Peter Mckiernan

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at University of Strathclyde

Purpose Conventional wisdom says stakeholders matter to managers as they develop strategy – but do they? If so, what type of stakeholders matter and what can managers do? Design/methodology/approach An in-depth exploration of five deep case studies where senior executives embarked upon strategy development. Analysis revealed five significant facto...

This research reveals, through an empirical study, how critical stakeholders are to the strategy process. The paper reports on the analysis and outcome of the study, where the purpose of the research was to understand i) the significance of stakeholders about what matters for the strategic future of the organisation when a senior management team co...

This paper creates a theoretical construct through the synthetization of industry recipes in the Hollywood film industry and scenario planning's intuitive logics approach. It illustrates how the incumbent-challenger paradox coupled with the industry recipes framework can provide a robust scenario narrative. Through a multiple case study approach, a...

Stakeholders are critical to the strategy process but, in much of the strategy literature, they are rarely seen or heard. This appears to contradict practice - where experienced strategy makers and their advisors hold them in eminent positions. These contrasting perceptions are the focus of the research in this paper. Herein, we investigate the con...

This Element infuses established scenario planning routines with an exploration of cognitive reasoning, by contextualising scenario thinking within the wider human endeavour of grappling with future uncertainties. A study of ancient civilisations shows that scenario thinking is not new, but has evolved significantly since ancient times. By de-coupl...

This book analyses the determining factors behind productivity and innovation amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore, and within the context of South East Asia, in order to offer recommendations for increasing productivity and aiding economic growth. SME firms are an influential driver of economic growth in advanced world economie...

This article examines path dependency and technological lock-in in the evolution of the Dundee jute industry, from its beginnings in the 1860s to its demise in the 1970s. The evolution of the industry is explored using the resource-based view of the firm (RBV). The results suggest that the nature and construct of jute fibre was the root cause of a...

The Intuitive Logics (IL) scenario planning process is grounded in the work of Hermann Kahn and Pierre Wack in the 1960s and 1970s. Its broad adoption and sustained use over 50 years have taken it beyond the typical management fashion or fad. It has helped shape the strategies of many types of institutions and organisations. The process encourages...

Increasing health care expenditure is a matter of concern in many countries, particularly in relation to the underlying drivers of such escalation that include aging, medical innovation, and changes in the burden of disease, such as the growing prevalence of chronic diseases. Most health care systems in developed countries have been designed to cur...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to both understand the motives for volunteering in local government (a strong/structured context) and determine how such motivation and other demographics interact with organisational contexts to influence volunteering outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a functional approach to volunteer...

Innovation maybe the ultimate driving force of a nation’s economic growth and prosperity. According to Porter’s (1998) theory of national competitive advantage, a nation’s economic development typically goes through the following several stages: resource driven, investment driven and innovation driven. Since China embarked on the road of economic r...

The profit impact of market strategy program began in 1970 as a formal attempt to discover what return on investment might follow from given market structures if certain strategies were followed. Thus began an unprecedented and unrivaled series of studies (over 108 by 2004). It fed academic research for over two decades and established some fundame...

The relationship between market share and returns is one of the most examined topics in economics and management research. The principle is simple – capturing a large market share heralds a multitude of benefits due to the increasing scale of operations but, should these operations become too large, then deceasing economies set in due to control, i...

Scenario planning (SP) is a process within strategic management that combines the creation of several stories of plausible futures with the practical strategic responses that are required to deal with them. The creation of stories maps the future terrain through a systematic analysis of the key drivers of contextual change. By focusing on the uncer...

This study examines the rhetorical strategies deployed by supporters of the Dundee jute industry (DJI) during the legislative debate surrounding British trade policy of the inter-war period. It conducts a content analysis of the House of Commons debate on 2 February, 1938 on a motion entitled 'Importations from Overseas'. This debate highlights the...

This book presents hidden champions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Turkey that have been studied as a joint project between CEEMAN and IEDC-Bled School of Management, Slovenia. This is an outcome of extensive research undertaken by over 30 researchers and covers 15 countries from Russia to Albania; covering many contexts, political systems...

