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Miles and Snow’s (1978) model posits that organizational performance is dependent upon the degree of consistency (fit) that managers establish between organizational and environmental elements. However, different interpretations of the concept of fit coexist in the literature. We argue that in this model, consistency can be defined as a pattern of “equivalent covariance”, which is operatively created through the use of confirmatory factor analysis. The form of fit as covariance leads to the view of “configuration as quality”, in that the basic subject is the study of the interrelationships among organizational and environmental elements. The concept of fit as covariance is decidedly different from the traditional concept of fit as difference, which regards configuration as a typology or taxonomy. The covariance perspective of configurational theory is underused; for this reason, we apply this analytical perspective to a sample of 229 companies. The empirical results confirm that consistency positively influences organizational performance.

This paper aims to unpack the organization of an multinational enterprise (MNE) and confront its meso‐level complexity of structures and strategies. It seeks to uncover how the glocalization process unfolds, which are the mechanisms at its base and the outcomes in terms of stability, convergence or divergence in strategies and structures.

Through a case study research design, the paper investigates strategic change in an Italian MNE from 2005 to 2011. In 2008 and 2010, extensive data on organizational configurations were also collected. Overall, the paper analyses the glocalized blending of corporate and subsidiary strategies and organizational structures. Attention is also paid to the cognitive, political and institutional mechanisms that accounted for this process before and during the late‐2000 financial crisis.

Glocalization, largely interpreted as an in‐between process compromising between homogeneous global standards and heterogeneous local traditions, unfolds as a beyond process leading to divergent outcomes outside the poles of an imagined local‐global continuum. The mechanisms driving strategic change partly differ from those usually described in strategic change literature emphasizing managerial cognition. Sensegiving from the center is found to be proactive during economic expansion and reactive during economic downturn. Following change initiation, cognitive mechanisms are “taken over” by political and institutional ones. Paradoxically, local societal‐specific patterns of organization and strategy were preserved due to the actions of powerful central HQ actors.

A theory of institutional‐bound strategic change within MNEs is outlined.

Purpose – Agribusiness is crucial for the Brazilian trade balance surplus. Innovation, not only that focused on technology or productivity, is a basic condition for its development. The context of the agribusiness activities in a developing country is dynamic and requires a multilevel and multifaceted view. This suggests that these features need to be incorporated both in the theories and methods. Therefore, we propose a method, from within the perspective of Configurations Theory, of capturing this dynamic multidimensionality. The method was applied in the context of the rice-farming business in Southern Brazil.

Methodology/approach – The proposed method, which we refer to as a Case Study Method with Multiple Units of Analysis and Mixed Methods, was applied in a research organization in an attempt to identify the evolution of innovation while considering a theoretical perspective based on multilevel rules.

Findings – Six different configurations in the temporal organization of research were identified. These six configurations describe the evolution of four emphases given to innovation, the drivers associated with the evolution of these emphases, and the changes that have occurred over time.

Social implications – The results may provide support for new public policies for rice farming and lead to improvements in the organization's strategies for innovation.

Originality/value of chapter – The combination of methods used (Case Study, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Social Network Analysis, Path Dependence, and Patterns of Decision Making) to study configurations, together with the dynamic approach to innovation based on multilevel rule, is unique.

Strategic group has been intensively studied since this term emerged in 1970s, but previous studies have been limited to the comparisons between groups such as performance comparison. The purpose of this paper is to explore the internal structure of strategic groups by examining the effect of strategic distance from a firm to the center of its strategic group on firm performance.

The research is based on data acquired from the annual reports of listed companies and some Chinese domestic databases, including CSMAR Solution, WIND financial database, and China Core Newspapers Full-text Database. After grouping listed pharmaceutical companies in China over the period 2010-2011, the authors test three hypotheses by using fixed effect regressions.

The paper finds that the strategic distance from a firm to the center of its strategic group has a significant negative effect on the firm's financial performance. Two factors are discovered to influence that effect: corporate diversification strengthens the negative effect of strategic distance on performance, while firm's media visibility weakens that negative effect.

The findings reveal the relationship between intra-group strategic positioning and firm performance, and specify how firms can gain competitive advantage through positioning choices and strategic actions. This study promotes the establishment of a more comprehensive strategic group theory by revealing the structure within strategic groups.

The last decade has been witness to an unprecedented growth in the number of alliances between companies. This growing importance of interfirm co‐operation, together with its inherent complexity, have generated a progressive interest in the study of this phenomenon, which has materialised in a vast but fragmented literature concerning it. As a response to the demands which these conditions pose, we have endeavoured to develop a conceptual framework which, from a knowledge‐based and learning perspective, integrates an extensive series of contributions and concepts for the study of the processes of co‐operation between companies. As distinctive features, our conceptual framework proposal sets up a bridge between formulation and implementation in alliance processes and goes into the alliance micro‐level processes, both in the framework of the co‐operative agreement and in the setting of the partners’ organisations. Additionally, our proposal also considers the different ontological levels where knowledge develops and the links existing between them.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how digital technologies trigger changes in the business process of manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Apulia Region (South Italy). As SMEs play an essential role in the process value creation of industries and countries, the article examines the enablers of Industry 4.0 in a regional contexts characterized by delay in research and development and innovation performances where the companies' competitiveness is based on limited knowledge and technological assets.

