How Competitive Strategies Affect Organizational Structure

Organizational structures can change according to the strategy determined by the businesses. The purpose of this chapter is to extend that research by analyzing the relationship between Porter's competitive strategies and Burns and Stalker's structure types. The authors conduct their research on the enterprises in Technology Development Zones in Istanbul, Turkey. One hundred sixty of 5,506 enterprises participated in the research. Then, to search deeper, the authors conducted a qualitative research on the 25 enterprises in Technology Development Zones. Results show that, while the mechanical structure tendency is observed in the enterprises following the cost leadership strategy, the mechanical or organic structure tendency is not observed in the enterprises following the differentiation and focus strategies. Also, according to the interviews, results show that the organizational structures in the enterprises in Technology Development Zones are affected by the size of the organization or the strategic awareness level of the senior managers rather than the competitive strategies.

Impact of Porter’s Generic Strategy on Firm Performance with reference to Nepalese Retail Banking Sector

Porter’s generic strategies are the proven and pervasive strategic options in achieving competitiveness and better firm performance. This paper aims in examining the effect of Porter’s generic strategies (low-cost, differentiation, and focus) on firm performance in the context of Nepalese retail banks, a more competitive service industry. This study applies casual comparative research design and the data have been collected through administering questionnaire survey from 75 senior bank managers of 18 Nepalese commercial banks who being engaged in strategic affairs. The econometric model has been constructed to measure the expected effect of the strategies on firm performance. The descriptive analysis, Pearson’s correlation analysis, and multivariate regression analysis were conducted. The empirical results of correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis produced consistent results indicating positive associations between generic strategies and firm performance. The empirical results from regression analysis declared higher positive and significant impact of low-cost on firm performance. Similarly, positive effect of differentiation strategy and focus strategy on firm performance was reported. The findings suggested that pursuing low cost strategy provides more financial returns with comparison to differentiation and focus strategies. The finding also suggested for combination of low-cost and differentiation (and focus) strategies could provide better competitiveness and firm performance. Keywords: Generic Strategy, Low-cost strategy, Differentiation strategy, Focus strategy, Firm performance

Academic emotions in giving genre-based peer feedback: an emotional intelligence perspective

Researchers have become interested in the emotion in feedback situations, yet little research has examined peer feedback-giving emotions. Giving feedback is emotionally laden and it is challenging and demanding for feedback givers to manage their emotions. Uncovering how feedback givers regulate their emotions as well as determining what influences them could extend the current understanding of the peer feedback-giving process. Informed by emotional intelligence (EI) (Goleman, Daniel. 1995. Emotional intelligence. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.), a notion describing an individual’s ability to monitor and manage one’s own and others’ emotions, this case study investigated how two Chinese Ph.D. English as a foreign language students utilized EI to regulate their feedback-giving process on research proposal writing. Data was collected from research proposal drafts and revisions, peer feedback, self-reported emotions, interviews, and stimulated recalls. The textual and qualitative data analysis revealed that individual differences existed regarding feedback focus, strategies, and emotions. The findings suggested that the feedback givers adopted different EI patterns to regulate their feedback giving process under the influence of five factors: goals and purposes, prior feedback experience, time constraints, the intimacy of relations, and the feedback givers’ perceived significance of the sections in a research proposal. Practical implications for teachers, supervisors, and students were discussed.

Cleft constructions and focus strategies in Modern Armenian

Cleft constructions are one of the possible focus strategies available in Modern Armenian alongside prosody and specific syntactic constructions. Cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativized argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Though typologically cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalization depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalization respectively. The corpus-based data show an unequal distribution of clefted pronouns as predicate clefts (impersonal with no agreement) and subject clefts (copular verb coindexed with personal pronouns as a subject) depending on the person and the polarity. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.

Entrepreneurship Empowerment Strategy in Islamic Boarding Schools: Lesson from Indonesia

Compared to formal educational institutions, Islamic boarding schools have their uniqueness and many advantages. Today's Islamic boarding schools provide learning about religious knowledge and entrepreneurship to equip and provide independence when returning to the community. This study aims to analyze the types of entrepreneurial empowerment of students and analyze the strategies of the Nurul Ulum Islamic Boarding School in Kemuningsari Lor Village, Panti District, Jember Regency in empowering santri entrepreneurship. The research method used is descriptive qualitative. While the data collection techniques used were observation, interviews, and documentation. The study results show that the types of entrepreneurial empowerment activities that are managed and developed by the pesantren are adapted to the conditions of the pesantren environment, infrastructure, and capabilities possessed by the pesantren. First, the generated businesses result from waste management (making cellphone bags, handkerchiefs, school bags, and brooches). Second, dress code (sewing) in clothes, headscarves, coats, and pants. Then, the entrepreneurial strategies implemented at the Nurul Ulum Islamic Boarding School include cost leadership, differentiation strategies, and focus strategies. This research contributes in-depth knowledge that Islamic boarding schools play an essential role in entrepreneurship in providing new jobs and poverty alleviation and contributing to the country's economic development.

The Effect of Differential Attentional Focus Strategies on the Performance of Military Elite Shooters

Background and Objective. The effect of attentional focus strategies on performance has been an interesting area of investigation, especially when the precision of performance is of significance. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of different attentional focus strategies on performance precision of elite military shooters. Methods. This study is semiexperimental with an intragroup design. A number of 10 military marksmen (30-42 years old) with at least 10 years of experience in shooting performed under four attentional focus strategies in a counterbalanced design. In each strategy, two blocks (each consisting of 20 trials) were conducted. Shooters’ performance was recorded using SCATT device and analyzed using the factorial variance analysis with repeated measure. Results. Results showed that the interactional effects of internal-external/relevant-irrelevant focuses of attention were significant on shooting record, shooting accumulation, and stability on the target center. Results suggest that the external-relevant attentional focus strategies were more effective than other focus strategies. Conclusion. The results of the study support the hypothesis that external-relevant attentional focus produced better scores, better accumulation, more stability at the target center, and less average fluctuation. Therefore, this attentional focus strategy improves performance precision of military elite shooters.