Thesis (M.S. in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy)--Joint Forces Staff College, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, 2006. / "14 Apr 2006." Electronic version of original print document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-74).

Thesis (M.S. in Joint Campaign Planning and Strategy)--Joint Forces Staff College, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, 2005. / "26 May 2005." Electronic version of original print document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-66).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-246).

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The fact that we have entered turbulent times has been a central theme in the recent strategy literature. Turbulent environments are commonly described by increased competitive intensity, disruptive changes in the industry structure, volatility of demand, and unpredictability of customer behaviour, alongside instability of economic, social and political factors. In such a context, the adoption of traditional approaches to strategy, which assumes a relatively stable world, have been questioned by new approaches. Mixed strategy, which emerged as a contingency option to Porter's generic strategies model, defends that in a turbulent environment the simultaneous pursuit of the low-cost and differentiation approaches is fundamental for the short-term performance and long-term survival of the firm. A vast corpus of literature supports the benefits of adopting a mixed approach strategy: several empirical studies have proved that a combination of low-cost and differentiation strategic elements establishes a firm's performance superiority over the pure strategy choice. The mixed literature has concentrated on the performance linkage and on the debate countering the pure strategy approach, however very little attention has been paid to the challenges presented by the mixed strategy implementation. In fact, despite the rich empirical literature, it is still not clear how firms that adopt a mixed strategy may successfully integrate the inherent contradiction of the low-cost and differentiation approaches. The aim of this study is to investigate how a firm has been implementing the mixed strategy approach, unveiling its managerial characteristics and to generate a proposed managerial framework that could serve as a guide for further implementation. This study approaches the subject of mixed strategy implementation on three levels: environment, strategy definition and making process, and value chain activity. After having elucidated several ambiguities related to the concept of mixed strategy present in the literature and having proposed a normalized definition, this study investigates through a unique case study approach, an in-depth explorative process using causal process methods the managerial implication of the mixed strategy. Several characteristics are revealed from the unique case study and represent a major contribution to the field of strategy management. Furthermore, a managerial framework is proposed which could serve as support in the implementation of a mixed strategy.

In this dissertation, I investigate how organizations understand and apply shared meanings of sustainability. Integrating recent theoretical developments regarding organizational culture with findings from prior literature suggesting that corporate codes can be effective instruments for shaping employee behavior, I describe the flexible exchange of cultural meanings and practices between organizations and their environment with respect to the adoption of environmental certified management standards (ECMS). Taking an inductive, mixed methodological approach, I first use cultural consensus modeling survey techniques to analyze the types of situations vineyard managers in Oregon and Washington categorize as sustainable management conventions and the consistency of these categorizations among those organizations that have adopted ECMS and those organizations that have not. I then draw on interview and archival data to gain deeper insight into the survey findings, focusing on the nature of the relationship between the adoption of ECMS and managerial knowledge around shared meanings and practices regarding sustainability. I find that the adoption of ECMS is associated with an alignment among organizations regarding how they understand and apply sustainability, with three characteristics enhancing the effectiveness of ECMS in cultivating alignment: detailed practice descriptions, demanding objectives to achieve and maintain, and industry specificity. I further uncover that key activities involving the interaction of ECMS and ECMS members facilitate this alignment in cultural meanings and practices surrounding sustainability. From these findings, I develop a grounded conceptual model of cultural exchange, describing how organizations serve varying roles in the cultural exchange process and how each role leverages a set of specific mechanisms to facilitate the adaptation, generation, and transfer of existing and new cultural meanings and practices between organizations drawing on a shared cultural repertoire. The findings from this study contribute to enhancing our theoretical understanding of organizational culture as an open system through a more complex, intentional, and hierarchical account of cultural exchange, as well as develop insight into how the substantive adoption of ECMS practices is associated with alignment among organizations regarding cultural meanings and practices regarding a salient issue in an industry, such as sustainability.

