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Research Summary: We develop new theory on incumbent firms' strategic decision‐making and the associated emotional dynamics at platform transitions. Based on in‐depth interviews with Nokia's senior leaders about their decision to adopt the Windows platform in 2011, we suggest that highly capable platform companies' entry into the established phone industry invalidated senior leaders' long‐held core assumptions about the industry, triggering existential anxiety and stunting self‐regulation. Distinct mechanisms then influenced senior leaders' emotions toward external platform options—myopic appraisals of firm competitiveness inside a platform (vs. platform competitiveness against other platforms), appraisals of changing firm boundaries, and emotional resonance of potential partners. These emotions contributed to emotional drift, with top managers ultimately favoring the emotionally attractive option. Our theorizing extends theory on platforms, strategy, and emotion. Managerial Summary: This research provides fresh insights into how emotions play a crucial role in incumbent firms' strategic choices, especially in the context of evolving technology platforms and major industry shifts. Our research focused on Nokia's 2011 decision to adopt the Windows platform. We discovered that when new players, like platform companies, enter a market, they can unsettle longstanding beliefs, causing anxiety and decision‐making challenges among top management. Specifically, we found that executives often focus too narrowly on their firm's ability to compete within a new platform rather than the platform's overall competitiveness. Additionally, changes in company boundaries and the emotional appeal of potential partners significantly influence these decisions. Executives' analyses emotionally drift such that they start favoring the emotionally attractive options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-ecological inclusion and the impacts of climate change on the built environment are two shared concerns central to the design and planning of the just transition in cities. The just transition leans heavily on inclusive convergence processes that are grounded in knowledge integration and transdisciplinary practice. However, there is a paucity of effective methods for the inclusion of so-called weak signals from actors situated at the periphery of these convergence processes. Building on the concept of structured flexibility, we introduce a building-blocks approach as a modular architecture for constructing methods for distributed engagement and knowledge integration beyond conventional small-group settings. By engaging in research through design, the Amplifying Weak Signals approach was prototyped with students in the context of dealing with heatwaves in The Hague and tested with expert users from the region who facilitate resilience strategy-making processes. Out of 900 possible building block combinations, 18 methods were created during prototyping. The resulting heatwave strategies that were drafted based on the collected peripheral knowledge showed the integration of new socio-ecological issues rather than a drastic departure from the baseline resilience strategy of the city. We discuss the research findings and their use in the production of guidelines for the construction of methods to integrate peripheral knowledge in convergence processes. Ongoing work to develop the guidelines in the form of an open-access, interactive repository of knowledge elicitation methods for urban resilience spatial planning will also be described. Recommendations for scaling the approach are provided.

Companies must provide economic, environmental and social added value based on innovation strategies, design and creative thinking in a globalised and competitive world characterised by rapid change and constantly evolving technologies. In this context, this paper analyses the role of design practice in companies in the agri-food sector (i.e. what is the design component present like; what are its relevance and importance?) An exploratory, descriptive study was conducted with 30 companies in southeast (SE) Spain's fruit/vegetable sector. The findings reveal that all the surveyed companies make financial investments in design and positively value this (7.6 out of 10), which indicates they recognise its strategic and operative importance. However, integration, training and design promotion in the agri-food sector remains somewhat limited. Most companies lack an in-house design department or design professionals as staff members and perform mainly design activities limited to the visual and communication tasks related to marketing initiatives. These results unveil opportunities for enhancing design incorporation and appreciation in the agri-food sector, which could boost its competitiveness and differentiation in the market. Finally, this study can be considered a starting point for future development in line with the horticultural sector's theory, practice, and design management policies.

