Over the last three decades, the prevailing view of information technology strategy has been that it is a functional-level strategy that must be aligned with the firm's chosen business strategy. Even ...within this socalled alignment view, business strategy directed IT strategy. During the last decade, the business infrastructure has become digital with increased interconnections among products, processes, and services. Across many firms spanning different industries and sectors, digital technologies (viewed as combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies) are fundamentally transforming business strategies, business processes, firm capabilities, products and services, and key interfirm relationships in extended business networks. Accordingly, we argue that the time is right to rethink the role of IT strategy, from that of a functional-level strategy—aligned but essentially always subordinate to business strategy—to one that reflects a fusion between IT strategy and business strategy. This fusion is herein termed digital business strategy. We identify four key themes to guide our thinking on digital business strategy and help provide a framework to define the next generation of insights. The four themes are (1) the scope of digital business strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy, (3) the speed of digital business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and capture in digital business strategy. After elaborating on each of these four themes, we discuss the success metrics and potential performance implications from pursuing a digital business strategy. We also show how the papers in the special issue shed light on digital strategies and offer directions to advance insights and shape future research.
Grandiose Strategy? James, William
The RUSI journal,
05/2020, Letnik:
165, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Grand strategy is hailed by some as a silver bullet for resolving policy drift, while others reject it as a hubristic term. William James argues that expectations of this concept need to be revised. ...The first half of this article addresses the study of grand strategy. James identifies and critiques the prominent conceptual frameworks for evaluating grand strategy. He offers an alternative approach for measuring the quality of a state’s grand strategy, based on the notion of proportionality. The second half is tailored towards policymakers, as the article assesses the ways in which grand-strategic thinking can be improved in government.■
Studies have examined how managers use strategy tools, but we know much less about how managers create strategy tools de novo. We undertook an ethnographic study of a business facing a wicked problem ...and investigated the sociomaterial practice of collective toolmaking. We identify how strategy toolmaking oscillates between different problem domains and reveal how this manifests process affordances, which are ‘unintended’ by‐products of the toolmaking process. Counterintuitively, by intentionally making a strategic tool, actors unintentionally create a sociomaterial springboard for 'spin‐off strategizing' and ‘the discovery of latent ambiguities’, generating strategic value beyond the tool produced. These insights illuminate how the practice of collective toolmaking can stimulate wayfinding, indirectly helping managers to respond to wicked problems, characterized by high degrees of complexity, ambiguity, and indeterminacy.
This study develops a model of emergent strategy formation at a large telecommunications firm. It integrates prominent traditions in strategy process research—strategy as patterned action, as ...iterated resource allocation and as practice—to show how emergent strategy originates as a project through autonomous strategic behavior, then subsequently becomes realized as a consequence of mobilizing wider support to provide impetus, manipulating strategic context to legitimate the project by constructing it as consonant with the prevailing concept of strategy, and altering structural context to embed it within organizational units, routines, and objectives. The study theorizes the role of "practices of strategy articulation" in emergent strategy formation, and explains why some autonomous strategic behavior becomes "ephemeral" and disappears rather than enduring to become emergent strategy.
The elephant herding optimization (EHO) is a recent swarm intelligence algorithm. This algorithm simulates the clan updating and separation behavior of elephants. The EHO method has been successfully ...deployed in various fields. However, a more reliable implementation of the standard EHO algorithm still requires improving the control and selection of the parameters, convergence speed, and efficiency of the optimal solutions. To cope with these issues, this study presents an improved EHO algorithm terms as IMEHO. The proposed IMEHO method uses a global velocity strategy and a novel learning strategy to update the velocity and position of the individuals. Furthermore, a new separation method is presented to keep the diversity of the population. An elitism strategy is also adopted to ensure that the fittest individuals are retained at the next generation. The influence of the parameters and strategies on the IMEHO algorithm is fully studied. The proposed method is tested on 30 benchmark functions from IEEE CEC 2014. The obtained results are compared with other eight metaheuristic algorithms and evaluated according to Friedman rank test. The results imply the superiority of the IMEHO algorithm to the standard EHO and other existing metaheuristic algorithms.
The electrochemiluminescence (ECL)-based simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers in one sample has received considerable attention in the past decade due to the increasing need for accurate ...cancer diagnosis and prediction. However, there has not been a comprehensive summary of ECL-based simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers. In this review, we focus on recent advances in multiplex ECL assays using diverse detection strategies and their applications for various biomarkers. Based on analyte-induced changes in ECL signals, systems for the simultaneous quantitation of biomarkers (e.g., microRNAs, proteins, and cancer cells) have been proposed. These systems are classified into the following four categories: spatial-resolved, potential-resolved, spectrum-resolved, and miscellaneous strategies. Finally, future perspectives for multiplex ECL-based simultaneous detection systems are discussed.
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•The recent advances in ECL-based multiplex bioanalysis are reviewed.•Simultaneous detection of multiple targets via different strategies is concluded.•Future perspectives for this field are discussed.
Leadership characteristics and digital transformation Porfírio, José António; Carrilho, Tiago; Felício, José Augusto ...
Journal of business research,
January 2021, 2021-01-00, 20210101, Letnik:
124
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Digital transformation (DT) is essential for all companies and industries, depending crucially on systems, IT, strategy, and people. In this research, we analyse how firms’ characteristics, ...associated with management characteristics, promote DT in Portuguese companies. The model considers the relationship between digital strategy and corporate and business strategy, according to firm and management characteristics. We use a multilevel analysis, applying fsQCA to data obtained from 47 Portuguese firms. The results represent an important step forward in the knowledge of the conditions to promote higher stages of DT, especially regarding leadership and management associated with certain firms’ characteristics. The conclusions support the crucial role of leadership and especially the importance of managers’ coherence towards companies’ mission to promote more advanced stages of DT. At the same time, it contributes to develop knowledge about the best possible combination of firms’ and management characteristics to promote DT.
In response to critiques of strategy tools as unhelpful or potentially dangerous for organizations , we suggest casting a sociological eye on how tools are actually mobilized by strategy makers. In ...conceptualizing strategy tools as tools-in-use, we offer a framework for examining the ways that the affordances of strategy tools and the agency of strategy makers interact to shape how and when tools are selected and applied. Further, rather than evaluating the correct or incorrect use of tools, we highlight the variety of outcomes that result, not just for organizations but also for the tools and the individuals who use them. We illustrate this framework with a vignette and propose an agenda and methodological approaches for further scholarship on the use of strategy tools.
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