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This thesis presents the results of a programme of research into the development and evaluation of a strategically driven Production Facilities Management (PFM) framework. PFM is the activity of managing production facilities to fully realise the corporate strategic objectives of a manufacturing organisation. Companies with strategies tend to be more successful than companies without them. The concept of manufacturing strategy is an approach to enhance the consistency between the manufacturing function and the direction of the organisation. Consequentially, PFM is the means to ensure these strategic requirements can be fully realised from the facilities management viewpoint. Through the literature review, it was seen that there is a lack of a link between manufacturing strategy and the management of production facilities. From questionnaire surveys and interviews at companies in the manufacturing sector, it was found that the issue of linking facilities management with corporate strategy has been ignored. Therefore, this programme of research not only investigates the context and contents in formulating an appropriate manufacturing strategy in a manufacturing environment but also reviews the most popular methods in relation to maintenance management and performance assessment of the facilities. This programme describes the development of a strategically driven, step-by-step approach that helps a company to capture the strategic requirements of the manufacturing function, measure the performance of existing production facilities and supports the decision-making analysis tasks. The primary contribution of the work presented in this thesis was the development of an implementation framework and an associated implementation workbook which comprise a set of stages and implementation sections that a user can use to carry out the process of capturing the strategic requirements and realise them with support from an appropriate PFM framework and a systematic, step-by-step implementation process.

Construction organisations are increasingly focussing their energies, resources, and aspirations to the development of strategy. In this context, information technology (IT) is progressively being used as a core tool and enabler of the business strategy (BS), particularly in areas of strategic analysis and knowledge management. However, two major issues should be considered concerning the use of IT; the first of which relates to the technology itself - specifically how this can be used (and evaluated) to support the business; and the second issue concerns implementation - the details of which naturally embraces many aspects, including the provision of (and support for) IT training. From an IT perspective therefore, organisations should endeavour to match opportunity with corporate capability, the edict of which requires appropriately trained and skilled workforce to deliver IT capability (to match skills with demand). Training can be considered an investment, the remit of which aims to prepare organisations to adapt to the changing business environment (to meet current and future business needs). Whilst the provision of training can often lead to improved performance, organisations must however engage appropriate mechanisms to evaluate (and assess) the impact of IT training on the business performance gap. Organisations are therefore increasingly using 'process' to improve business performance, the concepts of which focus on activities (how things are done), rather than the product ('what' is produced). Many large construction organisations are now using maps and protocols to deliver business benefits. In this context, the process approach to IT (and its link with the BS) could therefore enable process users to more readily appreciate (and assess) the impact of IT training on the business performance gap. This research introduces a Generic Assessment Process Protocol model for IT training (GAPP-IT) for specific use in the construction business environment. It engages the Process Protocol (PP) methodology to identify the key sequential stages (gates) and issues required to satisfy (or close) the business performance gap.

With a multi-method research approach that involves retrospective reflection, concurrent screen-capturing (Camtasia), and key-stroke logging (Translog), this study probed Chinese-English translation processes and investigated the strategy use and pause patterns of 20 translators with different professional designations (i.e., novice, paraprofessional, and professional translators). Through the application of the Translation Competence Model (PACTE, 2007) from the Translation Studies field and of the Language Ability Model (Bachman & Palmer, 1996) from the field of Language Learner Strategies research, this study is the first of its kind to compare the differences in translators’ pause patterns in the three different translation phases (i.e., orientation, drafting, and revising phases) and strategy use, and to analyze the relationship of translators’ strategy use and pause vis-à-vis translation performance. The three types of data provided a fuller picture of translators’ translation processes, and the use of the two models served to triangulate and cross-validate the multiple sources of data on translators’ reported and observed strategy use, which amounted to 97 individual strategies and 3,464 instances. The data examined quantitatively and qualitatively showed that translators of higher professional designations or the high performance level had higher percentages in professional, psycho-physiological, bilingual, and affective strategies, and paused longer and more often and spent more time in the revising phase. However, translators of lower professional designations or the low performance level showed higher percentages in instrumental and extralinguistic strategies, and paused longer and allocated more time in the drafting phase. The analysis revealed no significant correlation between overall strategy use or pauses and translation performance. The findings inform researchers, trainers, and trainees in the professions of both translation and additional-language teaching about translation strategy use and pause patterns. / Graduate