Companies must provide economic, environmental and social added value based on innovation strategies, design and creative thinking in a globalised and competitive world characterised by rapid change and constantly evolving technologies. In this context, this paper analyses the role of design practice in companies in the agri-food sector (i.e. what is the design component present like; what are its relevance and importance?) An exploratory, descriptive study was conducted with 30 companies in southeast (SE) Spain’s fruit/vegetable sector. The findings reveal that all the surveyed companies make financial investments in design and positively value this (7.6 out of 10), which indicates they recognise its strategic and operative importance. However, integration, training and design promotion in the agri-food sector remains somewhat limited. Most companies lack an in-house design department or design professionals as staff members and perform mainly design activities limited to the visual and communication tasks related to marketing initiatives. These results unveil opportunities for enhancing design incorporation and appreciation in the agri-food sector, which could boost its competitiveness and differentiation in the market. Finally, this study can be considered a starting point for future development in line with the horticultural sector’s theory, practice, and design management policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in organizational and strategy research increasingly accords centrality to narratives in developing and legitimating future-oriented strategies. Despite this growing interest in the use of strategic narratives for prospective sensemaking and sensegiving, the design of such narratives as persuasive vehicles that shape beliefs about possible futures and firms' potential roles in them remains undertheorized. We build on Paul Ricœur's narrative theory to develop a theoretical framework of how firms can employ imaginative thought, in the form of productive and creative imagination, to depict plausible and desirable "possible worlds." We term these worlds "futurescapes" and theorize how they synthesize heterogenous information through factual and fictive means to project different types of futures that have differential persuasive qualities. We argue that continuous or near futures are likely to be perceived as more plausible, whereas discontinuous or distant futures are likely to be perceived as more desirable by stakeholder audiences. We further draw on Ricœur's ideas about narrative time to theorize how narratives are used by firms for temporal reorganization that can alter perceptions of plausibility and desirability, thereby increasing the overall persuasiveness of their futurescapes. We illustrate our arguments using narratives created by auto manufacturers in response to the changing landscape of their industry. Our ideas have implications for research on the strategic use of narratives, future-focused strategy making as temporal work, and shaping strategies under uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various collaborative innovation methods are increasingly used in strategy development and the implementation of organizational challenges. The aim of applying them is to involve different agents of an organization and support them in generating new ideas in a joint effort. For this research, an experimental field study was conducted in the course of an innovation workshop for 80 top managers in the public sector using a quantitative questionnaire and an ethnographic observation. A novel workshop format was designed using different materials to support the beginning of this innovation process. The groups used either traditional workshop materials, that is, moderation cards (small sheets of colored paper), or novel workshop materials, that is, LEGO bricks. Our results show that both materials significantly influenced the human experience in the workshop. The use of LEGO bricks was perceived as more enjoyable, active, and inspiring than the use of moderation cards. However, the perceived group outcome using moderation cards was rated higher than that working with LEGO bricks. We discuss how using novel workshop materials changes the experience of an innovation workshop, but we also highlight that additional factors, including translation effects, trained facilitators, and specific innovation phases, must be considered to outperform the use of traditional materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological restoration is important to mitigate global ecological degradation. However, previous restoration, mainly targeting a single ecosystem or ecological problem at a single scale, couldn’t effectively solve systemic ecological problems, especially in rapidly developing areas. Land-Space Ecological Restoration (LSER) policy was proposed to change the situation that traditional ecological restoration was lack of overall planning and united goals. To integrate ecological restoration measures in different departments and scales in LSER practice and management, a multi-scale evaluation framework for LSER planning strategy making based on “P-S-R” perspective and landscape, ecological, GIS methods was proposed, and applied in Jiangsu Yangtze River Economic Belt in China. We took fishnet scale as data calculation unit, and town, county, regional scales as decision scale to formulate a hierarchical evaluation and decision making system. In study area, ecological engineering type (including 7 kinds of protection or restoration, and artificial or natural measures) at town level was identified, guided by county-level LSER zoning and grading obtained by normal cloud model evaluation method. At regional scale, an ecological network including 53 ecological sources, 95 corridors, 674 restoration points, and 80 footstones was constructed to determine regional restoration priority. Based on the research results, a decision-making system could be formed, with the regional ecological network as the decision-making basis for the overall restoration pattern, the county-level LSER classification as the standard for planning goals and task decomposition, and the township LSER project classification as the basis for the site selection of diverse ecological restoration projects. The proposed evaluation framework could integrate the data and decision-making process of ecological restoration measures at different scales, and assist regional ecological goal setting and space strategy making of LSER planning to achieve sustainable development goals.

