics performance, considering manufacturing firms in a developing country, where these aspects have not been largely explored before. It highlights the need to build trust, promote greater commitment of logistics user firms in logistics outsourcing relationships as well as aligning logistics outsourcing strategies to improve LORQ and enhance logistics performance. Additionally, the study provides for the first-time new evidence for the moderation effect of LORQ on the influence of relationship satisfaction on logistics performance. The study findings suggest advancing further scholarly discussions on logistics outsourcing as a critical strategy to enhance firm logistics performance within a developing country context. Due to limitations in logistics infrastructure, and existing low-level technologies, logistics in developing countries still revolves around conventional materials handling, packaging, inventory and transportation operations, and logistics outsourcing is new, thereby presenting an interesting research context for empirical investigations on logistics in general, and logistics outsourcing in particular.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how relative power and mutual commitment affect partners’ choice of influence strategies and how national culture may moderate these effects in the context of international strategic alliances.

In two experiments involving US and Chinese managers, respectively, the study looks into situations wherein a party’s power is lower, equal or higher, all relative to the other party, and there is high versus low mutual commitment between the two parties. The effects of relative power and mutual commitment on influence strategies are also compared between US and Chinese managers.

There is no significant difference between low and equal power with regard to choice of influence strategies. However, moving from a low/equal power to a high-power position, a party’s use of integrative (non-mediated) communications decreased significantly, whereas the use of coercive (mediated) communications increased significantly. The results also show that the effect of relative power is greater when mutual commitment is low than when mutual commitment is high. Finally, there is evidence that the effect of power is stronger for the Americans, whereas the effect of commitment is stronger for the Chinese.

The paper offers a finer account of power relations wherein a party’s power is lower than, equal to or higher than that of the other party and explores the moderating effect role of national culture on the linkages from relative power and relationship commitment to influence strategy use.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the relationship between employee participation and organizational commitment, and the moderating role of organizational strategy in those relationships.

The proposed hypotheses were tested by multilevel analyses with data from surveys of 1,105 employees and 49 managers in 49 companies located throughout South Korea.

The results demonstrated that POS mediated the relationship between employee participation and organizational commitment, and that participation practices were related more strongly to POS and organizational commitment in companies with a prospector or analyzer strategy than in companies with a defender strategy.

Organizational-level variables were measured by one manager in each company. This study provides important implications regarding the fit between participation practices and organizational strategy.

Managers in prospector or the most innovative companies should provide employees with more opportunities to make decisions and to receive financial incentives for their contributions.

This study is unique in that it simultaneously examined the horizontal fit and the vertical fit while focussing on individual employees’ outcomes rather than organizational performance.

Prior studies examining the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational behavior contain several limitations, such as mixed levels of measurement and lack of empirical study in different social contexts. Using Mowday, Porter, and Steers's approach, this study aims to investigate individual demographic, personal, departmental and community characteristics as factors affecting police officers' levels of strategy commitment.

Using attitudinal measures of individual, departmental, and community traits, which were developed by Michigan Regional Community Policing Institute, the current study collected data from 206 randomly selected South Korean police officers who were designated as community‐oriented policing (COP) officers or who were under COP training at the time of the survey.

The current study found that officers' creativity and community ownership were significantly related to strategy commitment to COP. In addition, it was found that officers' demographic characteristics were not significantly related to the levels of commitment to COP. Regarding departmental characteristics, supportive climate among officers was significantly and positively related to officers' levels of commitment to COP. Finally, officers in rural agencies were more likely to have higher levels of commitment to COP in South Korea.

Although the current study utilized random samples for data collection, the size of the data set was relatively small. Thus, generalization of the findings from this study should be cautiously carried out. Based on the findings, policy implications are suggested.

The current study attempts to identify factors affecting commitment to COP at multiple levels (individual, organizational and community levels) using attitudinal measures of various aspects of policing in South Korea. The findings will add to the comparative understanding on officers' commitment to COP.

