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The purpose of this paper is to highlight different strategy–business model (BM) alignments using Miles and Snow’s strategic framework and analyze the performance implications of these different alignments.

The paper develops a composite conceptual model combining Miles and Snow’s strategy typology with Demil and Lecocq’s BM framework to explore the performance implications of strategy–BM fit. This model is empirically examined using a sample of 156 French small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector.

The results first highlight a limited set of BM configurations across strategic profiles, confirming that a BM reflects a firm’s strategy as a means of realizing strategic choices. Second, they reveal that deviating from ideal strategy–BM alignments negatively affects performance. Finally, they shed light on the dynamics of Miles and Snow’s typology, from intended to implemented strategy.

The intrinsic characteristics of surveyed SMEs led to the hybridization of empirically derived profiles, which allowed to partially associate them with theoretically predicted configurations of BMs.

The paper suggests the patterns of predictive strategy–BM alignment that allow managers and entrepreneurs to monitor the dynamic consistency between strategic choices and their implementation.

Do you need a strategy if you have a BM? Adopting a fit and performance perspective, this paper addresses this question and complements other studies emphasizing the need to connect strategies and BMs.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal and empirically validate a new typology of company strategic profiles regarding intangible resources.

The study is carried out in three steps. The first stage comes to identify the coordinates of intangibles in which strategic profiles are found. The second stage enables a clusterization of more than 1,600 European companies observed during seven years in the coordinates of intangibles. The last step introduces comparative analysis of these clusters in terms of their performance.

As a result of empirical analysis three strategic profiles regarding intangibles are discovered. Two of these profiles are called intangible-intensive as they demonstrate clear predominance of a particular set of intangibles. The innovative profile is associated with intensive investment in innovation and networking capabilities. The conservative profile puts emphasis on managerial capabilities and development of business process. The non-intangible-intensive profile, that has been called moderate, evenly allocates resources among intangibles keeping them on a low level relative to the intangible-intensive profiles.

This research is useful for practitioners in strategic and knowledge management. It provides insight into common features of company strategies for intangibles as well their impact on short- and long-term performance.

This work contributes to the field of strategic knowledge management by demonstrating a new relevant typology in company behavior regarding intangibles. Moreover, it equips decision makers in companies with a tool to design strategic vision in intangibles.

The purpose of this exploratory research paper is to present a strategic profiling managerial framework that enables businesses to show visually the level of internal strategic fit in their organisation. Using this framework, service operations managers are able to understand the level of fit that exists, how it is created and identify actions for improving it.

Case‐based research was conducted in eight service organisations to investigate their level of internal fit and the corresponding characteristics of their market, operating strategy and service delivery system. Based on these findings, a strategic profiling framework was developed.

The strategic profiling framework allows a service organisation to compare the characteristics of its market, operating strategy and service delivery system and determine the level of internal strategic fit. This enables it to see more clearly where conflicts exist and to start to understand the steps required to improve the level of fit in its organisation.

The research used the Heskett strategic service vision and Hill's order‐winner and qualifier technique to investigate the level of internal fit. It looked at how they can be applied and the insights they reveal rather than whether the elements they contain are correct. The research focused on developing and presenting a method of visualizing internal fit, rather than investigating the link between fit and performance. The strategic profiling framework developed needs to be tested on a wider sample of organisations to see whether high‐fit profiles have high performance and whether the insights it reveals are true for other businesses.

Service organisations can use the strategic profiling framework to understand their level of internal strategic fit, and why it exists, in order to understand how to improve it.

The strategic profiling framework presented in this paper starts to address the gap in the literature around research into the field of internal strategic fit. It also meets the need for more management tools to help businesses develop strategies and understand the level of fit they create.

The purpose of this paper is to explore strategy-specific competencies with regard to intangibles and provides empirical evidence of intangible-based strategy groups for Russian companies. Additionally, the study examines the link between intangible-based strategy and company performance.

The paper uses strategic group theory and the resource-based view framework to identify similar strategic behaviour of companies by employment of intangibles. In line with the intellectual capital concept, the study provides a cluster analysis that considers four types of intangibles: human, relational, innovation and process capital. These are measured through publicly available data using principal component analysis. The empirical part of the study uses a database of 1,096 Russian public companies, which covers the period 2004–2014.

