Search

Introduction Given the social, economic, environmental and internal developments of universities, the necessity for medical universities to move to being third-generation universities has been demonstrated. These universities, along with the requirements of entrepreneurship and commercialization of research, are in need of structural requirements. This study was conducted with the aim to identify and introduce the structural requirements of medical sciences universities in Iran in the transition to the third-generation universities. Materials and methods This study was a qualitative approach using a conventional content analysis method. The contributors comprised 16 faculty members working in medical universities in Iran who were purposefully recruited and interviewed face to face in semi-structured interviews between October 2018 and March 2019. Results Two wide classifications containing macro-structural requirements (institutional requirements) and micro-structural requirements (organizational requirements) were developed. Institutional requirements included four subcategories including redefining the university as a holding of knowledge business units, redefining academic units as a strategic business unit (SBU) which refer to the mission of the universities and eliminate bureaucracy, independence, and 'Competition in recruitment and contracts' which refer to the administrative requirements of the universities. The organizational requirements included units and offices, centers, and parks that are grouped because of similarities in internal processes. Conclusion Medical universities need structural requirements to move to third-generation universities and improve infrastructure. These requirements, which develop in a spiral over time, must be appropriate and tailored to the capacity of each university.

Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to fill the existing gap in international relationship marketing (IRM) literature by developing and testing empirically a comprehensive conceptual model of firms’ relationship with their marketing channels in export markets. Whereas concepts such as power, conflicts, trust, commitment, and communication have been shown to be related to the economic success of interfirm cooperation in general and buyer–seller relations in particular, the need for a comprehensive model is often expressed in the literature.Methodology/approach: The authors combine commitment-trust theory with resource-based and knowledge-based view perspectives to develop a new comprehensive conceptual model of firms’ relationship with their marketing channels in export markets. Data from 104 strategic business units in Israel was used to test the model empirically.Findings: Notably, the model tested explained a higher percentage of the variance in performance. The findings suggest that nonco...

This mixed-methods study responds to the need for empirical studies of innovation in the experience industry context. A multisource approach was used to gather data from 189 attractions across the United States. The relationships between strategic leadership practices and various innovation output dimensions were examined at the organization level. Qualitative data in the form of innovation output examples complemented the quantitative results. Findings provide a snapshot of innovation in the attractions industry and reveal some of the “tensions” of leading innovation in organizations whose main economic offering is an experience. A list of context-specific leadership practices and innovation activities provide a starting point for self-assessment and integration of experience-economy concepts at the business unit level.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how factors such as cultures, genders, education, working experience or financial situation of the company influence the effectiveness of transformational leaders. By using transformational leadership (TL) sand cone model, together with an analytic hierarchy process-based questionnaire and TL indexes as well as a descriptive research approach, we measure the TL effectiveness for 86 middle managers located in 21 countries at the same company. We find that highly educated leaders, female leaders or leaders in a business unit with stable financial status were more effective (higher TL index) than the leaders in the opposite counterparts. Surprisingly, senior leaders and leaders of multicultural teams seem to be less effective (lower TL index) than fresh leaders who recently (within 1–5 years) joined the company. The implications of the findings for both theory and practice as well as directions for further studies are also discussed.

To explore group-based identities and collective sensemaking in the context of a cross-border alliance, a qualitative exploratory study was initiated. The emphasis was on interpretation of issues, within and around an interfirm partnership and the alliance process, perceived by those involved as important. The BP and Statoil strategic alliance, formed to carry out joint oil and gas exploration and development in Nigeria, Vietnam and Azerbaijan/Kazakhstan, provided 52 interviews with staff from both partner headquarters and team members from the three projects. By studying an alliance process from multiple perspectives, it was possible to identify differences in sensemaking across different groups of employees. The organizational level (the alliance business unit level and the alliance team level) proved to be more important for shared sensemaking of the alliance process than group identities, such as nationalities, companies or locations. The alliance business unit level had been tasked with strategically...

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) supports sustained competitive advantage through the continuous exploration and exploitation of new sources of knowledge. With an emphasis on combining knowledge in new configurations, strategic human resource management (HRM) activities are core to these entrepreneurial endeavours. We explore how strategic HRM activities may facilitate and impede CE through a rich, qualitative case study of three local entities within a business unit of a large multinational enterprise facing business stagnation and low levels of corporate entrepreneurship. Responding to a call for more empirical research that probes the subtle and complex interactions between HRM activities and other organisational factors affecting CE, we identify a configuration of inter-dependent factors that mutually reinforce each other and sustain inertia in corporate entrepreneurship. We also make two novel contributions to theory by (1) elaborating the links between organisational process-orientation, strategic HRM and CE; and (2) refining to our current understanding of human competencies for CE.

This conceptual review of global performance management (GPM) focuses on how individual performance results are aggregated in multinational enterprises. The authors propose a four-level vertical framework of the uses, metrics, systems and processes at the (1) individual, (2) local–regional, (3) strategic business unit and (4) global (corporate) levels. Based on a review of limited extant empirical literature and interviews with selected European human resource planning practitioners, the authors present a four-stage transformation framework. Individual GPM results are envisioned to be transformed via four processes, described as (1) ‘funneling’ of selective individuals to the attention of actors at the next vertical level in the firm, (2) ‘summation’ of individual performance metrics to the next vertical level, (3) ‘conversion’ of individual metrics into a different form of metric altogether before being forwarded to the next vertical level and (4) ‘sharpening’ or recalibration of macro-level firm strateg...

