Multinational Companies (MNCs) very often manufacture in a number of different countries. The management of these international factory networks has received very little direct attention from operations management specialists either in terms of research findings or the development of conceptual...

Current approaches that position human capital as central to value generation in knowledge-based industries obscure the importance of the relational nature of knowledge production. That is, separable and embodied forms of capital are interdependent in value creation and capture processes. We...

This paper draws together four related strands of theory to address the processes of corporate value creation. Specifically, contributions from resource-based theory, dynamic capabilities, corporate strategy and Mintzberg's structure theory have been combined to derive four congruent...

This paper reports on a study which examined firstly the extent to which managers from the same corporation shared similar perceptions of corporate strategy, secondly, the extent of consensus across the corporations and finally the extent of consensus about different rationales for corporate...

Michael Porter's four generic strategies for achieving competitive advantage can be condensed into two - low cost leadership and differentiation. David Faulkner and Cliff Bowman argue that, unlike Porter, it is false to choose between these two orientations. Only the low cost strategy with...

Following a review of recent trends and developments in competitive strategy, the competitive environment of companies, and links with the organisational structure of firms, Cliff Bowman and Simon Carter consider a case study of Baxi Heating in the UK, a company which has recently undergone...

One of the reasons why the resource-based view is difficult to operationalize derives from a lack of clarity about what 'valuable' means. In this paper we explore the impediments to arriving at a monetary valuation of a resource, and we suggest how resources could be identified within a firm,...

Recent developments in the management of strategy have advocated greater attention to managerial debate and involvement, and the surfacing of managerial assumptions about strategy. This paper illustrates an approach to surfacing and mapping managerial assumptions about competitive strategy,...

In this paper we suggest that strategic change should be considered from an individual manager perspective. We believe that change can only take place in organisations if managers behave differently, if they engage in non-routine activities. We argue that managers engage in change activities if...