As a result, the study reveals three profiles of strategic behaviour with regard to intangibles. The majority of Russian public companies (63.5 per cent) are Generics and pursue a non-intensive intangible strategy. Only 13.3 per cent of companies constitute the intangible-intensive profile by having endowment of all intellectual resources higher than the sample average. The remaining companies (23.2 per cent) also pursue an intangible-intensive strategy with a focus on innovation capital. Intangible-intensive strategic groups outperform Generics.

The study proposes a novel intangible-based strategy continuum, which straddles two polar strategies: generic and smart. The study introduces insights to better understand the differences in performance across intangible-intensive strategies and presents a new empirical inquiry into strategic behaviour with regard to intangibles in Russia.

This paper aims to identify the differentiated paths followed by firms to innovate in business models, among four different strategic postures and also to determine the innovation interactions between business model components, among strategic postures. The authors intend to highlight the differentiated patterns of business model innovation (BMI) in each strategic posture and provide guidance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) managers regarding the suitable alignments of business model components when they innovate in their business model.

The research model developed and tested in this work uses a composite model that borrows from the logic of Miles and Snow’s cycle of adaptive strategic choices as well as Demil and Lecocq’s perspective of permanent change within and between components of a business model. The authors’ model is designed first to encompass the differentiated patterns characterizing the relationships between the strategic posture of defender, prospector and analyzer profiles and the related innovation attributes of their business model components. The study was conducted with independent French manufacturing SMEs ranging from 10 to 250 employees in size and having revenues below €50m (European Commission, 2007). The analysed sample includes 169 firms from 14 sectors representative of French manufacturing SMEs.

Results confirm the differentiated propensity to adopt specific BMI behaviours among strategic postures. The authors also highlight the differentiated interactions between and within BMI components. These results suggest that SMEs tend to leverage specific BMI components related to their entrepreneurial, engineering and administrative choices. Thus, firms tend to evolve in a posture-specific, path-dependent dynamic consistency in which BMI attributes interact towards a limited set of alternatives, thus anchoring the new business model into strategic choices. It has been shown that the predictability of strategy–BMI alignment is contingent on the level of fit between empirically derived strategic profile attributes and Miles and Snow’s ideal profile attributes.

This paper investigates strategy–BMI alignments without addressing such alignments from the standpoint of firm performance. Still, performance from a BMI perspective lies in the ability of the firm to sustain the dynamic consistency of its business model components by identifying the effects of change in interactions between and within components on overall BM performance. Further studies should explore dynamic consistency as a means for firms to generate and maintain performance by innovating in their business model when facing specific contingencies. The conceptual framework designed for the present research seems appropriate for conducting such an investigation on the performance implications of strategy–BMI fit.

This research offers insights regarding manufacturing SMEs seeking guidance when changing business strategy. Indeed, by combining Miles and Snow’s configurational framework of strategic postures with Demil and Lecocq’s RCOV BM framework, the authors provide insights that can bridge the gap between intended strategy and realized strategy. The authors suggest that when realizing new strategic choices, SMEs should favour behaviours of BMI that are likely to fit the new intended strategic posture. Accordingly, the authors introduce a set of field-based BMI alignments specific to firms’ strategic posture to support the strategic management of innovation in SMEs.

By unravelling the alignments between strategic posture and business model innovation, this work contributes to enlightening the dynamics of Miles and Snow’s adaptive cycle. Indeed, viewing Miles and Snow’s typology from the configurational perspective of BMI provides a clearer picture of the adaptive cycle through which BMI reflects the path-dependent process of the formation of the firm’s strategic posture through the transformation of its business model.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the challenges of integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) with other strategic foci into the supply/contractor chain, both conceptually and empirically, with a focus on one sectorial case: the Norwegian upstream petroleum industry. It compares contradictory theories of strategic focus and explores their implications for the organisation of the supply chain and discusses challenges and solutions for operative CSR‐oriented supply chain management

The empirical analysis, inspired by the cognitive mapping approach, seeks to elicit the strategic profiles of the oil majors and suppliers/contractors in the petroleum industry. This is based on textual analysis of core statements of overall business strategy such as the CEO's and the Chairman's statement letter to the shareholders. The paper also draws on research and workshops with petroleum companies and their suppliers in the North Sea, as well as contracting experts and researchers taking part in the EU‐TRENDS project which focused on satisfying Europe's future demands and needs for sustainable, secure, safe and clean energy supplies.