This paper argues that performance should be investigated as an independent variable. Using survey data of over 400 managers responsible for the main export ventures of Portuguese SMEs (small and medium exporters), this paper shows that past performance plays a crucial role in building SMEs' commitment to exporting and to the determination of their current marketing strategy. Findings also show that marketing strategy adaptation to the foreign market is particularly noted in firms exporting to the most developed markets, rather than in firms exporting to the most competitive environments. Future international marketing research is encouraged to focus on understanding both the direct and indirect relationships among past performance, firm's commitment to exporting, and current marketing strategy under the influence of external forces. Such a focus has the potential to enrich the theory and generate relevant managerial and public policy implications.

The study seeks to add to the existing body of knowledge on the link between strategic planning and company performance by exploring the mediating role of personnel commitment to strategy implementation and organisational learning. To study the indirect link between strategic planning and company performance, the paper aims to introduce a participative strategic planning construct that may enable firms to: commit personnel to strategy implementation; increase organisational learning; and improve company performance.

Using data from 160 small and medium‐sized Finnish IT companies, the authors conduct an Mplus‐analysis.

The findings indicate that participative strategic planning positively affects personnel commitment to strategy implementation, which thereby increases company performance. However, according to the analysis, participative strategic planning does not impact organisational learning, although organisational learning does have a positive impact on company performance.

The results of this study are generalisable to a dynamic industry context of small and medium‐sized IT‐firms operating in a small open economy, such as that of Finland.

The results suggest that managers need to involve personnel in strategic planning to increase personnel commitment to strategy implementation. However, because participative strategic planning does not facilitate organisational learning, managers need to determine other ways to facilitate learning at an organisational level.

The paper highlights the role of participative strategic planning, which facilitates personnel commitment to strategy implementation and thus improves company performance.

This paperaims to investigate a novel expectation by examining how framing a company as its constituent members (members frame) versus an organization (organization frame) can influence consumer evaluations of a product or service from this company.

Four studies were conducted examining the effectiveness of an organization (vs members) frame in a between-subjects experimental design (a pilot study, Studies 1a, 1b and 2). Study 2 also tested the moderating role of donation strategies (amount-focused vs frequency-focused).

Results show a members (vs organization) frame leads to a higher purchase likelihood of a product from a company engaging in corporate donations. Further, this framing effect is mediated by increased levels of consumers’ perceptions about how committed the company is to the cause and the emotion of moral elevation in response to the company’s corporate donations. Moreover, this effect is moderated when the company uses a frequency-based (vs amount-based) donation strategy.

This research contributes to the literature on message framing by demonstrating how the same information about a company may lead to differential effects on consumer evaluations, depending on whether the company is framed as its constituent members versus an organization.

This paper presents significant managerial implications for small companies, in which the owner is the company, about how they can effectively communicate corporate donations to the consumers.

This research provides a novel perspective on how the same information about a company may lead to differential effects on consumer evaluations, particularly in the context of corporate donations.

Consistent with previous research, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the presence of workplace‐based return‐to‐work strategies would reduce the duration of work disability. Moving beyond existing research, the paper further seeks to propose that these strategies would also enhance mental health and affective commitment among injured workers. In addition, the paper aims to introduce interactional justice – injured workers' perceptions of the interpersonal and informational fairness of the person most responsible for their return‐to‐work process – to the return‐to‐work context, and to hypothesize that these factors would also contribute to the explanation of these outcomes.

Within five weeks of their injury, telephone interviews were conducted with 166 workers from the province of Ontario, Canada, who had experienced musculoskeletal lost‐time workplace injuries.

Multiple regression analyses indicate that certain workplace‐based strategies were associated with days on compensation, self‐reported days absent, and depressive symptoms, but not affective commitment. Further, as hypothesized, interactional justice accounted for additional variance explained in self‐reported days absent, depressive symptoms, and affective commitment. Interactional justice did not explain additional variance in days on compensation.

The findings have implications for employers engaged in return‐to‐work practices and researchers studying return to work. Both should address not only the workplace‐based strategies used, but also the way in which these strategies are implemented.

The paper replicates previous empirical work on return‐to‐work interventions and demonstrates the importance of the presence of workplace‐based strategies in explaining the duration of work disability.