To contribute to the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) literature, this study investigates how business unit growth relates to environmental risks and rewards (i.e., environmental dynamism and market growth rate) and three facets of entrepreneurial proclivity (i.e., innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness). The authors find that perceived environmental dynamism has a direct and positive influence on strategic business units' innovativeness and proactiveness. Moreover, this study explores the interplay between the risk and reward facets of the market environment and reveals that firms are most likely to adopt EM strategies in a high-growth, highly dynamic business environment. The results also show that whereas the industry growth rate promotes a firm's market expansion, but not market sustention, the firm's innovativeness and proactiveness positively influence both market expansion and sustention.

In this paper, we empirically test the theoretical model underlying the Toyota Way (TW), based on data obtained from Toyota’s logistics, sales and marketing functions across 27 countries. TW is the result of Toyota attempting to codify its culture to the global community. Using structural equation modelling techniques we show that the TW-associated measures challenge, kaizen, genchi genbutsu, respect and teamwork do adequately operationally define the TW; the first three measures corresponding to the construct ‘process improvement’ and the final two measures corresponding to the construct ‘people development’. Empirically, people development is found to have no direct effect on how the TW is deployed across a business unit. However, people development is found to be indirectly related to TW deployment through the mediating effect of process improvement. Our study provides quantitative evidence that while the intangible aspects of the TW (modelled as people development) may not directly relate to the resul...

Nonplatonic workplace romances (WR) are common in contemporary organizations. Academic research, although sparse, has pointed to both positive and negative outcomes associated with these relationships. Less attention has been placed on others (i.e., coworkers) perceptions of WR. Prior studies have acknowledged the lack of research examining how coworkers learn of WR. Using qualitative methods, we uncovered two themes concerning how coworkers described WR disclosures and their subsequent reactions, 1) a personal disclosure paired with a positive reaction and 2) an impersonal disclosure paired with a negative reaction. Coworkers' reactions to workplace romances were also influenced by several other factors including the actors involved in the romance, the coworkers' personal views on workplace romances, and the culture of the organization/business unit. These findings are discussed along with theoretical and practical implications.

Past studies examining how the match between organization and community racial/ethnic proportions influences performance have relied on the social categorization perspective on diversity, but have not offered strong significant results. However, the information and decision-making perspective on diversity suggests that organizational diversity fit based on variety, rather than a match of demographic proportions, leads to greater performance. This study considered both perspectives to test how both racial/ethnic proportions matching and diversity fit influence business unit financial performance. This was tested on a sample of 51 business units of a restaurant chain in the USA. The results show that business unit diversity was associated with higher performance in diverse communities but not in homogeneous communities. This suggests that racial/ethnic diversity is a valuable human resource conducive to greater performance but this is contingent upon community diversity. Implications for organizational dive...

The existing literature affirms an improved payoff in business performance when a business unit displays a high degree of market orientation (MO). However, the literature is still scarce in providing market managers a systematic and effective mechanism for implementing and improving market orientation. In this paper, we propose a framework based on the theory of constraints (TOC) as a mechanism to achieve an optimal degree of market orientation and thereby accomplish the ultimate goal of maximising business (financial, employees and customers-related) outcomes. We discuss how three dimensions – methodology, measures and mindset – of the framework relate to market orientation using a well-known TOC case study. Finally, we conclude our paper with research directions for further strengthening the relationship between MO and TOC and making market orientation truly a firm-wide endeavour as intended and acknowledged in the marketing literature. This paper demonstrates that TOC (1) methodology ensures that manag...

This paper synthesizes marketing and entrepreneurship literature and postulates the complementary nature of a customer orientation with that of an entrepreneurial orientation, then explores their relationships with product innovation and performance. A path analysis was used to test the hypotheses based on data collected from a sample of 159 strategic business units in 15 different industries. The results show that an entrepreneurial orientation does not have a relationship with product innovation unless it is coupled with the complementary effect of a customer orientation. This study also indicates that product innovation mediates this complementary effect on new product and firm performance. In addition, a customer orientation is found to exert a direct positive effect on both new product and firm performances. Although most hypotheses were supported, two out of five were not. As such, the findings present valuable practical insights as well as interesting contributions to the theoretical advancements i...

Little is known about the uptake of strategic marketing planning in golf clubs. Thus, based on a sample of 307 Australian, New Zealand and British golf clubs, this study examines the application of the normative model of strategic marketing planning and its associated marketing practices to golf club administration. Using information derived from golf club managers/secretaries, it investigates both the extent to which strategic marketing practices have been adopted as well as their contribution to golf organisation business performance. The results are highly supportive of the conventional wisdom as to the ingredients of strategic marketing success. Compared with their lower performing counterparts, the higher performing golf clubs are clearly more active in executing a wide range of strategic marketing practices. However, the results also indicate that there is much scope for golf clubs to do more and better strategic marketing. In the face of a challenging operating environment golf club manage...