The strategic profiles of the petroleum companies and their suppliers/contractors indicate that, while they coincide on many points, there is considerable discrepancy as far as CSR and HSE are concerned. The suppliers/contractors tend to emphasise the technology dimension more strongly than the petroleum companies. HSE and CSR are, on average, strategically under‐communicated within the supply industry compared with the petroleum companies, but there is also considerable variation within each group.

The paper explores how transaction cost theory may help frame managerial challenges and approaches in integrating CSR consistently throughout supply chains. It shows some of the limitations of the “rationalist” model of industrial organisation both at the firm level and at the supply chain level and discusses possible expansions into broader managerial approaches.

The paper highlights some of the managerial challenges and basic approaches for integrating CSR consistently throughout the value chain.

The originality of the article lies conceptually in linking the CSR literature to transaction cost theory of industrial organisation. Empirically the article presents new insights into strategic foci of the petroleum companies and their supply chain.

If there is any consensus on the nature of the management challenge today, it is that business environments are more dynamic, competitive, and unpredictable than ever before and that businesses have to be more flexible, organic, and innovative in how they structure themselves. Different environmental characteristics and different organizational forms require new and different ways of defining business strategy.

As service organizations move toward the open system strategic customer orientation, they need to ensure consistency among competitive methods, performance measures and strategies utilized. This paper aims to examine the relationships among these important facets of today’s service organizations. The study at hand examines the relationship among competitive methods, implicit strategy and performance measures used by Portuguese service organizations.

This research uses a survey-based methodology. Factor analysis, cluster analysis and regression analysis procedures are used to analyze the collected data from Portuguese service organizations.

Based on the results of this study, it appears that some of the studied service organizations are steadily moving toward the open system mode of strategy, competitive methods and performance measurement. However, the majority of the service organizations examined appeared to be in a state of strategic confusion, as they appear to lack the consistency among competitive methods, performance measures and desired strategic orientations.

The sample used in this study is specific in nature, as it includes only Portuguese service organizations. Therefore, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution. Future research in other cultural service settings is recommended. Such research should emphasize the exploration of theoretical frameworks, which tend to practically integrate competitive methods, performance measures and strategic orientation.

This study has direct practical implications for service managers, as they attempt to integrate their organizational systems. As such, the research in this study paves the way toward the practical integration and consistency among competitive methods, performance measures and strategic orientations needed to enhance the customer orientation. In this context, such integration and consistency are essential to enhance the strategic competitiveness of today’s service organizations operating in a dynamic marketplace.

This research combines bodies of knowledge dealing with competitive methods, performance measures and their impact on strategic orientations. The conceptual framework offered in this research attempts to facilitate the understanding for consistent practice pertaining to the competitiveness of the open system service organization in a dynamic environment. Such consistency is essential to the competitiveness of the organization in a dynamic environment.

The study aims were: (1) to replicate a previous study by the first author to confirm previous findings (internal validity) and to check construct validity of previously proposed information-behaviour profiles, (2) to compare the information processes used by students in parallel with requirements of early professional practice.

A replication study used the same questionnaire, delivered online to all 175 students across three years of a BSc adult nursing degree programme on one UK university campus. The survey included questions on information seeking processes, personality, approaches to learning and self-efficacy with information literacy. The literature review examined evidence around the transition from nursing student to practitioner and the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) standards for nursing information literacy.

The response rate was 86/175 (49%). The result verified findings on the most frequent information processes and association between approach to learning and information literacy self-efficacy. The personality findings differed. Combining results for both studies helped confirm most of the information-behaviour profiles. Mapping the frequent information processes against requirements of practice indicated gaps, particularly around professional networking.

As both studies were carried out at one higher education campus, further research to assess external validity is required.

Information-behaviour profiles, plus the mapping, help librarians and tutors develop tailored information literacy support that is clinically relevant and support transition to practice.

Validated a set of information behaviour profiles for nursing students and linked these to the requirements of professional practice.