Search results

The development of strategic supply chain mapping techniques has been slowed by four critical issues. The purpose of this paper is to answer a call to address supply chain mapping techniques and issues. It offers recommendations for more readable and useful strategic supply chain maps.

The paper utilized executive MBA, traditional MBA, and graduating logistics undergraduates' applied economic input/output data to refine mapping techniques.

The paper addresses strategic supply chain mapping issues to serve as the next step in advancing the evolution of strategic supply chain mapping techniques. It utilizes geovisualization to provide useful guidance to individuals trying to map their current supply chain and seeking potential improvements.

The paper is limited in that strategic supply chain mapping is in its infancy. Future research may consider use of the technique comparing alternative approaches to a supply chain, as well as the application of Pareto analysis and other metrics to focus on critical components for mapping.

The use of input/output analysis initiates mapping at the macro industry level as a key starting point. Geovisualization techniques allow those mapping to offer a great amount of detail in a simple, easy‐to‐read format to identify the critical components of the specific supply chain.

This paper is the critical next step to help further advance the evolution of strategic supply chain mapping techniques by both practitioner and academic.

Our primary objective is to provide method-related broad guidelines to researchers on the entire spectrum of issues involved in cause mapping and to encourage researchers to use causal mapping techniques in strategy research. We challenge strategists to open the black box and investigate the mental models that depict the cause and effect beliefs of managers, “walk” readers through the causal mapping process by discussing the “nuts and bolts” of cause mapping, provide an illustration, and outline “key issues to consider.” We conclude with a discussion of some promising research directions.

Often businesses fail, or fail to reach their true potential, for strategic rather than operational reasons. This type of failure may be caused because the key decision makers in such firms are not well informed about the strategic landscape in which their firm operates. A military analogy is used to show that successful military campaigns are often predicated upon having accurate maps. Similarly, competitive strategies followed by firms are likely to be more successful if key decision makers possess accurate strategic maps which display the location of their own and rival firms. In other words, those firms which have detailed knowledge of their strategic landscapes are likely to enjoy significant competitive advantage, while firms which are in ignorance of their strategic landscape are less likely to be able to navigate a route that will confer sustained competitive advantage. A firm’s strategic landscape is analysed in terms of: the firm’s true competitive position, the industry conditions under which the firm and its competitors operate and the core strategies that firms in the industry are following. This paper analyses an approach to strategic mapping developed by a major new independent strategic database called CAM (Competitive Analysis Model). This database has been built to aid small firms improve their results through generating accurate strategic maps. These maps enable client firms to assess their strategic locations and performances longitudinally, sectorally and cross‐sectionally. Finally, CAM clients appear to have outperformed similarly structured non‐CAM firms.

Research has highlighted the cognitive nature of the business model intended as a cognitive representation describing a business’ value creation and value capture activities. Although the content of the business model has been extensively investigated from this perspective, less attention has been paid to the business model’s causal structure – that is the pattern of cause-effect relations that, in top managers’ or entrepreneurs’ understandings, link value creation and value capture activities. Building on the strategic cognition literature, this paper argues that conceptualizing and analysing business models as cognitive maps can shed light on four important properties of a business model’s causal structure: the levels of complexity, focus and clustering that characterize the causal structure and the mechanisms underlying the causal links featured in that structure. I use examples of business models drawn from the literature as illustrations to describe these four properties. Finally, I discuss the value of a cognitive mapping approach for augmenting extant theories and practices of business model design.

The concept of smart city has recently become more topical in academic and policy discussions. This idea is considered a complex, non-consensual subject since its definition has not yet been agreed upon by most authors in the relevant fields. The need to identify and measure smart city indicators has also given rise to many different evaluation procedures. However, the available frameworks have yet to overcome challenges in structuring and measuring all the evaluation parameters of the cities in question. Thus, methods still need to be developed and applied that can structure criteria used to assess smart city success.

This study sought to show cognitive mapping's tangible usefulness as an expedient tool for strategic analysis, using smart cities as a complex object of study. To this end, various cognitive maps were constructed and compared using the Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA) approach.

Cognitive mapping's advantages and limitations in the strategic visualization research context are analyzed and discussed.

The authors know of no prior work reporting comparative analysis of this methodological approach in the same research context.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the design of a strategy map can be supported by measures expressing the customers’ perceptions about strategic factors and their related determinants. In particular, managers are provided with a fact-based test useful to revise prior knowledge and beliefs.