Since 2006, when AREVA mandated its Logistics Business Unit to handle ‘Transport Risk Management’, the Unit has executed or has, at least, ensured the proper management of shipments of radioactive material, which involve particular risks. This mission is fully complementary to the strict implementation of national and international regulations regarding the safety of radioactive material transport. Taking these regulations as a starting point, the AREVA Transport Risk Management Initiative develops general principles of risk management appropriate to operations that are sensitive by nature. By applying the Transport Risk Management Initiative to the shipment of radioactive materials, AREVA has widened the precautionary principle beyond the field of safety and radioprotection: accomplishing safe transport necessarily implies the identification and management of all risks inherent in these operations (safety, physical protection, media pressure, geopolitics, etc.). The guiding principles currently i...

Robust design (RD) has a large potential to contribute to product and process improvements providing increased customer value. However, it has shown to be difficult to obtain these benefits in practice. This study aims to evaluate and learn from an initial approach to introducing RD within the Volvo Group. It is based on three pilot cases within the product development organisation of a business unit. Data were collected through formal interviews and informal dialogues with pilot participants, supplemented by existing documentation of the pilot cases. The main finding was that a RD initiative, characterised by ‘tool-pushing’ and with a predefined solution introduced by an external consultant, faced many obstacles and could not create a sustainable result. Instead, it was found that there is a need to involve engineers and create a learning culture in which RD principles can become a natural part of work practices. This study identified six obstacles to the success of the initiative, which were perceived as learning points for a broader application of RD at the company. This underscores that RD initiatives can also be hampered by similar types of obstacles that have been identified in research on other change processes.

This paper is concerned with the design of a Bayesian network structure that is suitable for operational risk modelling. The model's structure is designed specifically from the perspective of a business unit operational risk manager whose role is to measure, record, predict, communicate, analyse and control operational risk within their unit. The problem domain modelled is a functioning structured finance operations unit within a major Australian bank. The network model design incorporates a number of existing human factor frameworks to account for human error and operational risk events within the domain. The design also supports a modular structure, allowing for the inclusion of many operational loss event types, making it adaptable to different operational risk environments.

The traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models treat a decision making unit (DMU) as a “black box”, which is often criticized for not considering the inner production mechanism of a production system. The network DEA models developed to overcome this deficiency by considering the internal structure of a DMU have recently gained popularity. The inner data, however, are not generally available for real application purposes. This paper, on one hand, addresses the problem with the traditional DEA for not considering the inner structure and, on the other, with the network models for missing inner data in parallel production settings. Procedures built on managerial information of production processes, as characterized by the Pareto principle, are presented that consider the inner production mechanism as well as the data availability in a reliable way. Firstly, the production activities of a DMU are classified into a core business unit (CBU) and a non-core business unit (NCBU). Secondly, the int...

In Hong Kong, over half of the Protestant churches are located in the upper-floor units in commercial and residential buildings. Because of their physical locations, these churches are sometimes dubbed ‘upper-floor churches’. Unlike those that occupy stand-alone religious buildings or dwell in church-run schools and social service centres, these are often invisible in the landscapes of the city. Through analysis of a case study, this paper aims to explore the spatial practices that a Protestant community has adopted in acquiring, representing, and ritualising a business unit in a residential high-rise for building up their church. Our analysis of the case study shows that in a metropolis like contemporary Hong Kong, the construction of sacred space is full of tensions between utilitarian calculations and concerns of human relations and religious values. While the congregation had been very creative in transforming a commercial unit into a religious site, it did not show much awareness of the oppressive po...

Customers want the packaging to be more capacious, to accommodate ever hotter materials, to reduce dose rates, to have quicker approvals, not to mention to come in cheaper. On the other hand, safety authorities want increased safety, thorough justifications, and essentially no new concepts. To make ends meet, the key is innovation on all fronts. AREVA’s Logistics Business Unit has introduced a new concept, internally known as the ID school. It is a unique combination of innovation tools and methods. It blends an all-round technological watch, a system for collecting internal ideas, an extensive R&D program, state-of-the-art research and problem-solving software, a network of experts, an array of innovation methods and dedicated facilities that promote an innovative spirit. These tools apply to engineering, freight forwarding, organisation… and favour both individual initiative and teamwork. This paper describes each of these aspects, stressing the successes and expected benefits to come. It discus...

Productivity is generally considered to be the efficient utilisation of organisational resources and is measured in terms of the efficiency of a worker, company or nation. Focusing on efficiency alone, however, can be harmful to the organisation's long-term success and competitiveness. The full benefits of productivity improvement measures are realised when productivity is examined from two perspectives: operational efficiency (output/input) of an individual worker or a business unit as well as performance (effectiveness) with regard to end user or customer satisfaction. Over the years, corporations have adopted new technology to integrate business activities in order to achieve both effectiveness and efficiency in their operations. In recent years, many firms have invested in enterprise resource planning (ERP) in order to integrate all business activities into a uniform system. The implementation of ERP enables the firm to reduce the transaction costs of the business and improve its productivity, customer satisfaction and profitability.

This paper investigates the tightness of budgetary control over projects in a large systems development multinational. This represents a case of extreme information systems development (ISD) failure en masse, where all but two of the 22 projects in a business unit went over budget, causing senior executives to refocus their strategic priorities and cancel all current and potential projects that followed. This study focuses specifically on the two best performing (12 and 4% under budget) and worst performing (223 and 320% over budget) of these projects. Using a framework drawn from control systems theory, this study examines the ‘tightness’ of budgetary control exerted over each project, and what was done or could have been done to avert such failure. The study then identifies a set of emerging factors affecting tight budgetary control in ISD.

