L10 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance: GeneralReturn

This literature review aims to assess the evolution of performance monitoring articles in relation to the business strategy based on an overview of articles indexed in the WoS and Scopus databases. The initial dataset of articles was obtained based on carefully developed keywords. In the second phase, we restricted the selection to business and management journal articles and reviews written in English before 2019. The authors simultaneously reviewed the abstracts of all 571 articles in the third phase of the study. These were subsequently re-read and limited; thus, the final dataset for further analysis includes 157 articles published between 1983 and 2019. The most important result is that the field of business strategy and performance is not subject to trends. While in the field of business strategy the literature is still dominated by generic strategies according to Porter and the strategy typology according to Miles and Snow, in the field of performance measurement we identified the market position (sales volume, growth in sales volume, etc.) and profitability (profit margin, return on assets, etc.) as the dominant method.
Implications for Central European audience: Despite a considerable amount of work focusing on bibliographic analysis, there remains a lack of literature on the link between strategy and performance. The paper brings potential value for the Central European audience by drawing attention to the systematisation of knowledge in the field of performance articles and its trends in relation to the field of business strategy. The overview of the theoretical frameworks contributes to a better orientation of the current state of the art and creates opportunities for future research.

This paper deals with the need to complexly evaluate maturity, management, stakeholder relationship and resources utilisation of an organisation. It searches for an assessment tool independent on time and industry contexts. The research was conducted in two phases. The literature review on a set of existing performance models did not find any suitable tool. Based on that, a new performance model was created to assess the maturity of an organisation, focusing on soft factors like its leadership, processes and culture. It had been tested using structured interviews with managers in Czech, Slovak, German and Chinese companies. The model is based on a set of 17 non-financial criteria, divided into categories Management, Stakeholders and Resources. The results are given for each criterion, category and as an overall score. This article briefly describes the developed CAT model, methodology of its creation and validation and explains how it can be applied as an assessment tool. Its results can be benchmarked among different organisations/overtime to track development progress.
Implications for Central European audience: This model gives both practitioners and researchers a lean, yet powerful tool to evaluate the maturity of an organisation with structured and measurable results. The new possibilities for quantitative research using the CAT model are now available for researchers to assess even larger samples of organisations with reasonable effort. For practitioners, the value is in a quick discovery of own weaknesses/strengths with structured results and recommendations. Model structure and selection of respondents ensures that the results are measurable and cover views of both management and employees.