Rational, analytical, directed approaches for strategy creation and execution may work for creating value by conventional, hierarchically structured organizations operating in stable environments. However, when the basis of competition shifts from product features to an experience delivered by a network of independently acting participants in a complex and fast-evolving market environment, approaches based on command and control do not work. For order to emerge from such chaos and to gain more control over success, strategy based on reason alone is not enough to inspire action in others. To understand what it takes to effectively make strategy under such circumstances, this article shows how the UK's Royal Marines, in collaboration with more than a dozen different stakeholder groups, developed a novel adaptation of war gaming to affect strategic change in Afghanistan. It also demonstrates the broad applicability of this strategic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper discusses the role of strategy making in organizational learning. By linking organizational learning and strategyas-practice literatures, the objective of this research was to analyze how intertwined the cognitive process and strategic activities are in organizational learning. Design/methodology/approach – The metodology used is a longitudinal qualitative single case study of one of the largest Brazilian companies in the power industry. The unit of analysis is the firm’s growth strategy through mergers and acquisitions from 2003 to 2012. Findings – The findings show that organizational learning involved four sequenced causal flows in which specific types of strategic activities contributed directly or indirectly to learning loops. Originality/value – Our main contribution is to show that the implementation of strategic activities is the key to strategic renewal.

In both the scientific and professional community, the need to integrate transport and land-use policies in order to achieve more sustainable urban development is widely recognized. Accessibility can provide a conceptual focus for this integration because it relates to both features of the transport system (e.g. speed, and travel costs) as well as the land-use system (e.g. density and functional mix). The concept of accessibility is well known within the scientific literature. The understanding of how it can improve transport land-use planning integration in practice, however, is still limited. In order to address this gap between theory and practice, we discuss two case studies in the Netherlands in which policy-makers from both transport and land-use planning developed and used accessibility indicators to generate and select effective combinations of transport and land-use interventions. For each case, the type of accessibility indicators used and the way they contributed to an integrated assessment of the quality of the transport and land-use system and the different policy options that resulted from the assessment are discussed. Finally, we reflect on the potentials and limits of this approach, and on the opportunities and barriers for its implementation in day to day planning practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two prescriptions dominate the topic of what firms should do next in uncertain situations: planning approaches and adaptive approaches. These differ primarily on the appropriate role of prediction in the decision process. Prediction is a central issue in strategy making owing to the presumption that what can be predicted can be controlled. In this paper we argue for the independence of prediction and control. This implies that the pursuit of successful outcomes can occur through control-oriented approaches that may essentially be non-predictive. We further develop and highlight control-oriented approaches with particular emphasis on the question of what organizations should do next. We also explore how these approaches may impact the costs and risks of firm strategies as well as the firm's continual efforts to innovate. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report is commissioned to analyse strategic position of Sony in market with brief history analyses, core competencies analyses along with strategic recommendations for Sony. Several key models like SWOT, Bowman's Strategy Clock and other related concepts are discussed, the data used for this research paper data gathered form secondary data sources i.e. Annual reports, Journal articles, Book, newspaper articles etc. which are properly declared in “Reference” section. The rational decision for choosing Sony as a research study for this paper is that they have been market leaders and pioneered many markets, however due to lack of ambition and strategic planning failure the company is now on verge of bankruptcy. Towards the end this research paper has given some strategic direction recommendations for the board of directors of Sony Inc. which will help Sony to revive themselves from current position and restore their brand to former glory.

This article is aimed to discuss and analyse Xerox Corporation and its core competencies. The research study will be focusing on the historical background and the era of success and downfall of the organization. In addition, several management models are also applied in this article in order to examine the competitive advantage of the organization and its strategies to sustain in the competitive market. The strategic problems faced by organization and its consequences are discussed in this article and in order to manage those issues and problems, different recommendations are also provided by the research study based on the past cases and secondary data. The paper suggests that Xerox should focus on the stretching of its brand name by diversifying into related fields in order to compete with competitors at multiple levels in the market. It is recommended that the organization should focus on certain departments like marketing as equal as it is focusing on research and development. The research has examined the strategies and major strategic making decision making of the organization in the past and its effect on the current state of the organization. The research study hopes that the discoveries and analysis helps for future studies in the related aspects.