This article analyses the effects of total quality management (TQM) in an organisational context. In our analysis we study how the experience (or age or application time) of TQM and the depth (level of self-assessing scores of the business unit) of TQM affect the performance of the unit measured with customer satisfaction, profitability and productivity. Our unique research setting was based on longitudinal data from a global integrated process products company. The results of our analysis indicated that TQM does have an effect on all three types of performance measured. However, there was variation in whether the effects come from the experience of TQM or its implementation. As the results of this study are based on one Case Company, the utilisation of the results as such may be somewhat limited.

Despite the high level of interest in how organizational structures facilitate service orientation in capital goods manufacturing companies, researchers have neglected this field. This article explores 4 different organizational approaches contributing to service orientation: (a) product strategic business unit (SBU), (b) product–service SBU, (c) service–product SBU, and (d) service SBU and product SBU. Each organizational approach reflects a unique degree of service orientation that leads to different levels of performance outcome. The description of organizational approaches enlightens the discussion of integration and the separation of product and service business. Complementary to existing research, this article clarifies whether companies should integrate or separate service and product functions in order to achieve service orientation.

International campuses provide social forums to enhance students’ intercultural competence, skills and confidence. Yet, despite multiple opportunities for social contact, the most typical pattern is one of minimal interaction between students from different cultural backgrounds. This study examined students’ attitudes towards culturally mixed group work in the natural setting of an actual group project. More specifically, it investigated the attitudes towards culturally mixed group work held by students in different years of undergraduate study, the relationship of attitudes to experience with multiple languages (as multiple cultures), whether attitudes are related to observed behaviour, and how attitudes change over the course of participation in a diverse or non‐diverse group. The study involved matched questionnaire data from 233 students enrolled in a first, second or third year business unit that included a semester‐long group project. The study provides support for the value of promoting culturally ...

Holding companies (HCs) differ in their nature and behavior from other types of companies. Their role is to support, control and budget their subsidiaries. In general, HCs do not compete directly with one another, as it is difficult to find two HCs with the same product and service portfolios. Competition occurs instead at the subsidiary level against companies, which may or may not be part of other HCs, in overlapping markets with similar products and services. This concept of competition, which differs from that of typical commercial companies, is central to the development of HC strategies for supporting and controlling their subsidiaries. Information Systems Strategic Planning (ISSP) attempts to align information systems strategy with business strategy by directing the investment in information systems so as to satisfy strategic goals. Traditionally, ISSP methodologies have addressed the definition of information systems for Strategic Business Units (SBU). This research demonstrates, using a case study of an Iranian Managerial Holding Company, how ISSP can be applied instead to Strategic Business Processes (SBP). It illustrates how to define Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Information System Needs (ISN) on Strategic Processes instead of Strategic Units. Moreover, this study combines the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) with a statistical questionnaire survey to define strategic processes.

OVERVIEW:Developing a roadmap within a single product line or a single autonomous business unit is relatively straightforward. A substantial body of literature exists on the process of generating roadmaps at the product, group or business-unit level. However, additional factors need to be considered when extending roadmapping to an integrated view of several highly autonomous business units. The customer base, the rate of product turnover, and the planning horizon will vary across business units. The architecture of the integrated roadmaps and the model for supporting the process should fit the structure and organization of the company. Additional issues also can be anticipated in areas including the scope of roadmapping, the level of detail in the roadmaps, the security of the roadmap information, and the use of a standard taxonomy to integrate information from diverse organizations.

Here's a process for removing some of the uncertainty surrounding breakthrough innovation projects in large companies. OVERVIEW: Radical innovation in large firms is a risky endeavor, exacerbated by high levels of uncertainty and long cycle times. Moreover, management lacks evaluation tools that are appropriate for the degree of ambiguity of the information available from these types of projects. Add to this the difficulties of managing in the context of the large firm where many processes are tuned toward repetition and continuous improvement, and it becomes clear that commercialization of radical innovation (RI) is a difficult proposition at best. Portfolio managers will almost invariably build a team, learn appropriate processes, clarify their mandate within the company, generate initial projects, and begin to enrich their portfolios, only to have their efforts cancelled out due to an unsatisfactory financial return. The "what have you done for me lately?" question plagues these groups, and ends up costing the company investment of resources in opportunities that are never leveraged. Having an evaluation tool to assess the relative values of projects within the context of the entire radical innovation portfolio, and to track changes in the relative value of the portfolio over time, can help RI portfolio managers articulate their contribution to the company's growth strategy and can aid in innovation strategy development. KEY CONCEPTS: radical innovation, portfolio evaluation, real options. It is truly amazing to observe the growth in management sophistication regarding breakthrough or radical innovation (RI) over the past ten years. Firms that once experienced RI only by happenstance, through the perseverance of strong champions protected from organizational rules by their patrons in senior management, have now developed management systems for encouraging RI. These groups oversee portfolios of potential radical innovations, and are increasingly faced with portfolio-level issues of diversification, pacing, balance, and valuation. What was once considered the exception has become the new frontier of management attention. Indeed, empirical research has established that large firms that successfully engage in radical innovation commercialization efforts are more successful financially than those that do not (1-3). This article presents the principal results of Industrial Research Institute-sponsored empirical research concerning evaluation of a portfolio of potential breakthrough innovations. The research covers 12 years in three phases at more than 30 large American companies that have proclaimed their intention to achieve repeatable breakthrough innovation as a corporate capability. Further details concerning the study and participating companies are provided in a later section. See also (4) for results concerning organizational structures. Radical innovation hubs, or groups responsible for managing these portfolios, continue to be subject to intense scrutiny, especially in times of limited capacity or senior leadership changeover. A company's capacity to invest in potential breakthrough innovations can be limited in many ways. Potentially ruinous litigation proceedings, extraordinary cost overruns on another innovation, collapse of a principal market due to massive overcapacity resulting in potentially fatal financial difficulties, rapid acceptance of a new technological product which results in the dramatic decline of an incumbent product again resulting in severe financial difficulties, or the strategic decision to sell a profitable business unit a year or so into the future are just a small number of events that can limit or even eliminate capacity. Historically, the average life expectancy of a radical innovation hub has been about four years (5), although our research leads us to believe that average life spans are lengthening, especially for those companies going through their second or third version of a hub. …

