Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
5,481
result(s) for
"strategic balance"
Sort by:
OPTIMAL DISTINCTIVENESS: BROADENING THE INTERFACE BETWEEN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Research summary: Attaining optimal distinctiveness—positive stakeholder perceptions about a firm's strategic position that reconciles competing demands for differentiation and conformity—has been an important focal point for scholarship at the interface of strategic management and institutional theory. We provide a comprehensive review of this literature and situate studies on optimal distinctiveness in the broader scholarly effort to integrate institutional theory into strategic management. Our review finds that much extant research on firm-level optimal distinctiveness is grounded in the strategic balance perspective that conceptualizes conformity and competitive differentiation as a trade-off along a single organizational attribute. We argue for a renewed research agenda that draws on recent developments in institutional theory to conceptualize organizational environments as more multiplex, fragmented, and dynamic, and discuss its implications for core strategic management topics. Managerial summary: This article aims to provide managers with a more comprehensive and contemporary view of how firms can become optimally distinct—being different enough from peer firms to be competitive, but similar enough to peers to be recognizable. We aim to equip managers with an understanding of firms as complex, multidimensional entities, and encourage them to identify and orchestrate various types of strategic resources to reconcile conformity versus differentiation tensions, address the multiplicity of stakeholder expectations, and aptly modify their positioning strategies in order to succeed in dynamic environments.
Journal Article
The challenge of grand strategy : the great powers and the broken balance between the world wars
\"The years between the world wars represent an era of broken balances: the retreat of the United States from global geopolitics, the weakening of Great Britain and France, Russian isolation following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the resurgence of German power in Europe, and the rise of Japan in East Asia. All these factors complicated great-power politics. This book brings together historians and political scientists to revisit the conventional wisdom on the grand strategies pursued between the world wars, drawing on theoretical innovations and new primary sources. The contributors suggest that all the great powers pursued policies that, while in retrospect suboptimal, represented conscious, rational attempts to secure their national interests under conditions of extreme uncertainty and intense domestic and international political, economic, and strategic constraints\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Strategic similarity and firm performance
Deephouse raised an important question as to whether firms should be different or should be the same. The strategic balance perspective proposed by him suggests that by balancing the competing pressures of conformity and differentiation, a moderate degree of similarity is what contributes most to firm performance. This perspective has been widely accepted by scholars but follow-up studies are few and have achieved mixed results, leaving the knowledge base in this stream on shaky ground. This study conducted multiple replications of Deephouse’s seminal work across 155 manufacturing industries in China and across two methods to examine its replicability, generalizability, and robustness to methods and to provide additional and cumulative information. The results show that strategic balance perspective was replicable, but with context limitations. Our exploratory analyses indicate several possible boundary conditions and promising topics for furthering the development of strategic balance perspective. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.
Journal Article
How do business group affiliated firm in emerging markets outperform standalone firms? A knowledge-based view
Purpose
This study seeks to understand how business group-affiliated firms perform in emerging markets. Previous studies identify that in spite of changes in the competitive landscape, seemingly counter-intuitively, business group affiliates outperform their standalone counterparts in emerging markets. This study adopts a knowledge-based view to resolve this apparent paradox.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a problematization methodology to qualitatively analyze the strategic decisions of Indian business group-affiliated firms. This study cross-validates their analysis with the empirical results available in published academic and practitioner articles.
Findings
Previous studies explain this outperformance paradox based on assumptions that include filling institutional voids, access to strategic resources and leveraging political connections. By questioning these assumptions, this study identifies an alternative explanation that is based on affiliates’ ability to adopt a strategic approach that balances knowledge capital acquired through international expansion and innovation.
Practical implications
The findings have important implications for managers of business group-affiliated firms in emerging markets, as well as for those in developed markets seeking to compete or collaborate in emerging markets.
Originality/value
This study provides a framework for managers of business group affiliates to identify suitable pathways to higher levels of competitive advantage.
