The strategic relevance of business relationships: a preliminary assessment

The ubiquitous contention within the Industrial Networks literature - that business relationships are one of the firm´s most important resources - has not been, in our viewpoint, thoroughly explored. Hence we argue that the ‘Resource-based View of the Firm’ (‘RBV’) may complement the network-based reasoning on the strategic relevance of business relationships. A theoretical framework is proposed – a competence-based view of the firm – which solves RBV´s terminological and inconsistency problems and, more importantly, assures compatibility with the network perspective´s assumptions. The possibility of cross-fertilizing the Industrial Networks and RBV theories seems not only real, but also conceptually profitable for both theoretical fields.Business Relationships, Industrial Networks, Resource-Based View of the Firm, Competence-Based View of the Firm

Scorecarding and Heat Mapping: Tools and Concepts for Assessing Strategic Uncertainty

The dramatic changes occurring throughout the agriculture industry are creating new and different uncertainties that result from a turbulent business climate. The objective of this paper is to present a methodology to understand, assess and evaluate, and manage strategic uncertainty. The approach is to present a mental model that frames assessment of strategic uncertainty from a potential and exposure perspective. Scorecarding and heat mapping assessment tools operationalize the mental model. Participants in an executive agribusiness educational workshop applied this mental model and the assessment tools to one of three hypothetical seed companies. The participants then provided an evaluation of the usefulness and effectiveness of uncertainty scorecarding and heat mapping.Uncertainty, scorecarding, strategic uncertainty, heat mapping, potential, exposure, likelihood, Risk and Uncertainty,

Musselman Library Updated Strategic Priorities 2016-2018

This document updates Musselman Library’s 2013 Strategic Plan, retaining the strategic directions that still require attention and adding new priority areas. This update grew out of an all-staff discussion on November 3, 2016, in which library employees identified areas of success/completion and pinpointed unfinished business from the 2013-2016 plan. The staff also suggested other areas to develop. In response to these suggestions, department heads updated the 2013-2016 plan. In this update we have: Retained three strategic directions from the original plan with some changes and additions: Lifelong Learning, Sustainability, and Assessment. Reframed the Leadership plank in the context of Scholarly Communications priorities. Added a fifth strategic priority: Diversity and Inclusion

Concept of comprehensive enterprises business model in global economic environment

The effective functioning of a modern enterprise necessitates the awareness of the owners and managers of its strategic orientations, the state of the internal and external environment, its competitive advantages, entrepreneurial potential and development prospects. A well-built business model of the enterprise helps to face these urgent and permanent challenges. However, the formation of a real business model of the enterprise necessitates mastering of theoretical and methodological bases and implementation of long-term practical measures in the field of assessment, shaping, organization and control. This study offers a comprehensive business model of the enterprise that systematically identifies key factors which influence business activity of the enterprise and provide value logic for doing business in the global economic environment

Sustainable growth rate in the strategic analysis of brewery industry

An analysis of sustainable growth rate could considerably improve an assessment of Strategic Business Unit’s potential. The sustainable growth rate analysis enabled us to compare a possible growth rate within the brewery industry with a growth rate that firms had achieved. To demonstrate this in more depth, we presented a case study of the brewery industry in Poland and Czech Republic.Growth, strategic analysis, seer industry, corporate growth, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, GA, IN,

Strategies for regional sustainable development in South-West Oltenia

The paper analyses the relationship between sustainable development, regionalism and strategic orientation in one of the least developed Romanian regions, South-West Oltenia. Based on a questionnaire filled in by a sample of managers from the region, the perception on business strengths and weaknesses, as well as the assessment of the external environment were investigated, and paralleled with the main causes of underdevelopment, as identified by the respective managers. The conclusions of the study give a plausible picture of the level of development, interrelated with the quality of business strategies in the region, and ask for a comparative analysis of more Romanian regions, having various development levels.sustainable development, regional planning, strategic management, South-West Oltenia.

An Assessment of E-business Strategies Using the Strategic Alignment Model.

Most research concerning e-business offers a methodology, measures the predisposition of the firm or evaluates the consequences in terms of management.This research aims at designing a model for assessing e-business strategies based on the strategic alignment perspective.Using the Information Systems (IS) literature about alignment and data collected from 11 interviews of general and e-business managers from the main companies of the French tourism sector, 12 variables were identified.These, in turn, can be used to build an e-business alignment model for the enterprise.tourism; model; alignment; Information Technologies (IT); strategy; E-business; Information systems (IS); Internet;

Business-IS Alignment: Assessment Process to Align IT Projects With Business Strategy

The value of information technology has been proved to be related to alignment between business and information systems (IS). However the constant report of failed IT projects suggests a misalignment between business and IS at the implementation stage. The majority of alignment assessment approaches focuses on the strategic level and overlooks the connections with IT projects. Although research has given little attention to this problem, it has been recognized that managers must focus on IT project planning as a mediator to improve business-IS alignment. This research proposes an assessment process across different organizational levels (strategic, tactical and operational). In doing so, the strategic alignment maturity (SAM) model is used and adapted to include the assessment of IT projects alignment maturity. IT projects are considered the unit of analysis that represents the operational implementation of strategies. The assessment process proposed has been tested in an SME in order to understand its practicability and limitations. The results show that is feasible to use the SAM model to assess the IT projects alignment maturity. Moreover, analyzing alignment across different organizational levels (strategic, tactic and operational) provides a more complete picture of the organization’s alignment maturity that could facilitate the design of specific actions to improve the project alignment with business objectives