Purpose – Responding to Colbert’s (2004) call for research examining the complexity of work systems’ effect on performance, and following Meyer and Dunphy’s (2014, 2015) work determining the general manner by which the complex mechanism of strategy choice and its implementation effect...

Purpose – The resource-based view and value-rarity-imitability-organisation (VRIO) method have diffused widely into courses aimed at managerial practice, but research has yet to verify whether they help managers analyse a firm’s resources. Following recent interest in the use of strategy...

Purpose – Despite much research on information technology (IT)-enabled organizational transformation (OT), there are still many issues to be addressed. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by proposing an integrative model that includes specific transformation resources, capabilities,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the capabilities of social entrepreneurship (SE) firms and how they achieve competitive advantage while engaging in social value creation. The authors employ a business model perspective to understand the (self-) sustaining mechanism for...

Discusses the death of inter‐firm and intra‐firm competition as we know it and propose an approach beyond competition – “the pursuit of immortality”. Our digital age offers immense and unprecedented opportunities to bring forth the latent potential of organizations, by allowing...

Human resource management’s challenge is to improve the balance among three competing quality targets: equity, flexibility and alignment. Management of these targets has improved through four historical periods: the pre‐industrial, paternalist, bureaucratic and high performance. There always...

Agile manufacturing is a response to competition in environments characterised by unpredictable change, so having the ability to vary capacity, respond to sporadic changes in demand, mass customise at the cost of mass production, and compete in both mass and custom markets is crucial. Empirical...

Presents a practical exploration of business manoeuvre theory, examining the application of a developing military war fighting doctrine and how this can be transferred to the business mindscape in order to influence future planning. Suggests that attackers have strategic advantage over defenders...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to improve the success rate and quality of outcome when strategy tools are used in practical situations. Design/methodology/approach – Draws on post‐experience teaching and uses conceptual reasoning to propose a typology of tool applications....

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to record an interview with George Stalk of The Boston Consulting Group. Design/methodology/approach – The article cites illustrative examples of a selection of notably successful companies including Toyota, Dell, CarMax, Ford Customer Service...