Books that search for the Holy Grail of “success” in the corporate world have been either light or heavy. Usually, the former derive from observation and anecdotal evidence and are written by consultants, reflective CEOs and journalists, and directed towards a target market of busy businessmen looking for the next quick fix. This is a volume indust...

Scenario planning has become a widely used strategic management approach for understanding future environmental uncertainty. Despite its increasing popularity in management practice, the theoretical underpinnings for scenario planning processes remain underdeveloped. Furthermore, there is little analysis on why some scenario methods succeed and oth...

This paper uses institutional theory to analyse the role of the British Academy of Management (BAM) and the Association of Business Schools (ABS) in gaining legitimacy for management education in the UK. By the 1980s, serious issues surrounding rigour and relevance were being asked about UK business schools that raised concerns about the legitimacy...

Business schools1 are subject to strong institutional pressures. In this paper we examine university‐based business schools in the UK. We argue that the result of such pressures has been to render business schools isomorphic in a number of ways and to diminish the potential voice of business school research in social and economic issues. We detail...

Using archival and interview data, this paper uses institutional theory (INT) to analyze the role that accounting played in the operation of voluntary price agreements in the Dundee jute industry (DJI) during the sector's decline from 1945 to 1960. At its peak in the late 19th century, the industry employed almost 50% of the Dundee labour force and...

Abstract Strategic management literatures have contributed significantly to our understanding of strategic decision-making, strategy formulation, strategy content and process. However, research into strategy context has been spasmodic, less interrogative and non-systemic. Hence, the relationship between context and both the content and process dime...

This paper attempts to open up a new line of enquiry into the dysfunctions of creativity within strategic processes. Generally, the impact and results of introducing creativity (and innovation) into organisational life are perceived to be wholesome and beneficial. But recent research in the area of organisational psychology has documented a ‘dark’...

In Western philosophy on epistemology, there has long been the traditional divide between what is a priori vs. a posteriori. This is taken as the starting point for a conceptual framing of an empirically grounded inquiry into the minds of Indian chief executive officer (CEOs) about Chinese strategic thinking. The objective of this a posteriori expe...

We examine the application of scenario-planning techniques to the detailed and daunting challenge of city repositioning when policy makers are faced with a heavy history and a complex future context. We review a process of scenario planning undertaken in the Edinburgh city region, exploring the scenario process and its contribution to strategies an...

The Delphi Method is designed to elicit opinion and counter opinion from a group of experts in order to inform better the decision making process. These experts may be geographically dispersed. Traditionally, information is captured through the use of questionnaires and their analysis is fed back to the experts in an unattributed manner through a c...

Since the early 1980s, developments in health service policy and practice have prompted careful reevaluation of the nature and importance of trust relationships in health care contexts (Mechanic 1998). The issue of trust arises across a range of health care conditions and settings including acute and long-term health care provision and primary, sec...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate CEOs as leaders in manufacturing organizations. The focus is on the roles of CEOs in organizational adaptations to changing and continuously evolving external environments. Design/methodology/approach The paper is grounded on a conceptual theory of molecular structuring inside organizations. The...

This project started as a set of scribbles to aid a failing memory. At BAM’s inaugural conference at Warwick in 1986, Peter Grinyer (St Andrews) presented the early results that we had developed from our ‘Sharpbender’ project. After getting the taste for BAM, I have attended every conference since then. I joined Council in 1995/96 and enjoyed my ex...

Drawing on extensive archival research, this article analyses the ‘soft systems’, such as logic and thinking, inherent in the Dundee jute industry post its world domination in the 1880s into its final demise and eventual reduction to a fringe competitor in the 1970s. Evidence for the existence of powerful individual firm and collective industry rec...

Traditionally, scenario thinking has been a planning tool used for improving foresight by generating alternative stories of future contexts. Such stories should enable organizations to develop better contemporary strategies and policies. However, scenario thinking has been charged with a failure to identify weak signals in contextual environments,...

The Oxford Handbook of Strategy is a two-volume text on the key subject areas and issues currently under discussion in the field of strategy. Volume One focuses on two major areas: first, the various different approaches to strategy, and secondly, the development of competitive or business unit strategy, where the pursuit of sustainable competitive...

