Since the 1980s, firms have searched for better ways to align their cost management systems with the realities of their business environments. The advent of accelerated global competitiveness, reduced product life cycles, rapid technological advancements, and inter‐organizational supply chains...

In currently facing dynamic environments, the tools of strategic management appear to be more and more important in improving the quality of decision‐making. Among the great Chinese wisdoms, Sun Tzu's, The Art of War , is probably the oldest military book in Chinese with principles which Sun...

Purpose – This paper seeks to present the results of an investigation on the justification of investments in advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) at manufacturing plants in the USA. Unlike previous research that explored the adoption and use of a specific AMT or groups of similar AMT, this...

Purpose – To manage linkages amongst value activities, this study seeks to explore to a greater extent the underlying information‐processing infrastructure of the value chain, and then to derive a corresponding business process analysis framework. Design/methodology/approach – The approach...

Purpose – In order to deepen knowledge and further build theory on the use of advanced manufacturing systems (AMS) in SMEs, the present research seeks to explore the following questions: are the AMS used by SMEs aligned with their network, product and market development strategies? And does...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is a comparative analysis of two electronic grocers, one success and one failure, in order to attempt to identify the critical success factors that contributed to their different performances. Design/methodology/approach – Four aspects of each company's...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of the manager's strategic orientation concerning technology acquisition and its repercussions for the firm's performance. Design/methodology/approach – These relationships are studied using a sample of Spanish engineering...

Purpose – The paper aims to study the effect of external managerial social networks on strategic flexibility for a quality management (QM) perspective. External social networks can affect strategic flexibility positively. QM also contributes to developing these networks. However, there is...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of different configurational archetypes of strategy and strategic management accounting and to appraise how management accounting's horizontal and vertical alignment with strategy can facilitate performance....

Purpose – The paper presents the concept of duality, which presupposes the synthesis of two apparently opposing organisation's properties. The purpose of the paper is to empirically verify whether management of dualities correlates with effectiveness and efficiency of organisations....