Journal Article
Strategic background of the start-up: Qualitative analysis
A start-up is a relatively new and attractive entrepreneurial form that is being explored in a broader national economy and industry context. However, there is little knowledge about its strategy, which is mainly represented by the business development strategy. The main goal of the research is to deepen and expand knowledge about the strategic background of start-ups, which is preparation and condition for a development strategy and later a business strategy, too. The partial goals of the research are in-depth and detailed knowledge of the content and novelty of the business idea, the quality of the internal environment of the start-up, the nature of the external environment of the start-up, and the content of the goals. The research sample contains 147 start-ups operating in Slovakia. Each start-up was researched by a member of the research team, who personally recorded the statements of the founder. The research results are based on qualitative analysis and synthesis of statements of the founders of start-ups. The main result of the research is a summary view of the strategic background of the examined start-ups, which expresses the peculiarities of the start-up business making and documents the possibilities and motives of the start-up's strategizing. The summary of knowledge about the strategic background of the start-up is synthesized into a strategic balance sheet, which expresses the strategic perspective of the start-up, the possibilities of survival, explains the potential failure, and provides a solution to the identified imbalance. The practical use of the results consists of providing a model of the strategic balance, which is the result of field research of real and functioning start-ups. The originality and value of the research lie in the direct collection of qualitative data, immediate knowledge of business reality, and the synthesis of results into a comprehensive and at the same time detailed picture of the strategic background of the start-up.
Journal Article
Xi Jinping's North Korea Policy
Purpose-This is an article which intends to clarify and profoundly specify China's North Korean foreign policy. Design, Methodology, Approach-This is a viewpoint paper which seeks to enhance the understanding of, and remedy any misunderstanding of China's key interest, as well as its intentions. Findings-First, regarding the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the subsequent sanctions against the North, China wants to be seen as a legitimate, norm-based, great power. Second is the PRC-DPRK bilateral economic cooperation, which is a practicality driven diplomacy. Strategic efforts for balancing between justification and practicality represent its diplomatic concerns because Beijing's efforts to strike a strategic balance have resulted in lowering its \"bottom-line thinking.\" Practical Implications-As competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, China will pursue a more tactical two-sided strategy between implementing sanctions against the North, while at the same time cooperating economically with North Korea. China has to realize that its policy towards the North will result in a continued lowering of its political and strategic room to maneuver. Originality, Value-While much of the literature on PRC-DPRK regards China's diplomacy through the \"buffer zone\" explanation, this study sheds light on two other motives that clarify China's actions. China's North Korea policy is strategically focused on the above two areas.
Journal Article
Rescuing Classical Geopolitics
The author submits his two intentions for writing this essay: first, to clarify the two international-relations models, realism and classical geopolitics, and second, to show why the models should separate. Below, the Introduction will provide reasons for a separation. In Part One, the author will define each model, its primary characteristics. In Part Two, he will outline differences and similarities. And in Parts Three and Four, to further differentiate and show value, the author will demonstrate the utility of dividing the two, how this will broaden an understanding by examining how realism and geopolitics have influenced the thoughts and actions of three scholars and two presidents and have impacted on the parameters of several foreign-affairs sketches. It will be shown that the two approaches differ in their assumptions and theories. After each of the models is drawn and then utilized, a new clarity and preciseness will be evident from their separation.
Journal Article
The Poverty of Statistics: Military Power and Strategic Balance
Military expenditures and the number of service personnel are the two most common features used to compare national military power. However, to what extent they reflect the real world remains a question. This article aims to provide the answer by using data on the great power conflicts of the last 160 years. The Correlates of War data are utilised to highlight that the relation between pre-war military expenditures and the numerical strength of armies on one hand and the outcome of the war on the other is blurred, to say the least. States with higher military expenditures prevailed only in six great power conflicts out of nine. Only four of them were won by state with a numerically stronger peacetime army. The case of the Franco-Prussian war is then used to illustrate that not even superiority in both categories can safely prevent a crushing defeat, much less ensure the victory. Nation’s military power stems from its ability to adapt effectively to the realities of modern warfare. That is what neither the sheer number of soldiers, nor high military expenditures can guarantee.
Journal Article
Strategic Balance and Performance: A Study of Malaysian Banks
The main objective of this study is to investigate whether banks with similar resources requirements will achieve better performance through balancing the pressures of competition and legitimacy. Past studies on strategic management found that differentiation reduces competition whilst past studies on population ecology and institutional theory found that conformity enhances legitimacy. Therefore, organizations seem to face conflicting pressures. This study provides empirical support to the theory of `Strategic Balance' which stresses that a balanced approach to differentiation and conformity enhances their performance. Organizations seeking competitive advantage should be as different as legitimately possible.
Journal Article