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Exploring value co-creation resonates with the ongoing debate concerning how business schools create value for their stakeholders. We suggest that the service-dominant logic (SDL) allows us to shed light on these concerns and advance this debate. In SDL, value creation is an emergent process, and co-production, co-creation and value-in-use are central dimensions in this process. This focus on process represents a departure from the traditional business schools' position, which conceptualizes value as an output. Some schools have begun to embrace process through collaborative engagement such as engaged scholarship, service-learning or the public value model. However, SDL allows us to demonstrate that these approaches tend to focus on co-production andmiss opportunities to extend value creation activities by engaging with a more diverse set of stakeholders as part of the value creation process. We contend that business schools' strategies need to shift towards developingmore direct and intense interaction with their stakeholders. In so doing, they can help support, create andmaintain unique value in use for these stakeholders on an ongoing basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classic approach to management education is managercentric and assumes an essential nature to management. Drawing on ideas from interpretivist epistemologies, the social construction of leadership, phenomenography, and variation theory, we discuss the implications for management education of taking a non-essentialist approach and regarding the nature of management as unknown and unknowable. We focus on phenomenography for two reasons: First, when applied to the task of defining management, it is built on interpretivist roots where the knowledge and understanding of the observer is paramount. Second, it is also a theory of learning with direct application to management research and teaching. Building on these insights, we highlight the importance of students becoming active investigators of management and offer practical teaching implications on how students might be encouraged to engage in experiences that identify variations in the ways that management is conceptualized and performed. We also consider how such an approach brings a fresh perspective on what management education is about, the role of the educator, and how it informs the ongoing debates relating to the institutional pressures that business schools face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2009.00644.x Byline: Veronique Ambrosini (2), Cliff Bowman (1) Abstract: We seek to develop the conceptual and practical understanding of causal ambiguity. Specifically we extend current thinking by setting out three types of causal ambiguity, based on whether firm resources are perceived to display linkage and/or characteristic ambiguity, and by examining for each type the impact of causal ambiguity on the sustainability of competitive advantage and on rent appropriation. We highlight the difficulties decision-makers face when they perceive ambiguity and finally we explore some implications of ambiguity with respect to resource-creation processes. Author Affiliation: (2)Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK (1)Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, UKEmail:ambrosiniv@cardiff.ac.uk;cliff.bowman@cranfield.ac.uk

The authors posit that while corporate resource possession is a conditional factor for producing shareholder value, dynamic capability is a requisite factor. Discussion focuses on how dynamic capabilities contribute to resource creation.

A study that examined firstly the extent, to which managers from the same corporation shared similar perceptions to corporate strategy, secondly, the extent of consensus across the corporations and finally the extent of consensus about different rationales for corporate strategy, is reported. The reason for the general consensus about competence-based strategies, and a lack of consensus about the motives for divestment and acquisition strategies are also explained.

The article examines tacit knowledge as a heretofore elusive concept for empirical study. The authors propose a redefinition of tacit knowledge as tacit skills, or context-specific resources, and suggest a methodology for research using causal mapping and storytelling.

Strategic change should be viewed from an individual manager perspective.

There are considerable problems associated with the use of single respondents in strategy research. It is clear that using a single respondent to obtain information about a company's position can lead to misleading results, even in cases where managers are well placed to see how the whole company operates. Recent research indicates that information obtained from a single respondent may well be unreliable, and that results of strategic research undertaken in this way must therefore be regarded cautiously.

The differentiation between the competitive and corporate levels of strategic planning for the creation of market value of a business is described.