A new matrix for building platform portfolios: how companies can sustain their leadership

2019 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Hensmans

Purpose An essential corporate decision-making tool, the Boston Consulting Group's growth-share matrix, is due for an upgrade. The purpose of this paper is to upgrade this growth matrix for use by corporate managers in the current platform age. Designed in the conglomerate age of the 1960s and 1970s to help corporate managers make disciplined and systematic portfolio investment decisions, the matrix is ill-adapted to the platform age in which we now live. The most valuable companies in the world are now platform companies, and many companies are transitioning to a more platform-based corporate portfolio. In this paper, the author explains how corporate managers can build and execute a sustainable platform portfolio. Design/methodology/approach The author started with a thorough study of the contextual assumptions and theoretical background of the original Boston Consulting Group growth-share matrix (which the author has been teaching for the past decade). He contrasted these with the assumptions and theoretical background developed in the platform strategy literature. To test and refine the framework, the author presented and discussed its applicability at companies such as GSK and with local consultants. He then used five consecutive cohorts of master students [280 students (70 groups)] to test this framework on a total of 20 companies (both “born platform” and “product to platform” companies). Findings The platform ecosystem age requires a corporate decision-making matrix that discriminates between businesses on the basis of platform market growth and platform commercialization capability, rather than product market growth and market share. As in the original matrix, these businesses correspond to three different investment horizons (Figure 1): the continuous renewal of blockbuster business, the integration of emerging killer businesses and the experimentation with joint innovation businesses. This paper helps corporate managers build and execute a sustainable platform portfolio by means of a sequence of six decision-making steps and a clear organizational template for successful execution. Originality/value The portfolio matrix, decision-making sequence and organizational execution advice presented in this paper are fit for both “born platform” companies such as Google (Alphabet) and “product to platform” hybrids such as Lego. The paper illustrates this with practical examples for both types of companies.

Author(s):  
Mary J. Henold

The Epilogue considers recent attempts to affirm the importance of Catholic laywomen in the church and extend their participation in decision making, while upholding Catholic teaching on gender essentialism and complementarity. Such limited efforts must be placed in the context of the 1960s and 1970s, when Catholic women’s leadership was also affirmed, and yet these women were still limited to prescribed roles and excluded from power. The work that Catholic laywomen did in these years to challenge Catholic teaching on gender roles, and remake laywomen’s identity, has been largely ignored and forgotten. As a result, the church, and particularly Pope Francis, continue to give lip service to laywomen’s dignity while failing to listen to their voices or give them genuine authority.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-311
Author(s):  
Claudia Roesch

This article investigates the role of the West German family planning association Pro Familia in the abortion reform of the 1960s and 1970s. It examines the question of legal abortion from the perspective of reproductive decision-making and asks who was to make a decision about having an abortion in the reform process—the woman, her doctor, or a counsellor. During the early reform suggestions of §218 in the 1960s, Pro Familia supported the West German solution of allowing legal abortion only in medical emergencies. Opinions within the organization changed as leading members witnessed legalization in Great Britain and New York. The feminist movement and the Catholic opposition to legal abortion influenced positions in the reform phase of the 1970s. Meanwhile, Pro Familia put emphasis on compulsory pregnancy crisis counselling as aid in decision-making for individual women and a tool for putting a decision into practice. Throughout the reform process, Pro Familia continued to perceive legal abortion not as way to enable women to make their own decision but as a pragmatic solution to emergencies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen A. Bourassa ◽  
Peggy H. Cunningham ◽  
Jay M. Handelman

PurposeThis study seeks to investigate the interaction between marketers' strategic behaviors, social norms, and societal stakeholders within a particular historical time period, the 1960s and 1970s.Design/methodology/approachThe study's findings are based on an analysis of two dominant retail industry trade publications, Chain Store Age and Progressive Grocer.FindingsThe analysis reveals an intriguing array of strategic marketing activity throughout these two decades not captured in considerations of marketing strategy at the time. The retailers examined engaged in two interesting behaviors. First, they responded to a wide range of stakeholder demands in a paradoxical fashion. Second, as retailers were confronted with social norms, instead of conforming to these norms they worked to help influence and shape them to their own advantage. This examination of retailers' behaviors over two decades has allowed the authors to present an intriguing new dimension to the understanding of marketing strategy.Originality/valueThe study found that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, marketers appeared to be actively engaged in a social dialogue. Through this dialogue, they not only responded to norms, but also attempted to shape the norms that came to define legitimate behavior for the marketers. This kind of strategic marketing endeavor was not accounted for in the managerial school of thought that dominated marketing thinking at the time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-133
Author(s):  
Jin Gi Kim ◽  
Hyun-Tak Lee ◽  
Bong-Gyu Jang

