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The literature on the past triggering learning in strategy practice is scant. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine the meaning of the past to learning in strategy practice and expands on the strategy-as-practice (SAP) literature. Understanding the relationship between the past and learning in strategy practice is important because learning is what keeps strategy practice in motion and remains in place, even if organizations and strategy practitioners change.

The authors used a longitudinal case study design combined with historical methods to examine how the past is embedded in present strategy practice. To capture learning in strategy practice over time, the authors applied a four-stage methodology in our analysis of document and interview data.

The authors identified four dimensions of the past embedded in the present strategy practice. These dimensions emerged from the analysis of the interviews and document data. The study’s results showed that the past appears in structures and routines, materiality, positioning and reflecting over repeated rounds of strategic planning. According to the study’s results, reflecting on strategy practice draws on past structures and routines, positioning and materiality. The past facilitates reflecting and reflecting on the past enables learning in strategy practice.

The authors constructed a conceptual model and showed that in strategy practice, reflection triggers learning. The authors contributed to theory development by demonstrating how the past is embedded in present strategy practice and is available for use by strategy practitioners. The authors showed that strategy practice is a continuous learning process.

This study aims to identify and prioritize the key practices and strategies for effective global sourcing and supply chain management (SCM).

The study uses a combination of Pareto analysis and multi-objective optimization based on ratio analysis research methodology to analyze and establish the relationships among the identified key practices and strategies. Pareto analysis enables organization to prioritize organizational efforts and resources by focusing on the most critical factors.

The study shows that the “eco-friendly sourcing strategy”, “lean manufacturing” and “tool cost analysis” are the top critical practices and strategy variables for global sourcing and SCM, whereas the “risk management”, “procurement strategy” and “leverage digital solutions” are the critical practices and strategy variables.

The findings of this research can also assist organizations in making informed decisions to optimize their global sourcing and supply chain operations.

By using these methods, this research paper gives valuable insights into the critical practices and strategies that can enhance efficiency, mitigate risks and drive success in global sourcing and SCM. The subjects and elements this study identified will serve as a framework and suggestions for further theoretical investigation and real-world implementations.

In large enterprises, the notion is that an organization’s business strategy is a significant determinant of its human resource (HR) practices. However, there is limited evidence in the literature of such linkages for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and extent of the relationship between the types of business strategies used and HR practices, namely, staffing, training and employee relations among SMEs.

The authors have collected data from 168 SMEs manufacturing autoparts and purposively chosen three SME case studies to derive in-depth observations of business strategies and HR practices. Quantitative results from the survey indicate that these SMEs exhibit a logical relationship between the strategic posture of the SMEs and their adopted HR practices.

This study illustrates that SMEs operating in the risky and lesser developed labor markets of a lower-income country such as Pakistan adopt certain practices that differ considerably from firms operating in more competitive automotive markets using highly skilled labor. The findings suggest that there is a significant potential to be realized through strategically managing HR practices to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Education of supervisors and management and suitable skill level of labor in tandem with continuous cutting edge industrial training appear to be the most successful business strategy followed by Prospector and Analyzer SMEs. For greater efficiency they need to have dedicated HR management, and financial and auditing services. Meanwhile, public sector entities as well as representative business bodies need to provide targeted practical technical and financial training and assistance to strengthen Defender and Reactor SMEs and improve their range of outputs.

This study contributed to the SMEs’ management literature in the context of Pakistan because there are very few studies that have examined the impact of business strategy on the HR practices in SMEs manufacturing autoparts in the automotive industry of Pakistan. The case study approach captures detailed insights and identifies the areas where the SMEs in developing countries perform differently than the SMEs in developed countries.

The role and contributions of blue and gray collar employees in strategy making in practice are generally ignored, and left out of scientific inquiry. However, the authors argue that they are “hidden actors” in the strategy making process, and “silent heroes” of the strategy. Their participative role is generally seen limited to operational phases of strategy. Nevertheless, recent literatures have fruitful implications on blue and gray collars workers’ contributions in formulation phase. Upper echelon (Hambrick, 1987; Hambrick & Mason, 1984) and strategy as practice (SAP) literatures (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009; Whittington, 2006) are suggested to be closely scrutinized since the former has incorporated the middle- and low-level teams of management in the explanation (Carpenter, Geletkancz, & Sanders, 2004), and the latter takes “practice” as a prominent research perspective, and thus enable us to approach strategy phenomena from a wider context of practitioners, practices, and praxis (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2002). Overall, this chapter suggests that future studies could question the hidden assumptions behind strategy approaches to trace the assumed image and role of blue and gray collars in strategy making, and go further to integrate their deserved role in strategy process, content, context, and cognition.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices frequently result in increased costs for Chinese international contractors (CICs), where profitability is the primary objective; therefore, internal corporate drivers and external pressures play a crucial role in encouraging them to engage in sustainable CSR practices. This study systematically examines the dynamic impact of internal and external stakeholders on the CSR practices of CICs.

This study adopted a structural equation model (SEM) to identify and validate a correlation between stakeholders and CSR practices. Standardized causal coefficients estimated in SEM were used to construct a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) model to illustrate the effect of stakeholders on CSR practices with linkage direction and weights. Predictive, diagnostic, and hybrid analyses were performed to dynamically model the variation in stakeholders on the evolution of CSR practices.

