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Strategic adaptation in complex environments with frequent changes must balance the search for innovative opportunistic ventures and conscious pursuit to achieve established goals and outcomes. This creates a tension between attempted efficiency gains from tight strategic controls that avoid diversion of corporate resources and the facilitation of dispersed initiatives in search for business opportunities. To assess this conundrum, the authors present an interactive strategic control model that combines planning and participative strategy-making with interactive control processes. This combination of management practices arguably creates an adaptive system that drives the upside performance outcomes from a guided adaptation of opportunistic insights. Various hypotheses are developed and tested based on survey data from among the 500 largest firms in Denmark. The results suggest a direct relationship between interactive controls, strategic planning, and participative leadership on upside performance outcomes. Moreover, the positive effect from interactive controls on the upside potential is enhanced by participative decisions.

The combined roles of strategic planning and decentralized strategy-making remain an essential issue in strategy research and its resolution has implications for management practice. To this end the current study considers the added effects of adopted leadership style and use of interactive controls and thereby uncovers new interesting insights about the combined strategy-making process. The authors use structural equation analyses to investigate these more fine-grained relationships based on an updated cross-sectional dataset from among the largest companies in Denmark. The analyses find that a participative leadership style drives the application of interactive controls, which in turn has a positive interaction effect on the relationship between strategic planning and corporate performance. A participative leadership style also exerts positive influence on autonomous strategic actions, which in turn has a negative direct relationship to performance, but a positive interaction effect on performance together with use of interactive controls. The authors discuss the theoretical foundation for these intricate relationships and consider opportunities to extract further research insights.

It is well recognized that Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are important and popular ways of achieving corporate growth. Motivations include a search for monopolistic power and growth, desire to respond to a low level of profitability in the existing business portfolio, improvement of market position, filling out product line, protection of supply or distribution, gain of control, acquire what is available, to internationalize, or to reduce risk. However, M&A strategies are not risk-free, and arguably one of the CEOs greatest challenges. The last several decades have witnessed a surge of interest in top executives. The strategic choice ranks as one of the dominant roles and responsibilities of senior management. Executives’ experiences, values, and personalities greatly influence their interpretations of the situations they face and, in turn, affect their choices (Hambrick, 2007).

Over the past few years, sad stories of M&A failures have been reported and that can be attributed to poor synergy, bad timing, cultural issues, hubris, complexity, and ineffective strategic control mechanisms including poor due diligence process. M&A strategies require a series of choices made over time by actors at various organizational levels; therefore, it cannot be seen as an independent activity but as an integral part of the formal rational procedure as well as the cognitive process. Strategic cognition plays a very important role in the diagnosis of strategic issues and the formulation of problems (Schwenk, 1988). Pre-decision control mechanisms permeate all levels of strategic investments process to ensure that the investment decision aligns with organizational strategy (Alkaraan & Northcott, 2007). Due diligence processes are comprehensive appraisal of strategic investment opportunities undertaken by a prospective buyer, especially to establish its assets and liabilities and evaluate its commercial potential. Due diligence processes refer to verification, investigation, or audit of a potential deal or investment opportunity to confirm all facts, financial information, and to verify anything else that was brought up during an M&A deal or investment process.

This chapter explores the influence of due diligence processes on strategic investment decision-making (SIDM) processes. Further, it provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations. Furthermore, the chapter adopts a strategic perspective on M&A, particular attention has been paid to the influence of due diligence and other related strategic control mechanisms on SIDM processes.

The aim of this study is, first, to explore the moderating effects of parent control on the strategic objectives of foreign firms entering international joint ventures (IJVs) and, second, to assess performance in relation to these objectives.

The study integrates three major theoretical streams in the IJV field to investigate the rationale for the formation of IJVs. The primary data collection method was a web‐based survey. The ability to collect large amounts of data without interviewers, stationery or postage, makes the cost of doing web surveys very attractive. Sino‐European manufacturing IJVs (in industries such as machinery, textiles, and electronics) were investigated.

The strong empirical evidence in this study confirms the significant moderating effects of parent control on attainment of strategic objectives, suggesting that different strategic objectives of foreign partners have different performance outcomes based on the degree of control exercised by the partner and the focus on different IJV activities. The findings also indicate that market‐developing and knowledge‐acquiring objectives outperform efficiency‐seeking objectives.

The purpose of this study was to examine satisfaction with performance from the point of view of the foreign IJV partner. Hence, data were collected from foreign senior management who represent foreign partners. Second, the single IJV host country context (China) inevitably raises the question as to whether the findings from this study can be generalised to IJVs in other emerging markets. Third, the relatively small sample size (61 IJVs), although comparable with previous studies, limits the use of more powerful statistical tools.

The findings of this study suggest that parent companies should formulate different control structures according to different strategic objectives. Second, and rather interestingly, different categories of objectives perform differently in joint ventures. It seems, for example, that, in joint ventures with Chinese partners, European multinational enterprises achieve better results in relation to market development and knowledge acquisition than when seeking organisational efficiency.