Purpose This paper examines whether the successful bid rate of the OnBid public auction, published by Korea Asset Management Corporation, can identify and forecast the Korea business-cycle expansion and contraction regimes characterized by the OECD reference turning points. We use logistic regression and support vector machine in performing the OECD regime classification and predicting three-month-ahead regime. We find that the OnBid auction rate conveys important information for detecting the coincident and future regimes because this information might be closely related to deleveraging regarding default on debt obligations. This finding suggests that corporate managers and investors could use the auction information to gauge the regime position in their decision-making. This research has an academic significance that reveals the relationship between the auction market and the business-cycle regimes.


Author(s):  
Bob Rehak

Today’s franchises of fantastic media depend on visual effects for their existence, not just in their local textual homes (a feature film, a TV episode, a videogame) but across multiple screens and platforms, working transmedially to build ongoing storyworlds, imbue bodies with evidence of life, and ultimately to travel freely as spectacular subgenres in themselves. In this book’s four case studies, major fantastic franchises of the last half century—Star Trek, Star Wars, the Middle Earth films, and The Matrix—reveal themselves as busy sites of negotiation between the late analog era of the 1960s and 1970s and the digital blockbuster era that followed. Arguing that this colonization took place largely in and through the visual effects design and engineering of high-profile media properties, the chapters explore television series art direction and its relationship to an amateur “blueprint culture,” documenting the contents of media’s imaginary worlds; the previsualization practices through which visual effects rebrand complex webs of creative contributions under the sign of the techno-auteur; the animation traditions that bring special-effects-assisted performances to life; and the role of special effects in larger circuits of visual culture. Approaching special effects both as specific technological practices and discursive performances of behind-the-scenes labor, More Than Meets the Eye plumbs the analog roots of contemporary transmedia franchises to find the unexpected behaviors and impacts of special effects that hide in plain sight, constructing perceptions of narrative worlds and characters as on another level they construct our collective ways of imagining franchise cinema, digital media, and technological change.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinaj Valangattil Shamsudheen ◽  
Saiful Azhar Rosly

Purpose This paper aims to develop and validate scale for ethical decision-making model in marketing that confirms religious–humanistic approach with special reference to ethical philosophy in Islam. Synthesized model of Ferrell and Gresham contingency framework for ethical decision-making in marketing and Al-Ghazali’s ethical philosophy are considered as theoretical background of this study. Design/methodology/approach “Content validity test” and “factor analysis” are used to refine measurement items and define as well as validate the scale, respectively. A total of 362 samples were collected from Islamic banking practitioners in the United Arab Emirates. Findings Item scale of the constructs comprised in the conceptual model defined and validated by using content validity test (CVT). Underlying theoretical dimensions of the constructs were extracted through exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and evidence of validation of scale/construct reported through CFA. Research limitations/implications The scope of this paper is limited to development and validation of scale. Future studies are suggested to use the newly validated scale/construct in descriptive model, and examine the hypotheses prescribed in the model. Further, explanations on theoretical background of this paper is limited as the main objective of this paper is to statistically validate the conceptual model adopted. Practical implications Proper application of validated scale of ethical decision-making model in marketing should enable concerned authorities of marketing department to gauge and understand the ethical aspects of individuals in the organizations. Apparently, apprehension of ethical perception of workforces in organizations should benefit in enhancing competence and minimize the costs from unethical behaviour, and, thus, better governance in whole level of management. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is an initial attempt to develop and validate the scale of ethical decision-making model in marketing that accommodates both religious and humanistic aspects into a single model to examine the decision-making behaviour related to ethical issues of individuals in organizations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 982-1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paraskevas Argouslidis ◽  
George Baltas ◽  
Alexis Mavrommatis

