This paper attempts to establish the applicability of the Miles and Snow typology of strategic orientation to small, entrepreneurial organisations. It posits that congruence between strategic orientation and decision making comprehensiveness of the strategic planning process is a superior determinant of firm performance to planning alone. An empirical study in the Regional Airline industry was conducted to investigate this proposition. Results support the importance of the congruence construct in determining performance in small, entrepreneurial ventures. Keywords:

The process of global purchasing:

This paper is work in progress and I am thankful for any comments and suggestions regarding it. Errors and omissions might remain in the paper and the intention is not to implicate any of them to the many scholars that have moved the field forward. Please do not quote without prior permission from the author. This paper examines how managers create and develop strategy in practice. It reports findings of an in-depth investigation of managerial activities and associated learning dynamics in strategy creation, the generation and development of radically new strategies. Managerial and learning activities on different organizational levels, their influence on strategy development, and relationship to strategic change are examined. A dual longitudinal case methodology, including a single in-depth case study combined with a multiple retrospective case study is used, involving four multinational companies. The findings show a twofold character of strategy creation including an adaptive and a creative strategy motor of strategic change involving fundamentally different learning dynamics, reflecting their diverse location and social embeddedness. Adaptive learning dynamics were based on exploitation and refinement of prevailing industry and resource structures and involved a deductive reasoning or sensemaking as regards strategy, including knowledge assimilation activities such as formal intelligence and routine experiences. Creative learning dynamics evolved in the periphery of the organizations and were more remote from existing values and beliefs. They predominantly involved exploration and inductive sensemaking, including activities like informal noticing and creative experiments. The exploration/exploitation trade off interaction between the two strategy motors resulted in tension, which finally triggered strategic change.

IT spending has been recognised as representing a large percentage of the budget for organisations. Research has shown that significant value can be derived from IT investments if organisations actively and effectively manage their IT investments using a portfolio management approach. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how IT portfolio management affects strategic IT investment decision making. First, an IT Portfolio Management Maturity Index is developed so that IS managers can readily assess the level of maturity of their organisation’s IT portfolio management. Second, a structural model is presented to examine the influence of IT portfolio management on decision rationality and organisational political behaviour. Next, we examine how these two outcomes of IT portfolio management impact firm performance. The proposed framework can be used as a benchmark for managers to understand how to allocate IT resources most effectively. It also serves as a foundation for further research in IT portfolio Management and other IT governance mechanisms.