manufacturing companies? The unit of analysis was a Strategic Business Unit (SBU) in both German and Swiss machinery and equipment manufacturing companies. The data collection is based on a broad survey among 212 firms. The hypothesized model was estimated by means of structural equation modeling techniques. he results suggest that the positive associations of the external environment and orientation of the business strategy towards CSS are supported in erms of significance and size of effect. The orientation of the business strategy towards SS is also positively related with organization of development activities, service manager decision-making authority, and creation of an innovation culture in the service organization. Furthermore, the overall profitability is influenced positively by these three factors of organizational design.

Purpose - To develop and test a conceptual model of four dimensions related to mid-level marketing managers' (MLMMs) locus-of-control and to model these against MLMMs' role performance. Design/methodology/approach - Focuses on the detailed processes and practices of managers which embody the day-to-day activities within the firm and which correspond to strategy execution, using the personality concept of locus-of-control to explain the factors that influence MLMMs' effectiveness in executing strategies, the data sample consisting of 115 business-to-business service-based strategic business units based in Europe. Findings - In contrast to role clarity and role significance, high role self-determination and role commitment are positive and significant in their relationship with role performance in ineffective product-market strategy execution environments but when considering effective product-market strategy execution contexts, both role clarity and role significance of the MLMM role are significantly positive in explaining role performance while role self-determination and role commitment are not. Finds that MLMMs who course their expectancies from external sources are better placed to contribute to the firm in terms of executing strategy than those who are purely internally driven. Also demonstrates empirical support for the notion that role clarity and role significance are key external drivers of MLMMs' performance in firms that execute their product market strategies effectively and that MLMMs who exhibit an internal locus-of-control in explaining their role performance tend to prevail in firms achieving low levels of strategy. Research limitations/implications - Argues the need for more detailed and comprehensive conceptual models related to strategy execution due to the very fragmented research to date, for a managerial-level view of execution to provide valuable insights and for more research on the influence of psychological phenomena in determining the nature of execution by MLMMs. Practical implications - For effective strategy execution, argues that organizational members responsible for this should be able to meet deadlines, achieve intended goals and feel that both the methods and outcomes are acceptable and that MLMMs should exhibit external loci characteristics in order to fulfil their role performance. Asserts that firms should foster environments in which individuals are given clear instructions as to what is required of them and encouraged to feel valued and important in the work they do. Originality/value - Contributes to our understanding of strategy execution by taking a micro perspective on strategy and concludes that by organizing strategic decision making around the principles of locus-of-control, firms may greatly enhance their strategic capability, since external loci factors seem to contribute directly to effective strategy execution.

In this reply to James Narus, James Anderson and Earl Honeycutt (NAH) we elaborate on the journey, a 25-year process, in teaching Business Marketing at Ivey. We further discuss the goal to elevate Business Marketing knowledge in the core of the program, rather than to build a strong specialization in the area. Inspired by NAH's reply, we then comment on the root causes of lack of progress at some schools in bringing more Business Marketing into master's programs, and we address the question, “What about those schools where the characteristics are different from Ivey, i.e., how far can our ideas be generalized?”

The authors of this article and their colleagues at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario are to be commended not only for this well-crafted article but also for their efforts to elevate and incorporate essential knowledge of business marketing into the fabric of their school's master's program. The provocative argument that the authors make is that business marketing behaviors, concepts and topics should not be the focus of just one elective course but that they should serve as a foundation of a school's entire master's program. According to the authors, that foundation can be built around four pillars or business marketing essentials-organizational buyer behavior, relationship marketing, customer value, and business markets. In this article, they present not only a process and guidelines for imbedding these pillars into a master's program but also recommend specific topics and cases for various master's level courses. For these reasons, this article is a “must...

In response to the challenge issued by Narus and Anderson (1998) to rethink the role of business marketing in an MBA curriculum, we propose the rationale, methodology, and philosophy for integratin...