The case study of Smart District 4.0, an ongoing project aimed to promote the digitalization of SMEs operating in the Agri–Food, Clothing–Footwear and Mechanics–Mechatronics in the Apulia Region (South Italy) is analysed. The project has been financed by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development with the final aim to sustain the digital transformation of SMEs in South Italy.

The results introduce a four levels approach of engagement of SMEs in the adoption of digital technologies, namely, digital awareness, digital enquirement, digital collaboration and digital transformation. Furthermore, for each level of engagement the study describes and discusses some relevant variables that could be used by managers and entrepreneurs to assess the level of readiness for utilization of digital technologies and how to digitalize some processes.

Practical implications regard the definition of a roadmap useful to assess and manage the level of digital transformation of SMEs. Limitations of the study regarding the temporal dimension of the evidences associated to the Smart District 4.0 as well as to the regional context was analysed.

Originality resides in the definition of a roadmap for the digital transformation of SMEs in a region where the profile of companies' digital maturity is still low.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether business owners that simultaneously demonstrate past entrepreneurial experience and process agility have greater export propensity levels.

The proposed hypotheses are tested using binary choice models relating past entrepreneurial experience and reported process agility on a unique sample of 246 Catalan business owners for the year 2010.

Consistent with the theoretical arguments on the relevance of generative-based cognitive agility, the results of this paper reveal that serial entrepreneurs demonstrate a greater export propensity. Additionally, the authors found that serial entrepreneurs who also demonstrate process agility show superior export propensity levels, compared to the group of business owners outside this ambidextrous group (first-time business owners without process agility).

The findings of this study indicate that traits characterizing international marketing agility, decisional speed and accuracy are also linked with greater export propensity levels. The added export market expansion resulting from the opportunity responsiveness of serial entrepreneurs is found to be amplified by the accuracy of internal adaptation capabilities of process agility.

Therefore, the promotion of ambidextrous strategic agility coming from the complementarities between the benefits of entrepreneurial experience and adaptive process abilities is essential for increasing businesses’ internationalization.

The paper contributes to the literature by further exploring the influence of different sources of agility on the internationalization of entrepreneurial ventures and opens a link between entrepreneurs prone toward export market expansion and international marketing agility.

This study aims to analyse the relationship between innovation and human resource management (HRM) from an empirical perspective, attempting to establish whether innovation determines the firm's HRM or conversely HRM influences the innovation level of the company

Literature is reviewed from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. On the basis of this review, some research hypotheses are formulated. Finally, these hypotheses are empirically tested on a sample of Spanish firms.

The results provide evidence for both hypotheses and offer more support for Schuler and Jackson's model than for Miles and Snow's model. In accordance with the previous literature, that in order to affect employee behaviour – and consequently promote company objectives – firms must develop a bundle of internally consistent HRM practices. However, what is still unresolved is which HRM practices should be included in that system.

Fills a gap in the literature, particularly in empirical research, with a focus on Spanish firms.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

This paper aims to discuss the interplay between strategic management accounting (SMA) and three organizational change configurations: strategy, structure and restructuring. This explication occurs within a context that is characterized by organization restructuring and corporate strategy changes within Jordan Customs Organization (JCO).

This paper uses a qualitative research approach and presents an interpretive case study of the JCO public sector organization. To collect data, it uses methodological triangulation, which includes interviews, historical and statistical analyses, documents and archival records. It is informed by the theoretical lens of configurational theory and strategic typologies to interpret the influences of organizational change configurations on SMA as it relates to the interplay of strategy, structure and restructuring.

The study findings agree with the related literature that SMA practices have developed management accounting from important operational transactions to gain a more strategic orientation through integrating customers, human resources, processes and financial departments. This paper concludes that specific SMA techniques have been used for strategizing by organizations in the public sector, providing a valuable counterpoint to the private sector adaptation that has dominated SMA research. This study finds that organizational restructuring has also contributed to decentralization and delegation, which has led to the distribution of tasks and specialization in accounting departments. It also concludes that SMA may facilitate or delay organizational change configurations in JCO. SMA can play a significant role in ensuring that the institution learns in response to organizational changes. On the contrary, this paper also concludes that organizational practices led to changes in SMA rules and routines.

A general criticism of case-study methods is that they lack rigor and provide little basis for generalization. First, case studies tend to be specific and individual, posing significant issues regarding generalization. Therefore, several comparative case studies involving various organizations should be conducted to ascertain if these practices have become more commonplace, especially in the public sector. Second, considering the nature of a government entity and the sensitivity of the information that required confidentiality, certain strategizing imperatives could not be directly examined, such as meetings between top management to make important decisions of strategic significance. This paper has important implications because it highlights the shortcomings of a supercilious singular relationship between strategic choices and the design of SMA practices.

This paper contributes to the growing literature by focusing on the relationship between SMA and three organizational change configurations: strategy, structure and restructuring. This paper is informed by the configuration theory perspective commonly used in accounting research. The empirical evidence in this study is provided in an SMA field, where empirical research is needed to be comparable with traditional accounting practices.