A Research Agenda for Strategic Management Research in Developing Countries

This paper explores the extent to which it is possible to address issues pertaining to developing countries with significant socio-cultural and political interventions. Examples from the Sri Lankan tea plantations are used to illustrate the necessity to understand the context from actors’ perspectives using rigorous case study research, before making prescriptive recommendations. Current problems faced by the Sri Lankan tea industry are identified as not merely micro-institutional or managerial. We argue that their roots lie in reproduction of social struggles at the level of production. We propose a research agenda, in the doctrine of critical theory, for exploring the formation and implementation of business strategies in developing countries, using the tea plantation sector as a case. Our primary attempt here is to conceptualize strategic management in the context of political economy and to identify central issues to be addressed. Accordingly, we argue that researching historical dynamics of strategic management facilitates understanding and interpreting the articulation of modes of production in a given social formation. We further argue that a highly context specific research agenda is required to fully comprehend idiosyncratic characteristics of Sri Lankan strategy structures and organizational forms. Then, it is proposed that explaining the role of social formation in shaping and reshaping strategy relations should be at the centre of the research due to the social significance attached to ‘strategy’. Finally, methodological and epistemological necessities arising from the nature of strategy relationships are discussed.

Green technologies in the automotive industry

In most of the discussions about environmental issues and policies, transportation is highlighted as one of the main sources of pollutant emissions and energy consumption. The attention given to the automotive industry is understandable in this context due to its size, expansion, presence in our daily lives, and of course its environmental impact. If we scrutinize the “greenness” of car manufacturers we will find issues of concern from the raw material use, production processes, use, and end-of-life of vehicles. The main issues for production are high consumption of energy, raw materials, water and the waste stream, which contains the four substances of concern (cadmium, lead, hexavalent chromium, mercury). In respect of carbon emissions and energy use the use of cars is the main phase of its life-cycle due to the combination of internal combustion engines with fossil fuels. The most recent pressure is aimed at the end-of-life vehicles (ELV). In addition to the pollution from vehicle use, traffic jams and car accidents continue to be part of the downside of a car culture. Landfills sites are becoming scarce and the contamination of soil and aquifers completes the picture.

E-blogspot in the teaching of strategic management

E-learning and e-learning applications/tools are available to all educators thanks to the evolution of technology and the internet. Although a great variety of technologies are available it is not always obvious how these can be integrated in traditional teaching to support and enhance the learning experience. The majority of the existing literature proposes the use of blogging as an activity that students should do in order to increase their active participation in learning. This article presents the use of blogspots in the teaching of Strategic Management as a tool used to create greater linkages between theory and practice, discussing the evolution of its utilisation in my modules, the current state of use and a series of reflections on experience gained from its use so far. Overall, I have found that there is limited literature on how blogging could link to teaching activities and its utilisation should be viewed as learning by doing which is evaluated and improved by critical reflection of the user.

What is the Future of Strategic Management?

The history of planning and creating strategies has a past of over half a century. Throughout this lifetime period we have witnessed both the evolution of theory and practice. The MBA study books in the last-third of the 20th century have with predilection exhibited this very process as a complex of monetary centered budget planning, forecast-based planning, strategic planning and strategic management. There might be a controversy existing about the naming, characteristics and timing of these different sections but there is an accordance that the changes that we have taken place in the last decade as a whole without a doubt can be derived from these very changes in the business environment or in some outstanding cases (like 9/11) they can be acknowledged as the ability of corporate foreseeing and the ability to adapt to the vision of the future. The main purposes of the research is to provide a summarized picture about the changing process of this procedure during last decades as far as the planning and creating strategies are concerned and also their milestones and periods. Try to explore and systemize the very aspects of these changes. The happenings of the first decade of the new millennium are outstandingly interesting if we consider their real effect on the theory and practice of strategic management. Let us remember the euphoria around the year 2000, the predictions of „new technologies”, „new economy”, „new organization” and „new leadership”. We have implied before on the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center which meant a new era, a new quality of international terrorism and its consequences (Afghanistan, Iraq). But the „product” of this decade is the strategic aim that companies focus on, which is the social responsibility regarding the unavoidance of the effects of climate change on the long run. During the research the big question has risen concerning how did the science of strategic management do as far as the predictions of the global monetary and economic crisis are concerned? And also its solutions this very science has to offer in order to handle and get over the crisis. Does it conclude from the answers given to the questions that a change in paradigms are necessary, a new quality is needed or may be we have come to a new crossroad of the development process that will take over strategic management? (...)

A life cycle framework for governance of Intermodal terminals; planning, operations and strategic management.