"Idea generation is everyone's job and no one's responsibility," wrote Robert Cooper in describing how no one individual in a company or business unit is specifically in charge of idea generation, and often, when new ideas surface, no action is taken (1). This lack of action could be due to the absence of a process to evaluate the worthiness of one idea compared to others or, more often than not, to the difficulty of finding the right home for the idea. One way of overcoming this problem is by using an idea management system. However, the classical idea management system as described in many books on innovation is little more than a suggestion box (2,3). Employees are encouraged to submit any idea that comes to mind. Typically, such programs don't get a lot of ideas after the initial marketing phase is over; moreover, the ideas that are submitted are often unfocused and hard to process and are rarely developed or funded. As a result, the process of extracting value from employees' ideas is often inefficient and random. Rather than leave ideas to chance, Bayer MaterialScience has developed an "active" process that empowers its employees to be innovative and creative by sharing their ideas for specific focused business needs using a Web-based idea management tool named Idea Works. The Event Approach Ideas are only as good as your ability to make them happen.-John Galt, CEO of Idon Resources. In 2003, a team co-led by two of us (Raymond Yourd and Valerie Patrick), with the Future Business group at Bayer MaterialScience, benchmarked idea management practices of several companies and evaluated a number of vendors offering idea management software. After considering building custom software, the team chose the idea management application called Idea Central by Imaginatik (4). The Imaginatik software is not simply a suggestion box; instead, it is designed to run focused "events." An event is a defined problem or need around which ideas are captured. These events are posted on the Web portal, and participants can enter their ideas within the event page. This approach solves several problems inherent in a passive "suggestion box" system. By definition, the ideas are focused because they have been generated to solve a specific problem. Additionally, they already have a home, which is the business unit that had the problem and sponsored the event. After deliberating the pros and cons of event-based versus passive suggestion box idea systems, the Bayer team was convinced that this "active" approach was the best, and rolled out their own Idea Central portal, christened Idea Works, in the summer of 2003. Today, Idea Works is a global tool used at Bayer MaterialScience in North America and Germany and will soon be launched in Asia as well. Anatomy of an Event In our experience, there are many types of events that can be addressed by an "active" idea management system. Examples at Bayer MaterialScience include: * Customer needs requiring technical solutions. * New technologies looking for a new application. * New applications of old products. * New products for old applications. * Process improvement. * New market strategies. * Continuous improvement and more. Employees are regularly invited to an event by an e-mail providing them with a special Web link to an event Web page like that on this page. Their activities in the portal are rewarded with feedback e-mail replies. This allows the idea submitter to be acknowledged immediately for his or her input. Each event has an assigned sponsor and a dedicated team to evaluate ideas and move the best ones forward, while keeping the idea submitter informed. All events are time-bound, soliciting ideas for no longer than two to four weeks. Success Stories The idea we're looking for is never beyond our reach.-Earl Nightingale, author, radio host and philosopher. …

In recent years human resource (HR) managers have been encouraged to play a more strategic role in their organizations, especially in the case of extensive organizational change processes such as international mergers and acquisitions (IM&As). Today this requirement is even more acute since the past decade has been characterized by enormous growth in IM&As. In addition, it has been argued that the challenge in making M&As work is the management of people. In a case of IM&As the role of HR managers is very demanding because they needs to integrate HR practices and, moreover, perform two other roles simultaneously: a strategic role for company-wide integration and a support role for business unit transaction. Considering the importance of human resource management (HRM) in IM&As, it is surprising how little is known about the role and activities of HR managers in these processes. This study addresses the existing research gap by investigating the role of HR managers in the IM&A process. Based on semi-struct...

Over the past two decades, hospitality strategy researchers have made several attempts to develop models aimed at capturing the competitive strategies of hospitality firms. These efforts, although comprehensive in their own respect, were unable to verify the applicability of models proposed by Porter (1980) and Miles and Snow (1978) to the hospitality industry. The objective of this article is to develop a multidimensional causal model for the lodging industry, primarily using Porter (1980, 1985), that addresses the complexity and multivariate nature of relationships making up the strategy construct. This model, once tested, will provide lodging strategic business unit managers an overall strategic orientation as well as a resource allocation decision framework for their firms.

