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This paper describes the development of strategic alliance research as it relates to successful outcomes and interorganizational growth. According to the author, the link between growth and individual orientations, key decision leaders' attitudes, environmental factors and public policy has been established by analyzing the Strategic Alliance Research Group (SARG) data sets. The SARG project is an informal alliance of researchers in several countries, nine of which are featured in this paper. The author uses a combination of reviews of significant articles and empirical findings from the SARG project to explore the current situation and to identify research opportunities. The author uses micro level research but supplements it with a macro level view of industry-wide and regional alliances that facilitate the growth of small and medium-sized firms.

According to the author, diversification strategy is one of the most important strategic challenges facing top executives. This paper explores the different research paths in the literature of diversification strategy and provides arguments as to what each one holds for advancing theory development. The first path reviews conceptual and theoretical developments of diversification strategy with the intent to offer insight on where the literature has been and how it has evolved. The next two paths build upon this review, offering a discussion of how some current thinking is emerging. The last path offers some sketches for where fruitful contributions may exist in future research. Overall, the author hopes to provide a research agenda that challenges traditional theories and compels new thinking that will enrich our understanding of this important strategic topic.

This paper explores the intrinsic economic value of "corporate reputations." These are favorable perceptions of a company shaped by four key resource-holders: employees, customers, investors, and communities. According to the author, securing attractive perceptions of a company from these resource providers is crucial if a company is to build and sustain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Reputations matter because they create value. The author suggests that reputational markets can therefore be characterized as "winner-take-all" environments in which exaggerated rewards accrue to companies that develop even marginally better reputations than their rivals. In building a definition of corporate reputation, the author explores how economists, strategists, sociologists, marketers, and organization theorists view corporate reputations. The author concludes with three key issues that appear to dominate current research in corporate reputation: measuring reputations, valuing reputations, and causality.

This paper proposes a positive interpretation of transaction cost theory (TCT) and explores the roles of entrepreneurship and trust. The author presents a critique of TCT that offers a reappraisal of the theory's basic assumptions and postulates in order to reveal its previously neglected positive and humanistic side. The author's aim is to reorient TCT and show that (1) it is possible to embrace the central views of the theory and thus preserve the predictive ability of TCT while (2) weakening and even dispensing with the negative and emotive connotations of terms such as opportunism and asset specificity. The author's analysis shows that a strong assumption of opportunism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for TCT to be able to produce refutable propositions and hypotheses.

This paper considers the idea of "stakeholder management" as it has come to be applied in strategic management. First, the authors offer a brief history of the stakeholder approach, which they say emerged in the mid-1980s. Fragments of the stakeholder concept survived and developed within four distinct management research streams over the next two decades: the corporate planning, systems theory, corporate social responsibility, and organizational theory. Furthermore, most of the research on the stakeholder concept has taken place in four sub-fields: normative theories of business; corporate governance and organizational theory; corporate social responsibility and performance; and strategic management. The idea of a stakeholder approach to strategic management suggests that managers must develop and implement processes which satisfy all and only those groups who have a stake in the business. This requires managing and integrating the relationships and interests of shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and other groups in a way that ensures the long-term success of the firm. The authors conclude with future research questions on the stakeholder approach to strategic management.

This paper explores the origins and implications of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. The authors explain that the field of strategic management is organized around the question of why some firms persistently outperform others. According to the authors, the RBV emerged as one of several significant explanations of persistent firm performance differences in the field of strategic management. The authors explore the theoretical history of the RBV, its major theoretical tenants and how they differ from other explanations of persistent firm performance differences. According to the author, prior theoretical work of the RBV comes from at least four sources: the traditional study of distinctive competencies, Ricardian economics, Penrosian economics, and the study of the anti-trust implications of economics. The authors also address some unresolved issues about the RBV and its empirical and practical implications.

Since research in the area of decision-making is so diverse, this paper concentrates on a single and homogeneous perspective of decision-making--field study. Field study, explains the author, involves investigating real decisions made by real people in real organizations in which the consequences of the decisions are potentially measurable. The author examines two types of strategic decisions: developmental and non-developmental. A developmental decision requires a vision of how to alter the key business practices of an organization. Non-developmental decisions have less ambiguity. According to the author, the organization's strategy is not in flux and can be used to offer premises that frame what needs to be done to make a decision. The author discusses the steps needed to implement a developmental decision and notes that they are parallel to the steps needed for vision implementation. The author also addresses retrospective and prospective approaches to investigating developmental decisions. According to the author, retrospective methods compare exemplars that display characteristics of interest. Prospective methods attempt some of the process ideas and report on results. The author suggests that the strengths and weaknesses of retrospective and prospective approaches are complementary and concludes that an accumulation of insights drawn from research using both approaches is needed to study developmental decisions.

This paper argues that firm growth studies need to be longitudinal and turns to the conceptualization of the firm as the unit of analysis in growth studies. The authors explore theoretical perspectives and explain how these correspond with different conceptualizations of the firm. The authors also turn to operationalization issues--the choice of growth indicators, ways to model growth trajectories, and the distinction between organic and acquired growth. Furthermore, the authors discuss three alternative micro-level units of analysis: (1) an individual's or group of individuals' entire business activities, (2) a certain business activity or set of related business activities or (3) a governance structure.