This chapter establishes a framework for the governance of intermodal terminals throughout their life cycle, based on the product life cycle. The framework covers the initial planning by the public sector, the public/private split in funding and ownership, the selection of an operator, ensuring fair access to all users, and finally reconcessioning the terminal to a new operator, managing the handover and maintaining the terminal throughout its life cycle. This last point is especially important as industry conditions change and the terminal's role in the transport network comes under threat, either by a lack of demand or by increased demand requiring expansion, redesign and reinvestment. Each stage of the life cycle framework is operationalised based on empirical examples drawn from research by the authors on intermodal terminal planning and funding, the tender process and concession and operation contracts. In future the framework can be applied in additional international contexts to form a basis for transport cost analysis, logistics planning and government policy.

Rates of change : digital distribution as a disruptive technology in the film industry

-

Commercial successes in the music industry

Commercial success in the music industry is obviously related to one’s ability to use musical artisanship as a basis for generating profits and to accumulate substantial wealth. That may seem fairly straightforward, but commercial success is an elusive concept that is continuously negotiated within the industry to determine both what should be considered “success” as well as how it should be measured. This entry discusses commercial success in the popular music industry and strategies used to achieve it.

The design and development of music eScape: A new iPhone mood management music App

The physical, emotional, educational and social developmental challenges of adolescence can be associated with high levels of emotional vulnerability. Thus, the development of effective emotion-regulation strategies is crucial during this time period. Young people commonly use music to identify, express and regulate their emotions. Modern mobile technology provides an engaging, easily accessible means of assisting young people through music. A systematic contextual review identified 20 iPhone applications addressing emotions through music and two independent raters, using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), evaluated the quality of the apps. Their characteristics, key features and overall quality will be presented. Three participatory design workshops (N=13, 6 males, 7 females; age 15-25) were conducted to explore young people’s use of music to enhance wellbeing. Young people were also asked to trial existing mood and music apps and to conceptualise their ultimate mood targeting music application. A thematic analysis of the participatory design workshops content identified the following music affect-regulation strategies: relationship building, modifying cognitions, modifying emotions, and immersing in emotions. The application of the key learnings from the mobile app review and participatory design workshops and the design and development of the music eScape app were presented and implications for future research was discussed.

Music industry

The music industry is usually structured into three industry sectors: live music, music licensing, and recorded music. Live music and recorded music are primarily consumer businesses where revenues are generated consumers who buy CDs or concert tickets. The licensing industry on the other hand is a business-to-business industry where companies pay music rights owners for the use of their musics in various contexts, e.g. background music in shops, music in advertising, or music in broadcast radio...

Inventory Routing - A Strategic Management Accounting Perspective

This dissertation develops a strategic management accounting perspective of inventory routing. The thesis studies the drivers of cost efficiency gains by identifying the role of the underlying cost structure, demand, information sharing, forecasting accuracy, service levels, vehicle fleet, planning horizon and other strategic factors as well as the interaction effects among these factors with respect to performance outcomes. The task is to enhance the knowledge of the strategic situations that favor the implementation of inventory routing systems, understanding cause-and-effect relationships, linkages and gaining a holistic view of the value proposition of inventory routing. The thesis applies an exploratory case study design, which is based on normative quantitative empirical research using optimization, simulation and factor analysis. Data and results are drawn from a real world application to cash supply chains. The first research paper shows that performance gains require a common cost component and cannot be explained by simple linear or affine cost structures. Inventory management and distribution decisions become separable in the absence of a set-dependent cost structure, and neither economies of scope nor coordination problems are present in this case. The second research paper analyzes whether information sharing improves the overall forecasting accuracy. Analysis suggests that the potential for information sharing is limited to coordination of replenishments and that central information do not yield more accurate forecasts based on joint forecasting. The third research paper develops a novel formulation of the stochastic inventory routing model that accounts for minimal service levels and forecasting accuracy. The developed model allows studying the interaction of minimal service levels and forecasting accuracy with the underlying cost structure in inventory routing. Interestingly, results show that the factors minimal service level and forecasting accuracy are not statistically significant, and subsequently not relevant for the strategic decision problem to introduce inventory routing, or in other words, to effectively internalize inventory management and distribution decisions at the supplier. Consequently the main contribution of this thesis is the result that cost benefits of inventory routing are derived from the joint decision model that accounts for the underlying set-dependent cost structure rather than the level of information sharing. This result suggests that the value of information sharing of demand and inventory data is likely to be overstated in prior literature. In other words, cost benefits of inventory routing are primarily determined by the cost structure (i.e. level of fixed costs and transportation costs) rather than the level of information sharing, joint forecasting, forecasting accuracy or service levels.