Research with Industrial Research Institute member companies reveals what it takes to make money from licensing while protecting the core of the business. OVERVIEW: Intellectual assets are fundamental to the operation of technology-intensive firms. Companies skilled at managing intellectual property as a business strategy protect the core of the business while licensing IP to generate a return on investment. Developing a reasonable and defensible valuation model is key to the success of any intellectual asset management program. A previous article described how leading firms strategically organize their intellectual asset portfolios (RTM, Jan.-Feb. 2005). This article describes the valuation of IP, specific methods for extracting value from the IP portfolio, organizing for out-licensing technology, and the career opportunities for licensing professionals. KEY CONCEPTS: intellectual asset management, strategy, technology valuation. The organization of intellectual asset (IA) management, especially the value-extraction function, is crucial to the success of technology-intensive firms, from the strategic business unit level up to the corporation as a whole. That's why, for example: * Philips Electronics employs 300 intellectual-asset professionals in 23 offices worldwide to maximize the value of its 100,000 patents. * IBM generates over $1.5 billion annually (at a 90 percent margin) from out-licensing technology. * The majority of Fortune 1,000 firms are either actively out-licensing technology or developing programs to do so over the next 12 months. This level of activity demands that managers understand the pitfalls as well as the opportunities in value extraction in order to maximize the value of their IA portfolios. This second of two articles describes specific challenges managers face as they operationalize the valueextraction function. To understand how firms successfully extract value from their IA portfolios, discussions and interviews were conducted with over 70 representatives of Industrial Research Institute member companies. Participants represented a cross-section of industry sectors including consumer products, life sciences, oil & gas, chemicals, pulp & paper, control systems, defense/aerospace, computer hardware and software, and electronics. Each participant was selected because of their own and their organization's extensive experience in licensing and technology commercialization. The results of this study fall into two general areas: how to strategically organize assets, and specific methods for extracting value. The first area was addressed in our previous article (7), while this second paper focuses on specific issues firms face when organizing and executing a licensing program. The issues in this second area are addressed in four major categories: * Valuation of IP. * Extracting value. * Organizing for out-licensing technology. * Career paths for licensing professionals. Valuation of Intellectual Property Developing a reasonable and defensible valuation model is key to the success of any Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) program. A valuation model allows each party to a potential agreement to understand its financial aspects and discuss them rationally. Absent this understanding, managers rely on brute force negotiating techniques, cash-flow models that meet corporate needs but are disconnected from the specific value of the technology, marketplace demands, or simple rules of thumb that fail to account for the challenges of developing a specific technology, a new market, an industry application, or identifying the appropriate fields of use for the agreement. Regrettably, the outcome of these methods is disappointing. Many agreements that should have been profitable to the parties are never realized because they cannot agree upon mutually acceptable terms and conditions. Valuing intangible assets is difficult and requires the support of experienced and competent financial counsel. …

This exploratory study focused on the information-gathering behaviour of line managers within a specific business context. The context is a for-profit business unit within a major USA-based corporation. It is proposed that managers are a unique information user group and that managers tend to seek and accumulate information that is not only related, but may also be unrelated, to their role in the organization. This tendency to accumulate information enables managers to navigate their environment and to avoid the formal information search process when information solutions are needed. Three hypotheses were tested comparing line managers to non-managers. The results offer quantitative evidence as to the difference in user behaviour between the two groups. Future research planned and currently under way takes the results of this study and applies the methodology of the qualitative paradigm so these findings can be more fully understood.

The Journal of Business to Business Marketing, an important thematic journal within the field of marketing, serves as a vital venue for both academicians and practitioners interested in business-to-business marketing phenomena. Articles cover a broad spectrum of topics related to business marketing management. A subject-based listing classifies these articles into 16 categories according to their key research issues. Those categories are: Advertising and Communication, Brand Management, Buyer-Seller Dyad and Relationships, Channels, Customer Relationships, Education, International Issues, Literature Reviews, Methodology, Networks and Strategic Alliances, Organizational Buying Behavior, Pricing and Value, Product Development, Segmentation, Selling and Salesforce Management, Technology. After the subject listing, titles and abstracts of all articles appearing in the first ten volumes of JBBM are listed in volume/issue order. We hope that this index will provide a useful tool for academicians and pr...

With the exception of Argos, catalogue showroom retailing has not been a major success in Europe. Argos, founded in 1973 by the Green Shield stamp entrepreneur, Richard Tompkins, has grown to be one of Britain's leading retailers. Its corporate history, with two periods of independence and two periods as a business unit in a conglomerate, is of interest. Its innovativeness, through its catalogue development and format experimentation, makes Argos important to our understanding of retail change. The catalogues themselves are essential social and retailing history documents. Now part of GUS plc, Argos has to face the challenge and opportunities of the Internet. With experience of the catalogue as an intervening element in the customer purchase process, Argos has further potential as a multichannel retailer.

In recent decades, companies have adopted management philosophies such as Just-In-Time (JIT) and Theory of Constraints (TOC) in an effort to improve productivity and, thus, financial performance. This paper describes the use of a comprehensive set of criteria to examine empirically changes in business unit performance, over 3 years, as reported by firms adopting these management philosophies as well as by those using a traditional manufacturing approach. We compare the performance and the change in performance of companies reporting TOC adoption, those reporting JIT adoption, those reporting to have adopted both, and those reporting to have adopted neither (traditional manufacturing). Results indicate that the greatest performance and improvement in performance accrued to adopters of TOC. JIT did not have superior performance or superior change in performance when compared with traditional manufacturing. Change in performance for firms using JIT and TOC simultaneously was negative and trailed all others, ...

This paper describes a major Change Agent Programme conducted by Siemens Nixdorf (and later Siemens AG). This programme was part of a larger, sophisticated culture change initiative. Details of the programme are provided and the benefits accruing to the company are carefully assessed. It was found that impact should be considered at the levels of (a) the participant, (b) the business unit and (c) the corporation and that evaluation requires a longitudinal perspective. A number of lessons are extracted from the analysis – the requirement for serious senior management commitment, the creation of realistic programme expectations, providing a road map for post-programme implementation, and so on. Finally, recommendations are made for future work on this very important topic.

The proposal by Backhaus, Muehlfeld, and Okoye (2002) to design a business marketing text around a framework of customer-relationship types is provocative and spawns a useful debate on the issue of what should actually be taught in the business marketing course, particularly at the undergraduate level. We believe that the approach may increase the attention given to relationship marketing but do so by sacrificing coverage of core content that students and informed business marketing managers need to know. In the end, we opt for a more comprehensive approach in exploring strategy making for the business market while they chart a narrower and more specialized path.