This paper deals with the communicative accomplishment of strategy practices and processes (Cooren Bencherki, Chaput & Vásquez, 2015; Pälli, 2017; Vásquez Bencherki, Cooren & Sergi, 2017). We do so by investigating one significant activity within an organizational strategy making process, namely strategy meetings. Here, members of the upper management group create concrete drafts for the actual strategy document, and we focus on a specific action sequence where strategy actors propose changes to the strategy document. Specifically, we investigate how the participants subsequently deal with the proposal, how such interaction work facilitates the accomplishment of strategy roles, and how the interaction impacts the decision making process. Our study shows that strategy actors, when making these decisions, not only orient to an acceptance or rejection of the proposal but also to questions of entitlement (Asmuß & Oshima, 2012). This orientation involves multimodal resources, ranging from talk (Samra-Fredericks, 2003) to embodied and material resources. The study thus provides an empirical demonstration of the processual aspects of strategy work and their impact on strategic outcomes; further, it highlights the importance for practice studies to acknowledge communicative (verbal, embodied and material) aspects in capturing the complexity of strategy work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning Support Systems (PSS) can provide important and much needed knowledge and support in strategy-making processes, by bringing explicit information to daily planning practices. However, as decades of academic studies show, their use is riddled with barriers and bottlenecks. Academic studies generated insight in these bottlenecks and identified a number of directions to bridge the implementation gap. Most notably, the transparency, flexibility and interactivity of PSS needed to be enhanced to align the instruments more with the dynamic characteristics of urban strategy-making processes. However, PSS developers do not seek instrumental use only; they seek to increase the quality of planning through this use. Accordingly, academic analysis should go beyond the user-friendliness of the PSS themselves. There are a number of studies that focus on the relations between PSS and planning quality. This paper aims to construct links between these studies of usefulness and the body of knowledge on user-friendliness. To do so, it operationalizes the characteristics of user-friendliness and the potential added value that PSS have on the qualities of planning (specifically the strategy-making phases). Consequently, the relations between these concepts are further explored. Five experiments measured user-friendliness and usefulness indicators of different PSS and explored the relations between these two concepts. The findings indicate high user-friendliness across the board, while usefulness was only found in very limited cases and for very limited dimensions (notably Insight and Consensus). The correlations between the perceived user-friendliness and usefulness on different planning qualities reveal that for the self-reported Enthusiasm of participants all user-friendliness indicators have a positive effect. For perceived gains in Insight, only Credibility and Clarity of output have a significant positive effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report is commissioned to analyse strategic position of Sony in market with brief history analyses, core competencies analyses along with strategic recommendations for Sony. Several key models like SWOT, Bowman's Strategy Clock and other related concepts are discussed, the data used for this research paper data gathered form secondary data sources i.e. Annual reports, Journal articles, Book, newspaper articles etc. which are properly declared in "Reference" section. The rational decision for choosing Sony as a research study for this paper is that they have been market leaders and pioneered many markets, however due to lack of ambition and strategic planning failure the company is now on verge of bankruptcy. Towards the end this research paper has given some strategic direction recommendations for the board of directors of Sony Inc. which will help Sony to revive themselves from current position and restore their brand to former glory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is aimed to discuss and analyse Xerox Corporation and its core competencies. The research study will be focusing on the historical background and the era of success and downfall of the organization. In addition, several management models are also applied in this article in order to examine the competitive advantage of the organization and its strategies to sustain in the competitive market. The strategic problems faced by organization and its consequences are discussed in this article and in order to manage those issues and problems, different recommendations are also provided by the research study based on the past cases and secondary data. The paper suggests that Xerox should focus on the stretching of its brand name by diversifying into related fields in order to compete with competitors at multiple levels in the market. It is recommended that the organization should focus on certain departments like marketing as equal as it is focusing on research and development. The research has examined the strategies and major strategic making decision making of the organization in the past and its effect on the current state of the organization. The research study hopes that the discoveries and analysis helps for future studies in the related aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain the divergence in technological strategies among leading electric vehicle (EV) firms in China. EVs, with their prospect of energy efficiency and emission reduction, have attracted widespread attention in recent years. However, EV development still faces technological challenges. While these challenges are similar for all firms, their coping strategies are highly divergent. One of the main reasons is that the policy environment for Chinese EV developers is shaped by a multiplicity of institutional logics which are sometimes incoherent. This allows firms to selectively build on those institutional logics that meet their needs and priorities. This strategic behavior results in divergent technological paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In strategy research, there is a consensus that strategy making resides on a continuum from planned to emergent where most strategies are made in a mixed way. Different contingency factors have been suggested to explain the factors that influence strategy making. Sustainability research seems to overlook most of this development and assumes instead that sustainability strategies are made in a purely planned way. We contribute to a better understanding of the role of different strategy making modes for sustainability in three ways. First, we point to the bias towards planned strategy formation in sustainability research. Second, we propose a new contingency factor to help explain sustainability strategy making based on the nature of the problem addressed. Third, we discuss strategy making for different types of sustainability problems. We argue that planned strategy making is expected for salient and non-wicked problems while emergent strategy making is likely for non-salient and wicked problems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]