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Strategy researchers have become fascinated with the possibilities for developing theoretical perspectives rooted in knowledge and intellectual assets as drivers of superior performance. However, there have been many different schools of thought, each with its own conceptualization lenses and operationalization approaches. In this chapter, we focus on three schools of thought: (1) knowledge as stocks; (2) knowledge as flow; and (3) knowledge as a driver of an organizational capability. We use them to: (a) lay out the distinct approaches to conceptualization and operationalization of strategy-related concepts; and (b) identify specific ways to enhance theory-method correspondence. We believe that considerable progress could be made towards developing a knowledge-based view of strategy but only when accompanied by serious attention to measurement and methodological issues.

In this chapter, the authors review emerging literature on multidimensional, information age-related phenomena across different disciplines to derive common themes and topics. The authors then proceed to analyse recent developments in these fields to provide an interdisciplinary overview of the most disruptive challenges for multinational companies (MNCs) competing in the modern information age. These challenges include more efficient peer-to-peer communication between stakeholders, crowd-organisation, globalisation of value chains and the need to organise knowledge resources. The aim of the chapter is not to review all age research, but to identify fundamental uncertainties for MNCs and discuss strategies of tackling such information age phenomena from an international business perspective.

This research empirically analyzes gaps in performance among development stages of integration in supply chain management (SCM). The used variables are integration such as internal and external and performance such as cost and service. The population is international freight forwarders in the Republic of Korea and the sample frame is the membership list of the Korean International Freight Forwarders Association. The used methodology in this research is various: Cronbach’s alpha, factor analysis, cluster analysis, analysis of variance and post hoc analysis. It is important to ascertain the position in which they are included and the position is concerned with internal integration and external integration because the aim of this research is to ascertain where the forwarders are in development stages of integration. According to prior research, development stages of integration are regarded as the flow from internal to external. However, this research suggests that development stages of integration do not explain the flow of the stages but explain the strategic choice concerned with their current decision-making.

Considerable international attention is now focused on management accounting to deliver value‐adding services that facilitate effective decision making against the backdrop of complex and often unpredictable global structural changes. A review is made of a number of potential opportunities for accounting to contribute to organisational performance, together with a discussion of some possible shortcomings. One conclusion arising from this analysis is that management accounting must become organisationally proactive to ensure its value‐adding role.

Developments in Information Technology (IT) are perceived to be a major driver of interorganizational cooperation, both within and across industry boundaries. These developments have challenged the creation of interorganizational competitive advantages, as conceptualized in the Relational View (e.g. Dyer & Singh, 1998). The relationship between IT and effectuated interorganizational competitive advantage, however, is still unclear. This chapter is a first attempt to shed light on this unexplored area in the literature. We focus our analysis on developing a conceptual framework of the relationship between IT and interorganizational resource complementarity, which is an important determinant of interorganizational competitive advantage. Our framework suggests that cooperating organizations need to develop three distinctive but interrelated capabilities in order to effectuate interorganizational resource complementarity by means of IT. It is proposed that these capabilities give rise to interorganizational competence building, forming a pre-condition for achieving interorganizational competitive advantage. Preliminary support for our framework and proposition is provided by a brief case study of an interorganizational relationship between a large European financial services firm and a major European telecommunication firm.

To construct and test, through its application to a real case study, a methodology that generates contingencies for the evolution of a company or an industry's reference business model (BM) under the impact of a technology innovation.

The paper draws on theoretical predicaments of organizational development and scenario planning as well as more recently published works (2001‐2004) on BM design and change in order to build the primary steps of the methodology. A contingency approach is applied for selecting among alternatives the most suitable future BM. The usefulness and applicability of the provided methodology are proved through a real case study that concerns changing the exhibition's industry reference BM under the impact of a mobile innovation.

The proposed methodology is primarily useful in cases where a strategic manager wishes to draw and assess not one totally new BM but a set of scenarios that reflect alternative configurations for its current BM evolution. Such a methodology needs to be complemented with a contingency framework for guiding the selection of the scenario that better suits the internal and external environment of the company.