In an effort to take advantage of access to valuable resources and increased market presence, many U.S. manufacturers have pursued production sharing relationships in a variety of overseas locations. These efforts are seen as methods of combating several threats to firm performance: increased domestic production costs, escalating international manufacturing competition, and ever changing barriers to entry regulations. From the perspective of an integrated North American competitive strategy, two geographic areas-Mexico and the Caribbean Basin-have received much attention as potential operating locations. Using a survey of corporate managers responsible for strategic business unit operations, this study investigates and compares the manufacturing and logistics performance of U.S. manufacturers operating in Mexico and the Caribbean. Relationships between logistics performance, manufacturing performance, and firm performance are examined and managerial implications are discussed.

This article describes how one firm has developed a system for managing high-technology R&D. We describe a portfolio approach for measuring and managing the technology commercialization process developed by the Advanced Technology Division of Lucent Bell Laboratories. The model consists of a set of four quantitative financial factors condensed into two metrics, plus six qualitative attributes taken from four categories—strategic initiatives, market categories, intellectual property classes, and business unit designations. The interrelationships among these attributes are visually displayed. The integration of all attribute information leads to better-informed management decisions for value creation. The value created derives from the balanced scorecard of the attributes rather than an emphasis on any one attribute, e.g., financial performance.

Ten major trends are affecting product development today. Your company's survival is dependent upon its ability to adapt to these new trends and execute its strategy faster than the competition. OVERVIEW: Powerful trends affect product development and the creation of business value today. "Main-Street" companies must improve their profits and "all" companies face aggressive revenue targets. For everyone this means finding new ways to fill the gap between current and projected revenue goals. A company increases its market capitalization by filling this gap, a burden resting predominantly on R&D. R&D has traditionally been focused internally on product development and, to some degree, on mergers and acquisitions. R&D's role must now expand and take on a greater scope to meet the financial goals of the company. This article outlines the trends that are both creating and enabling changes in R&D. Although presented as though they were fixed or inviolate, these trends are in reality unfolding before us. As companies experiment with methods to take advantage of the trends, or thwart their impact, their efforts, at a minimum, distort the environment for everyone. Thus, whether or not these trends are in fact "real" or "inevitable" is not the point. The point is that some companies are reacting to each and every one of the trends discussed, and their behavior distorts and adds to the chaos we all experience. Each of the trends described below has been present to some degree before. But it is the building of, and the confluence of, these trends that is creating extreme opportunities and threats for everyone. Synergy among these trends has created a completely different business environment for companies today. My preparation for Industrial Research Institute national programs afforded the opportunity through personal conversations and access to IRI committee work to analyze the approaches taken by today's companies. I learned that some organizations were managing clusters of these trends, but no company was dealing with and blending the opportunities from all of the trends. The most successful companies will be the ones that face the majority of these trends head on and adopt effective strategies to thrive in this new environment. Patterns Among the Trends Ten major trends affecting R&D today can be segmented into three areas: * New avenues for building corporate value. * New development processes. * Trends that are warping time. The first set of trends encompass new avenues to building corporate value. These include the changing basis of market capitalization, building companies to flip, off-balance-sheet spin-offs and licensing-out as a business practice. These market forces are redefining what value means to a company. The basis of market capitalization is changing from a focus on tangible to intangible assets. Companies are no longer being built solely to withstand the tests of time. Instead, some new companies are being built to flip. Spin-offs are going off the balance sheet and licensing-out is emerging as its own business unit. All of these trends are affecting how a CEO explains value to the company's shareholders and how R&D expenses are explained to the analysts. Second, new development processes afford tremendous opportunity for substantial returns from the new business models. These trends are "spiral" product development, synchronous portfolio selection and management, iterative integration of product development and portfolio management, and connection-focused new product developments. Product development and portfolio selection are moving from conventional funnel models to spiral development. Acquisitions and partnerships are replacing some of R&D's traditional role in bringing new products to the company. These trends are both reducing the time to bring new products to market and adding greatly to the complexity of managing R&D. …

The need to turn companies around can arise for defensive as well as offensive reasons. In the case of defensive reasons, such as cost reductions, one usually has to rely on rather authoritarian methods. When the driving force is of an offensive nature, as in the case of re-engineering, introduction of e-commerce or business unit management, the step-by-step method of change has proven itself powerful. This is illustrated here in a case involving the introduction of business unit management in a functionally organised multinational enterprise. An evaluation of and a speculation on the area of application of the method are given at the end of the paper.

Strategic planning has been imported into social work from the business sector. The Business Plan is a key component of strategic planning and is typically used by management to steer an organisation through times of environmental turbulence. This paper argues that the Business Plan is relevant not only for the management structure of an agency, but also for the individual workers within that agency. After presenting the theory of the Business Plan and the plan of his own agency, the author presents the results of a small study (29 social workers). This study found significant positive relationships between the feeling of making a significant contribution to the Business Plan, job satisfaction, energy and motivation for work, commitment to the organisation and perceived client satisfaction. The author discusses the resultant implications and practice recommendations.