Purpose – This paper aims to consider decision speed’s role in the largely neglected decision area of product elimination. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on an inter-disciplinary theoretical background (e.g. organisational, decision speed and product elimination theories), the authors develop and test a framework for decision speed’s effects on the market and financial outcomes of a stratified random sample of 175 consumer product eliminations. Findings – In contrast to decision speed research that hypothesised (and often failed to confirm) linearity, results show inverted ∪-shaped decision speed-to-decision outcomes relationships, with curvatures moderated by product importance, environmental complexity and turbulence. Research limitations/implications – Findings are suggestive of several implications for the above theories (e.g. contribution to the dialogue about performance-enhancing value of rational vs incremental decision-making; evidence that excessive decision speed may become too much of a good thing). Certain design limitations (e.g. sampling consumer goods’ manufacturers only) point at avenues for future inquiry into the product elimination decision speed-to-outcomes link. Practical implications – Managerially, the findings suggest that product eliminations’ optimal market and financial outcomes depend on a mix of speed and search in decision-making and that this mix requires adjustments to different levels of product importance, interdependencies with other decision areas of the firm and environmental turbulence. Originality/value – The paper makes a twofold contribution. It enriches decision speed research, by empirically addressing speed’s outcomes in relation to a decision area that is not necessarily strategic and represents the first explicit empirical investigation into outcomes of decision speed in product line pruning decision-making.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Claerwen O’Hara

Abstract This paper provides a genealogy of consensus decision-making and democratic discourse in the multilateral trade regime. It argues that the contemporary link between the World Trade Organisation’s consensus procedure and ideas of ‘international democracy’ has its roots in a struggle that took place over the international economic order in the 1960s and 1970s.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satu Huuhka ◽  
Sini Saarimaa

Purpose When dwellings fail to respond to residents’ needs, housing will suffer from segregation and buildings will possibly be demolished ahead of their time. This paper focuses on the lack of variation in the sizes of dwellings as a factor in residential segregation. It examines this issue in the context of Finnish mass housing built in the 1960s and 1970s. The purpose of the paper is to review how mass housing layouts can be adapted to produce the currently absent flat sizes. Design/methodology/approach The paper operates at the intersection of human geography, building stock research and adaptability research. First, statistical data are utilized to investigate how dwellings and households of different sizes are distributed over the Finnish housing stock. Second, the building layouts of mass housing are examined in detail. Third, the potential that flats in mass housing have for size modification is reviewed. Findings There is a disparity of available dwelling sizes between different housing types, and statistics show that the proportion of large households has decreased significantly in blocks of flats over the last decades. The lack of large dwellings in mass housing may contribute as one factor to the segregation of the neighborhoods built in the 1960s and 1970s. The findings show how the variation of apartment sizes can be increased in mass housing. Originality/value The housing stock is rarely examined in detail in segregation research, even though it is a major determinant for a city’s social structure. This paper argues that to address segregation sustainably, it is necessary to understand the housing stock better and to view it as an adaptable asset.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 350-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jone Martinez Palacios

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework for democratize inclusively through participatory and deliberative apparatus. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on literature from inclusion in deliberation, gender in participation and intersectionality to critically analyze the democratic deepening. By bringing into dialogue with one another “the norm of parity of participation” (Fraser, 2006), “communicative democracy” (Young, 1993) and the “matrix of domination” (Collins, 1990) a response to one of the questions that has been put to European and North American thought in democracy since the 1960s is proposed: how is it possible to democratize inclusively? Findings The reproduction of domination through apparatuses for the extension of democracy is both possible and probable. So, to democratize inclusively, it is necessary to bring the theories on vertical and horizontal inclusion into dialogue with each other. With the aim of establishing a dialogue between the two, it is necessary to export complex thought regarding oppression and inequality into the design of deliberative and participatory apparatuses. For that, consider that designing democratization processes based on the fact that the intersectional experience of oppression is not an exception but rather an everyday occurrence allows participatory procedures to be made more inclusive. Practical implications This paper proposes a tool designed with a focus on dialogue among the norm of parity of participation, communicative democracy and the matrix of oppression, based on 11 direct questions for the inclusive design of deliberative or participatory procedures. Facilitators, experts and social agents involved in deliberative or participatory processes will be able to use this question-based instrument in their work. Originality/value This paper has applied value because it offers a conceptual key to the design of and thought about participatory inclusive processes. The originality of this approach lies in its shift away from partial analyses of horizontal and vertical inclusion. It is of use both to facilitators of participatory processes and educators and researchers concerned with democratization. It offers an instrument for working on reflexivity with regard to inclusion in democratic extension, based on a series of key questions that can be used as a checklist. In comparison with other forms of considering inclusion in democracy, the proposal considered includes complex thought on oppression based on the critique of simple identity, as well as on an intersectional perspective.


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