It is often claimed that 50–90% of strategic initiatives fail. Although these claims have had a significant impact on management theory and practice, they are controversial. We aim to clarify why this is the case. Towards this end, an extensive review of the literature is presented, assessed, compared and discussed. We conclude that while it is widely acknowledged that the implementation of a new strategy can be a difficult task, the true rate of implementation failure remains to be determined. Most of the estimates presented in the literature are based on evidence that is outdated, fragmentary, fragile or just absent. Careful consideration is advised before using current estimates to justify changes in the theory and practice. A set of guiding principles is presented for assisting researchers to produce better estimates of the rates of failure.

Understanding the value the right chief executive officer selection and tenure choices can bring to an organisation is under researched in legal jurisdictions such as Australia where there is strong separation of the role of the chief executive officer and chairperson. The chief executive officer is the key organisation strategist and plays an important role in formulating and implementing strategy as well as keeping the board of directors informed of the work of the executive team. This paper reviews and synthesises the corporate governance literature to develop the argument that a chief executive officer’s professional development background and work context will impact his or her ability to favourably influence organisation performance. A series of research propositions of interest to a range of stakeholders inside and outside the organisation are developed drawing on a number of corporate governance theories (e.g., agency theory, stewardship theory). This conceptual paper develops a substantial future empirical research agenda.

It has been said that entrepreneurs plan in order to deal with market uncertainty. It has also been argued that entrepreneurs act spontaneously and with insufficient planning, as time is of the essence and as market uncertainty seldom yields to planning. Theoretically, in uncertain market conditions, the concept of effectuation posits that entrepreneurs control their resources enhancing them through likeminded stakeholder buy-ins towards creating an opportunity. Alternatively, the first prospective action steps under uncertainty are argued to be taken regardless of resources position, reflecting enactment before sensemaking. Thus, enactment embodies resource-independent action-embracing ambiguity, whereas effectuation, i.e., controlling resources and enhancing stakeholder buy-ins, represents resource-dependent action that mitigates ambiguity and risk. This paper proposes that prospective enactment action and effectuation control action are analytically distinct, complementary and simultaneous aspects of entrepreneurial action. It further proposes that successful outcomes of entrepreneurial action may be anticipated by a high and matching combination of enactment and effectual action in a generative co-occurrence. The paper illustrates the propositions using cases that exhibit diverse action outcomes. It also potentially reconciles the ambiguity-embracing or risk-taking approach and the ambiguity-reducing or risk-mitigating control approach in understanding entrepreneurial action seeking opportunity in an uncertain and dynamic market.

Using organizational justice literature, the current study aimed to examine the relationship between three dimensions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interactional justice) and affective commitment, and to explore the moderating effect of group cohesion on the relationship between the three dimensions of justice and affective commitment in a collegiate team sport context. Data were collected from 253 college student-athletes of two Football Bowl Subdivision institutions in the Southeastern United States. Results of three hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that all three dimensions of justice were positively and significantly related to affective commitment. In regard to the moderating effect, group cohesion significantly moderated the distributive justice–affective commitment and the interactional–affective commitment relationships. Specifically, the two significant relationships were significantly stronger for student-athletes who reported high levels of group cohesion than their counterparts. Strategies by coaches to improve athletes’ perceptions of fairness and group cohesion and suggestions for future researches were discussed.

Forming strategic alliances with foreign organizations is critical for firms, as it can enable them to access external resources globally. However, because firms, especially those in emerging economies, may possess less legitimacy in foreign countries, potential foreign alliance partners may lack satisfactory organizational information to adequately evaluate them. By applying signaling theory, this study argues that alternative sources, such as the prestige characteristics of the top management team, play an important role in signaling the quality of firms. Additionally, this study expects that the effects of the prestige characteristics of top management teams on the formation of international strategic alliances are lessened when the number of prior international alliances increases. The empirical results support our arguments. Overall, this study contributes by bringing signaling theory into the research of the formation of international strategic alliances.

The purpose of this research is to examine the undergraduate learning goals of business programs and determine if these goals are skewed in the directions posed by critics of undergraduate business education. The underlying theme of many critiques is that nonlinear-thinking processes are underrepresented in undergraduate business curricula, whereas linear-thinking processes are overrepresented. The learning goals of 208 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International-accredited business programs were coded into two goal categories: linear thinking and nonlinear thinking. The results support the contention that nonlinear-thinking processes have a lesser presence in the typical undergraduate business program’s curriculum. These findings are consistent across research and teaching universities.

On 13 September 2012, the Good George Brewery and bar opened for business in the Hamilton, New Zealand suburb of Frankton. This case describes the start of the business, the environment that supported it and the resources and capabilities that were utilised. The case won the ANZAM award for best case study at the 2013 ANZAM Conference.

The confusion concerning the theoretical roots of the dynamic capabilities view and the fact that it was often being positioned as an extension to the resource-based view in strategic management, prompted a paper by Galvin, Rice, and Liao (2014) that suggested that the dynamic capabilities view would benefit from adopting a more explicit Darwinian approach. In response to this paper, Arndt and Bach (2015) highlighted that the seminal papers in the field do indeed take an evolutionary perspective and that in operationalizing the variation–selection–retention cycle in an empirical setting it is necessary to move away from firm performance as a dependent variable and instead use survival, which more closely aligns with the concept of natural selection. In this paper, we respond to this recent critique to articulate the benefits of a Darwinian nomenclature and how this will assist in positioning the dynamic capabilities view as an independent, though complementary, theory to the resource-based view. However, we do clearly recognize that until the key terms of variation, selection and retention can be operationalized at the routine, firm and industry level, such an approach may not in itself bring the field towards a common understanding of how dynamic capabilities operate in different environments.