Today the e-commerce market has become a bigger part of both organizations’ and consumers’ everyday-life. Earlier established strategies within retail can't be relied upon. The online-based organizations don’t act on the same conditions as traditional shops in terms of location, customer service and personal interaction to name a few. These are factors generally important to the traditional strategy formation within retail. E-commerce is an emerging market and to survive a well-formulated strategy formation is crucial in order to endure the environment. The aim of this research is to create an understanding of how strategy is formed in e-commerce organizations. In order to answer the research questions, a qualitative research, including a case study, have been performed. Empirical material has been conducted mainly through semi-structured interviews, with one of Sweden’s largest internet retailers, regarding their ink- and beauty supply segment. Whittington’s (2001) two perspectives; evolutionary and classical, have been used to get different viewpoints on the organization studied. We came to the conclusion that the key factors in strategy formation within e-commerce are experience in combination with available information about the environment they act within. When making recommendations for future studies, a suggestion has been made to examine the whole strategic process and review successful strategies as a consequence of well-analyzed formation. Finally, to examine the impact of maturity of organizations in relation to their strategic processes, would create an understanding of how the relationship between experience within the organization and the data accessible is constructed.

An increased openness and rapidity of the media has resulted in more comprehensive coverage of organizations and their behavior. Additionally increased customer awareness of corporate ethical behavior has led to higher customer demands and expectations resulting in added pressure on companies. Corporate social responsibility has by researchers been identified as the solution to these increased expectations. There are various types of CSR activities and this study focuses on the concept of Fair Trade. A literature review examining the existing research within the field was performed to identify a research gap that assisted in establishing the purpose of the study. The purpose of this study is to assess how practicing CSR strategies at Coop influence subjective performance, and if these are deliberate or emergent. Three research questions were formulated to answer the purpose. The study tests a research model that has not yet been tested in practice, namely the 3C-SR model. The study has been conducted through a case study in the form of in-depth interviews and content analysis. The study was carried out through five interviews with employees from the Swedish grocery chain Coop. Organization-wide needs for well-developed communication, consistency and clear goals regarding CSR and Fair Trade were recognized. Practical managerial implications have been concluded based on these findings. Additionally, a suggestion for developing the existing research model is presented. The study reveals that Fair Trade is not practiced entirely in accordance with the 3C-SR model. Potentiality was identified concerning the subjective assessment, hence the subjective performance was not ultimate. The study further concluded that despite deliberate features, the corporate strategy was highly emergent.

In this study an effort is made to bring more clear insights into the effect of management control systems on strategy formation. The content of management control systems does not have a final conclusion. Primary components of management control systems include managerial accounting and other controls. In the other hand, the process of strategy formulation mainly divided into two ways which are deliberate strategy and emergent strategy. The deliberate strategy is more applied to stable and predictable conditions while emergent strategy is a prompt response of enterprise to strategic uncertainties. Different perspectives of management control systems will separately help for two kinds of strategy formulation. This is an exploratory study which is contingent on size of organizations. Choosing steel industry as interviewers, the study divided them into two groups that are three large companies and three middle & small companies and proceeded elite interview separately. The conclusions are as follows: 1. High formalization of management control systems help for the need of information of deliberate strategy formulation. 2. The degree of participation and communication of interactive control systems in large companies are higher, while those of interactive control systems in small companies are lower. 3. No matter what the size of an organization is, the initial stages of strategic activities are shaped by management control systems. 4. No matter what the size of an organization is, boundary systems do not serve as a strategy filter. 5. The top management of interviewer companies tends to not realize that employees may make up the key performance indicator (KPI) due to the changes in the priority of KPI for responding to strategic uncertainties. 6. No matter what the size of an organization is, complete management control systems will help for higher performance in organization.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:51:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2003-03-17T00:00:00Z / Este estudo teve por objetivo identificar e descrever o processo de estratégia de duas grandes organizações do ramo varejista pela ótica da estratégia deliberada, destacando as principais características, modelos e ferramentas teóricas que se aplicam aos casos empíricos. Assim, realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa, essencialmente descritiva, com abordagem de estudo de caso junto ao Makro Atacadista e a Wal-Mart. Observou-se que o processo de estratégia do Makro caracteriza-se por ser formal, consciente, sistemático, contínuo e organizado e por seguir uma sequência bem definida de etapas pré-programadas. Os agentes estratégicos são os Diretores da empresa e a estratégia é tornada explícita através de planos e programas. Na Wal-Mart, a formulação da estratégia passa por um processo de concepção, no qual o líder (Presidente da empresa) tem papel fundamental. O modelo é simples e informal e as estratégias são implementadas através de um processo de institucionalização. Nos dois casos, a formulação da estratégia precede a implementação, sendo que a formulação é responsabilidade do Presidente e Diretores e a implementação é executada por seus subordinados. Não se utilizam nos casos as ferramentas analíticas propostas por alguns teóricos da estratégia deliberada e a análise da concorrência é realizada de modo intuitivo. Além disso, não se verifica um modelo de estratégia padrão para as empresas estudadas. Cada qual impõe as suas especificidades organizacionais ao processo de estratégia. Observou-se: que o processo deliberado gera integração e unidade entre os funcionários das empresas, pois todos se alinham num foco comum. Constatou-se ainda a importância do sistema tecnológico das empresas no processo de estratégia, principalmente no que se refere ao controle estratégico. Por fim, o estudo realizado pela ótica da estratégia deliberada demonstrou-se importante, pois, ao contrário do que alguns teóricos, em especial Mintzberg, argumentam, os processos de estratégia empíricos provaram-se essencialmente deliberados. / This study had as purpose to identify and describe the strategy process of two major retailers from the point of view of deliberate strategy, pointing out the main characteristics, models and theoretical tools applicable to empirical cases. .Thus, a qualitative, essentially descriptive research was performed, approaching a case study with Makro Atacadista and Wal-Mart. It was observed that Makro's strategy process is distinguished for being formal, conscious, systematic, continuous and organized, and following a well-defined sequence of predetermined stages. The strategic agents are the company's Directors and the strategy is made explicit through plans and programs. At WalMart, strategy formulation undergoes a conception process where the leader (President of the company) plays a criticai role. The model is simple and informal and the strategies are implemented through an institutionalization processo In both cases, strategy formulation precedes implementation, where the President and the Directors are responsible for its formulation while their subordinates perform its implementation. The analytic tools proposed by some theorists of deliberate strategy are not used in these cases and the competitors' analysis is made based on intuition. Besides, there is no standard strategy model for the surveyed companies. Each of them imposes its own organizational peculiarities on the strategy processo It was observed that the deliberate process generates integration and unity among the companies' employees, since they are ali aligned with a common focus. It was verified further that the companies' technological system is very important for their strategy processes, particularly as regards the strategic control. Finally, the study made from the point of view of deliberate strategy showed up to be extremely important, since, as otherwise argued by some theorists, particularly Mintzberg, empirical strategy processes proved to be essentially deliberate.