It is expected that related theories, such as the theory of Industrial Organization and the theory of Network Economics, also need to be examined under the light of BM change to identify and cross‐validate factors that contribute to the design and assessment of BMs.

The ultimate utility of the proposed methodology is as a road‐map for leading change in the value‐creation logic of a firm, taking advantage of an advanced technology solution. By continuously changing their BM, and identifying new ways to deliver value to their customers, firms aspire to obtain and sustain a competitive advantage in high‐velocity environments.

This paper fulfils an identified research gap for a structured approach towards changing the BM of a firm, which introduces a technology innovation by keeping the principles of the old (traditional) business logic and taking into account the effects incurred from the firm's internal and external environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate inter-organizational coordination (IOC) patterns between the buying firm, design agency, and component supplier in new product development (NPD) projects and to identify the determinants of these approaches.

Seven NPD projects are examined using the multiple-case study method. Data are collected from five design agencies, two buying firms, and two suppliers in Italy and the Netherlands.

Building on organizational information-processing and resource dependence theories, and based on the case study findings, four patterns of IOC approaches are proposed: buyer as mediator, buyer-designer partnership, designer as integrator, and team design activities. Two determinants of these approaches are suggested: the degree of novelty of the product/project (radical vs incremental) and the design approach (user oriented vs design driven).

Although the NPD projects are chosen from a wide variety of industries, the relatively small number of cases limits generalizability. The four IOC approaches proposed in this study should be tested in wider samples, possibly by means of the survey method.

The findings suggest that practitioners need to understand the determinants of the different IOC approaches to manage joint NPD projects most effectively. The authors also suggest that practitioners pay attention to the distinct roles of different types of suppliers while deciding on the appropriate coordination mechanisms to adopt. Finally, the results illustrate that buying firms need to consider empowering a supplier in an incremental NPD project if the supplier has a very distinctive capability that does not exist in the buying firm.

Previous research primarily focusses on dyadic-level buyer-supplier relationships in NPD projects. In this study, the authors adopt triads as the unit of analysis and specifically focus on cases that involve both component suppliers and design agencies.

This paper aims to review previous studies on how organizations, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), adopt digital information and technology, especially on the drivers and the outcomes of the adoption itself.

The present study follows a literature review design. Previous studies that examine SMEs’ digital information and technology adoption are taken into account in building the conclusion.

The review reveals that digital information and technology that is used for marketing-related position allows SMEs to be more competitive. In general, there are three main theories that have been used to understand the adoption process (i.e. diffusion of innovation theory, technology-organization-environment framework and institutional theory). These theories should be used in conjunction with each other to better explain the adoption process. Additionally, there are three characteristics (i.e. innovation, firm and environmental) that are related to the risks and barriers of the adoption process.

This theoretical review is among the few that put forward the findings reported in research articles on the digital information and technology adoption process within SMEs. Moreover, this paper summarizes the issues (i.e. drivers, outcomes, risks and barriers) related to the adoption process.

Much of the current understanding of the effectiveness of Web sites is anecdotal and contained in case studies. Building on a review of these case studies, this study has two objectives: to evaluate systematically the relevance of the antecedents for which anecdotal evidence is available, and to determine the relative importance of these to uncover factors that are crucial for successful Web sites. Measures performance of Web sites in terms of the number of visitors and the managerial satisfaction with the site. The results indicate that both performance indicators refer to different dimensions of Web site performance and that they are influenced by different antecedents. The results show that most antecedents identified in literature indeed somehow influence the performance of Web sites. Multivariate analyses indicate that customization of the Web site is an important determinant of both Web performance indicators. Evidence was also found that a too strong focus on short‐term financial benefits has a negative impact on Web site satisfaction. Extensive sites tend to attract more visitors, while building sites merely for learning related goals tend to decrease the number of visitors.