Prior research has tended to examine the IJV phenomenon from a single theoretical perspective. This study attempts to integrate three major theoretical streams in the IJV field to investigate the rationale for the formation of IJVs. As such, it potentially offers more comprehensive explanatory power. A further innovation is related to the use of a web‐based survey rather than the traditional mail survey.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational climate impacts the speed of strategic change (SSC) for firms in transitional economies and whether if the effects were contingent on internal control mechanisms.

A theoretical model including five constructs is developed. The questionnaire survey is deployed to scale main constructs, including organizational climate, such as open communication and hierarchical bureaucracy, internal controls such as strategic and financial control, and SSC. The moderation regression method in five steps is employed to test all hypotheses using the survey data from the 120 sampled Chinese firms.

The findings show that open communication has a positive effect on SCC, whereas hierarchical bureaucracy has a negative effect on SSC. Furthermore, strategic control positively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but negatively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC; meanwhile, financial control negatively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but positively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC.

This research integrates organizational climate and internal control mechanisms into the framework of strategic change to investigate how firms achieve fast strategic change through aligning organizational climate with proper organizational control mechanisms. The findings advance the authors’ understanding of the organizational climate, internal controls, and strategic change literature, and offer valuable managerial insights for managers in situations when strategic change is of central importance in the transitional economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of strategic control and operational control on new venture performance in the China context.

This study tests the hypotheses in a sample of 83 new ventures that have equity investment by established firms and are founded between 1993 and 2007 that issued initial public offerings while not more than eight years old.

The results of this study show that: strategic control has a significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance. The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.

The management control that the corporate investor exercises over the new venture is a significant determinant of the new venture success. Managers have to distinguish between strategic control and operational control and understand their impacts on new ventures.

This study highlights the issue of management of corporate venturing capital relationships from the new venture’s perspective. In addition, this study separates strategic and operational control within management control and examines how they influence new venture performance.

Drawing on the literature on corporate diversification, the purpose of this paper is to shed light onto the influence of geographic dispersion on the effectiveness of control mechanisms in related diversified corporations. This research contends that control mechanisms implemented by corporations and the extent of geographic diversification play a role in the synergies expected from related diversification being realized.

This study uses OLS regression to analyze data collected through surveys from managers of 193 Iranian corporations and their 2,704 subsidiaries to examine the relationship between relatedness, corporate performance, geographic dispersion, and emphasis of strategic controls.

The author finds that a triple interaction effect between corporate strategy (diversification approach), controls mechanisms, and the extent of geographic diversification influences the overall performance of corporations. Findings of this research suggest that the positive effects of strategic controls in related diversified corporations are most when there is less geographic dispersion and will attenuate as corporations become more geographically disperse.

The findings of this research, have contributed to the extant literature in several ways. First, the findings further establish the superiority of related diversification to unrelated diversification in achieving economic performance in corporations. The findings reveal that, ceteris paribus, the more relatedness between activities of subsidiaries in corporations exists, higher performance can be expected at the corporate level. Second, the findings show once more that to achieve the higher performance that results from synergies in related diversified corporations, emphasis of strategic controls play a crucial and important role. Third, the author find that although the emphasis of strategic controls in essential to realizing the potentials in related diversified corporations, greater geographic dispersion attenuates the positive effects expected from stricter enforcement of strategic control mechanisms.

An important consequence of findings of this research is that managers should be more aware of the implications of selecting the geographic location of the subsidiaries that they either acquire or establish. While the literature focusing on corporate diversification has mainly focused on the differences between related and unrelated diversification, this paper brings a new factor into light. Therefore, the findings of this research provide the author with a better understanding of the factors that define success or failure in achieving financial objectives of corporations.

There has been very little done to investigate the factors that influence effectiveness of strategic controls in related diversified corporation. Much of this shortcoming has resulted due to difficulties in measurement of strategic controls their operationalization in empirical studies. This study has taken a step to that direction and therefore, provides a more coherent and clear picture of the factors that influence the overall performance in corporations.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of public value in practice by applying Moore's (1995) strategic triangle as an analytical framework to study strategic management and management control practices in relation to public value.

The paper uses an interpretative longitudinal case study approach including qualitative methods of document studies and interviews between 2017 and 2019.

In the strategic triangle, the three nodes of authorising environment, public value creation and operational capacity are interdependent, and alignment is a necessity for a strategy to be successful. But this alignment is vulnerable. The findings suggest three propositions: (1) strategic alignment is vulnerable to management control practices having a strong focus on performance measurements, (2) strategic alignment is vulnerable to standardised management control practices and (3) strategic alignment is vulnerable to politically driven management control practices.

With the strategic triangle as a base, this paper tries to understand what kind of management control practices enable and/or constrain public value, as there has been a call for this kind of research. In this way it adds to earlier research on public value, to the growing interest in the strategic triangle as an analytical framework in analysing empirical material and to the request for more empirical studies on the subject. The strategic triangle also embraces political factors, government agendas and political leadership for which there has also been a call for more research.

Drawing on the literature on international joint ventures (IJVs) and strategic international human resource management, the paper proposes a model for strategic staffing of IJVs based on an integrative (strategic intent and negotiations) perspective. Building on the results of previous studies that indicate, directly or indirectly, the importance of control in staffing, the paper proposes that strategic control may be a critical driver that underpins IJV staffing. In conclusion, the paper outlines an agenda for future research that can test the model and explore possible implications.