This article aims to describe the evolution of thinking about business strategy over the forty or so years in which it has been identified as a distinct subject of study, and makes some suggestions about its possible future development. It begins from the 1960s perspective in which strategy was largely equated with corporate planning, describes the...

The concept of core competence underlies competence-based competition and competence-based management. When new firms get established, due to resource constraints, managers have to make conscious decisions to develop certain competencies and not others. In order to have all competencies that are required to be successful, firms look for strategic a...

The structure-conduct-performance model is extended to include managerial factors. Multiple regression of data for 45 companies in the electrical engineering industry shows market share, capital intensity, growth of sales, tightness of control of working capital and decentralisation to contribute significantly to an explanation of corporate profita...

The majority of the literature on corporate performance in SMEs has indicated that the absence of formal strategic planning (or inadequacies in its process) can be directly linked with failure, while its presence can be linked to success (Bracker and Pearson, 1986; Stoner, 1983). However, other empirical evidence fails to find a relationship (Robin...

The purpose of this paper is to deepen understanding of the role that hindsight plays in foresight. The authors argue that the past is not an isolated static state, but one that is intimately connected with the future. However, there are several biases that influence our perceptions and conceptions of the past. These biases act as constraints on ou...

This editorial essay introduces each of the articles contained in this inaugural issue of the European Management Review. The articles fall into two broad categories: the first group engages with arguments around ‘strategy-as-practice’, a perspective that is gaining increasing prominence within strategic management; the second group of papers are b...

Strategy is a youthful discipline, with much of its research material derived from studies in the last 30 years. Its roots, however, go back much further. Modern studies can be partitioned into four schools—Planning and Practice, Learning, Positioning and Resource-Based, each with long scholastic and practical traditions. The schools are not mutual...

The transition to free market economy in Ukraine has the country entering a period of discontinuous change. Much of the necessary infrastructure for a free market economy is missing. Enforced segegation from the rest of the developed world has resulted in inherently diiferent socio-cultural beliefs. The economy is in crisis. There is a lack of reli...

Problems with post acquisition performance still remain for many organizations choosing this stratagem as their means for growth. Much research has been conducted that concentrates on the softer ‘cultural’ issue surrounding the marriage of two organizations. It has been asserted that organizations are generally poor at amalgamating such human conce...

This paper builds upon earlier research undertaken in the UK on manufacturing companies that had undergone a sharp and sustained recovery performance from a period of long stagnation. After longitudinal observation of these performances, we discovered that more of our ‘Sharpbenders’ were subject to take-over than a simple probability of other UK qu...

The European business environment is undergoing rapid change, exposing strategic weaknesses and challenging management skills. This book provides an examination of how non-European firms have developed strategies to compete successfully in this volatile European market. It describes the opportunities for the new Europe which will aid any business w...

Although corporate growth through acquisition continues to be a popular strategy for the 1990s, the failure rate of acquired companies remains high at 50 per cent. This paper focuses on post-acquisition integration of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) and its impact on post-acquisitive performance. Based on the results of det...

This paper reports the salient descriptive results of the St Andrews survey of strategic planning in the ASEAN region. Systematic, formal strategic planning was found to be extensive; often sophisticated; to draw increasingly on qualitative approaches whilst retaining the quantitative; often widely shared among senior managers; but frequently suppl...

Improving corporate performance through a competitive advantage is central to the objective of corporate planners and strategists. Learning the lessons from companies, or competitors, who have successfully achieved a relatively superior performance is a useful starting point for the analyst. In particular, if those companies previously occupied a p...

Hypotheses relating to market, organizational and managerial determinants of profitability and growth are developed and tested using data collected by structured interviews in 45 randomly selected companies in the electrical engineering industry. Multiple regression analysis suggests that market share and barriers to entry are the principal determi...

This book presents the results of a unique and illuminating study of corporate success in Britain. Based on a wide sample of industry, analysed in depth for over ten years, Sharpbenders focuses on companies which have affected - and, crucially, sustained - a marked improvement in performance in comparison with their competitors.