Describes the Merlin Exercise and its use by the authors integrating two models of the future ‐ “forecasted” and “invented” – to educate management in the development of a strategic intent and in implementing such an intent.

Process redesign is not always successful and is almost always accompanied by pain or at least unpleasant side effects. Many companies have undertaken reengineering efforts only to abandon them with little or no positive results. As important as it is to understand how to reengineer, it is...

In today's turbulent environment, customers are playing a more important role in competition, which can be reflected by customers as co‐producer, value co‐producer, or co‐developer of knowledge and competencies, etc. Accordingly, business priority should be given to what customers really...

Using a sample of small, regional professional service firms, this paper investigates relationships between firm performance and aspects of strategic planning. Constructs measuring vision, mission, latent abilities, competitor orientation and market orientation are identified using exploratory...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the semantics of the language of management in order to seek clarification of the terminology and how it is used and misused in the strategy literature. Design/methodology/approach – An extensive review of the literature was undertaken....

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to justify the research programme and describe the conclusions. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a summary of the aims and results of the research published in two special issues of Journal of Management Development . It argues that there are...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a coherent model for small business principals to understand the strategic process and to be able to create and implement strategy for their own business. Design/methodology/approach – Action research (AR) was undertaken to develop a system...

Purpose – To implement the concepts developed in this action research (AR) programme in a single company and monitor the results. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper the ideas canvassed in earlier papers regarding the inductive frame and the deductive frame are applied to a single...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the nature and practice of strategic planning in two different environmental contexts, the UK and Turkey. Design/methodology/approach – Employing a structured mail questionnaire, the study collected data from a sample of UK and...