A case study is used to describe the adoption of the partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM) approach to structural equation modelling in order to compare competing strategy maps and select the one that best fits customer perceptions. A focus group was organised to design the strategy maps, which were tested through a survey of 600 randomly selected resellers.

The empirical-based validation of a causal map by using PLS-PM may effectively stimulate a revision of managers’ collective perceptions about a phenomenon characterised by implicit knowledge, as in the case of customer needs.

The case-study company operates in a business-to-business environment, and thus only the needs of direct customers have been included in the analysis. Final users’ needs should also be considered, even if different solutions are required for data collection.

The proposed approach provides a set of indicators which allow managers to identify strategic priorities, thus facilitating decision making and strategic planning.

In the strategic management literature, few attempts have been made to operationalise the complex and multidimensional latent constructs of a strategy map combining managers’ implicit knowledge and empirical validation in a “holistic” manner. The adoption of PLS-PM is relatively new in testing the accuracy of causal maps.

The purpose of this study was to investigate and propose the appropriate K‐mapping models as an approach to integrating key project components and technologies for the effective improvement of project performance within and across construction projects.

In this holistic, single‐case study, one of the largest construction consulting firms in South Korea has been studied by conducting 15 semi‐structured interviews and the different loci for each of the K‐mapping components are identified and analyzed. Based on the different loci, four types of the K‐mapping model are provided and elucidated.

Research findings indicate that these four types of the K‐mapping model provide the criteria to identify the appropriate types of K‐map for construction project organizations, according to the characteristics and conditions of their own construction personnel, construction processes, and K‐transfer technologies. With the K‐mapping models, an appropriate knowledge management system (KMS) can be developed more effectively.

First, as interpretivism was adopted as the research philosophy, the case study findings were subjective and qualitative to both the interviewees in the case study company and the researchers, though this study provided an important underpinning for future research on K‐mapping within construction project organizations. Second, the theory developed in this study was based on an investigation of the appropriate K‐mapping models with only a single case study. Nevertheless, this case study provided sufficient data and information to develop and propose a theory for successful K‐mapping model development within construction project organizations.

In the KM area, the definition, benefits, purposes, principles and types of K‐map have been already provided by many KM researchers and practitioners. However, no industry (practical)‐based K‐mapping model has been developed and proposed, especially in the construction industry. Accordingly, the originality of this study to be presented in one of the paper's conclusions: construction processes must be considered and adopted as a key component in the K‐mapping process, and the discussion of the four types of K‐map this research have generated, which significantly expands the existing literature on K‐mapping.

This chapter applies Axelrod’s (1976) and Huff’s (Huff, A. S. (1990). Mapping strategic thought. In A. S. Huff (Ed.), Mapping strategic thought (pp. 88–115). Chichester: Wiley; Jenkins & Huff, 2002) approach to mapping strategic thought (causal mapping) to (1) categorize how manufacturers of new fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) may respond to environmental feedback to their decisions and (2) assess the effectiveness of alternative implemented decisions in assisting organizational growth. The manufacturing of new FMCGs requires timely product modifications in the assumptions of entrepreneur thinking in response to environmental responses/non-responses to decisions/actions of the manufacturing enterprise. A detailed example of causal mapping analysis is presented for a manufacturing entrepreneurial case study; the example covers processes linking events, decisions, and activities in business start-up, growth, and failure of the enterprise. The chapter closes by suggesting that causal mapping analysis is a valuable tool for advancing theory construction from case study research. The chapter provides a research plan for future reports applying causal mapping in retailing entrepreneur studies.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the current status of strategic group theory in the light of developments over the last three decades. and then to discuss the continuing value of the concept, both to strategic management research and practising managers.

Critical review of the idea of strategic groups together with a practical strategic mapping illustration.

Strategic group theory still provides a useful approach for management research, which allows a detailed appraisal and comparison of company strategies within an industry.

Strategic group research would undoubtedly benefit from more directly comparable, industry‐specific studies, with a more careful focus on variable selection and the statistical methods used for validation. Future studies should aim to build sets of industry specific variables that describe strategic choice within that industry. The statistical methods used to identify strategic groupings need to be robust to ensure that strategic groups are not solely an artefact of method.

The paper looks specifically at an application of strategic group theory in the UK pharmaceutical industry. The practical benefits of strategic groups as a classification system and of strategic mapping as a strategy development and analysis tool are discussed.

The review of strategic group theory alongside alternative taxonomies and application of the concept to the UK pharmaceutical industry.