The empirical results demonstrate that (1) employee participation in CSR has the greatest impact on CSR practices, followed by CSR strategies, partner and customer expectations, and finally government regulations. (2) In the early stage of CSR fulfillment, CSR strategies have the greatest influence on CSR practices; in the later stage of CSR fulfillment, employee participation in CSR has the greatest influence on CSR practices. (3) In the long run, the most effective and economical integrated interventions are those that address employee participation in CSR, partner expectations and customer expectations, and intervention in CSR strategies is needed if the level of CSR practice needs to be improved in the short term.

This study contributes to the research on the influence mechanisms of CSR practices of CICs and systematically analyzes their dynamic influence on CSR practices of CICs from the perspective of stakeholders.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and changing market demands, competition for manufacturing industries is increasing and they face numerous challenges. In such a case, it is necessary to use multiple strategies, technologies and practices to improve organizational performance and, as a result, to integrate them for ease of adoption. The purpose of this research is to identify advanced Industry 4.0 technologies, operational excellence (OPEX) strategies and reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) practices. The study also computes their weights, as well as identifies and prioritizes the performance metrics for the same.

A thorough review of relevant articles was conducted to identify 28 OPEX strategies, RMS practices and advanced technologies, as well as the 17-performance metrics. The stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis approach was used to compute the weights of the selected practices, while the WASPAS approach was used to prioritize the performance metrics. While developing the framework, the industry expert’s expertise was incorporated in the form of their opinions for pairwise comparison.

According to the study findings, advanced Industry 4.0 technologies were the most prominent for improving organizational performance. As a result, integrating Industry 4.0 technologies with OPEX strategies can assist in improving the performance of manufacturing organizations. The prioritized performance metrics resulted in the production lead time ranking first and the use of advanced technologies ranking second. This emphasizes the significance of meeting dynamic customer needs on time while also improving quality with the help of advanced technologies.

The developed framework can help practitioners integrate OPEX strategies and advanced technologies into their organizations by adopting them in order of importance. Furthermore, the ranked performance metrics can assist managers and practitioners in evaluating the manufacturing system and, as a result, strategic planning for improvement.

According to the authors, this is a novel approach for integrating OPEX strategies with advanced Industry 4.0 technologies, and no comparable study has been found in the current literature.

In this study, we applied the strategy-as-practice (SAP) framework to analyse strategic communication practices. SAP implies approaching strategy as something that organisational members do and is useful for understanding the tensions between emergence and formalisation and between planning and improvisation that characterise the everyday communication work of communication practitioners.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a record company and on qualitative interviews with various actors from the music industry.

Tensions exist between the emergence of inputs from active consumers that require flexibility and attempts to strategically formalise and continuously adapt plans and encourage consumers to act in anticipated ways. The findings revealed five strategic communication practices—meetings, working in the office, gathering and analysing consumer engagement and related data, collaboration and storytelling—that practitioners used to conduct strategic communication and navigate the tensions.

The study contributes to understanding the role of strategic communication practices in contemporary organisations and how practitioners manage the tensions within them. The study shows that an SAP approach can account for improvisation and emergence, as well as planning and formalisation. It also shows how SAP resonates with emergent and agile strategic communication frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how an influential supplier of electronics manufacturing services (i.e. Foxconn) discloses its labour practices.

The analysis is conducted through the theoretical lens of legitimacy and impression management. This particular firm is selected as it provides a rich case on labour practice disclosures in a setting where significant labour malpractice incidents occurred from 2009 to 2011. The sample period covers 12 years of the firm's labour practice disclosures (2008–2019) to match with publicly available information that is used to construct expert comparative accounts on the disclosures. The authors corroborate the comparative accounts with sociological studies and responsibility reports from the major customer (i.e. Apple).

The authors found that the disclosures become more detailed over successive years. Occupational health and safety issues are predominantly reported, followed by issues relating to vocational guidance and training and then employment policy. Regarding impression management strategies, defensive strategies embedded in the disclosures are rarely detected and assertive strategies are persistently used from 2008 to 2019 to maintain legitimacy. The comparative accounts show the persistent use of one defensive strategy (i.e. omission) to maintain and regain legitimacy. In other words, as an economic strategy, material labour practice issues are persistently omitted in the disclosures. The incidents discernibly affect how Foxconn discloses labour practices.

The authors’ study contributes to the limited extant research on suppliers' labour practice disclosures from the perspective of legitimacy theory and impression management. The results will be of great interest to researchers, investors, assurers and other stakeholders.

Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

The digital contents (d-contents) are vulnerable to various threats either natural or manmade. Digital preservation is the plethora of a wide array of strategies necessary for the long-term preservation of digital objects. This study was carried out to assess the digital preservation practices for information resources in university libraries of Pakistan.

A quantitative survey based on a structured questionnaire was carried out to conduct the study. The questionnaire containing two sets of strategies (general and technical) was distributed amongst the whole population and received 90% response rate.

Overall, progressive implementation of general digital preservation practices was noted in these libraries like checking the digital collections for viruses, keeping the digital media in fire/water/theft proof locations, restricting unauthorized access, maintaining ideal humidity and temperature, and checking the digital media for functionality. Amongst the technical practices, only replication was in practice at a progressive rate, followed by metadata recording and media refreshing that was sometimes practiced in these libraries. The other technical practices were rarely or never practiced in these libraries. Significant variances in general and technical digital preservation practices were noted based on their physical locations (regional distribution).

The study contributes a comprehensive set of digital preservation practices divided into general and technical types to conduct similar studies in other parts of the world.

The findings stress the need for national and institutional policies, funding streams and skill enhancement of library staff.

The study fills the literature gap and contributes a comprehensive set of digital preservation practices divided into general and technical types to conduct similar studies in other parts of the world.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-02-2023-0074