Building a Business and Strategic Intelligence Policy as a Strategy for Promoting Congolese Business Progress and Healthy Economic Development in Eastern DRC

The aim of this study was to verify the existence of business and strategic intelligence policies at the level of Congolese companies and at the state level, likely to foster progress and healthy development in the east of the DRC. The study was based on a mixed perspective consisting of objective analysis of quantitative data and interpretative analysis of qualitative data. The results showed that business and strategic intelligence policies have not been established at either company or state level, as this is an area of activity that is not known to the players in companies and public departments, and there are no units or offices in their organizational structures responsible for managing strategic information for competitiveness on the international market. In addition, there is a real need to establish strategic information management units within companies, upstream, and to set up a national strategic information management department or agency to help local companies compete in the marketplace, downstream. This reflects the importance and timeliness of building business and strategic intelligence policies to ensure economic progress and development in the eastern DRC. Business and strategic intelligence provides companies with an appropriate tool for researching, collecting, processing and disseminating information useful for decision-making among stakeholders, in order to cope with a crisis or competitive situation. The study suggests a number of key recommendations based on its findings. To the government, it is recommended to establish the national policy of business and strategic intelligence by setting up a national agency of strategic intelligence in favor of local companies;and to companies to establish business intelligence units in their organizational structures in favor of stakeholders to foster advantageous decision-making in the competitive market and achieve progress. Finally, the study suggests that studies be carried out to fully understand the opportunities and impact of business and strategic intelligence in African countries, particularly in the DRC.

The Moderating Effect of Team Orientation Over the Relationship Between TMT Strategic Decision Speed and Firm Performance

Due to the fast changing competitive environment faced by organizations, companies are forced to find ways to quickly adapt to technological innovations, changing demands of customers, and strategic actions taken by competitors. The purpose of the paper is to further the relationship between top management team （TMT） strategic decision speed and firm performance, considering the team processes when making strategic decisions in the face of complex environments. Measures of TMT strategic decision speed, firm performance, team orientation, and environmental complexity were collected from 29 top management teams of Mexican companies, which represented a total of 118 questionnaires. Pearson correlations among the variables and moderated regression analyses were performed, to test the hypotheses included in the study. Results show a positive relation between environmental complexity and TMT strategic decision speed and between team orientation and speed. Furthermore, results show that there is a positive relation between TMT strategic decision speed and firm performance in the presence of team orientation. In other words, team orientation moderates the relationship between TMT strategic speed and firm performance. Among the implications for managers is that they must ensure effective team processes （e.g., building consensus, active participation, and trust among team members） when making strategic decisions in order for the firm to perform better.

A WISE STRATEGIC DECISION——Written in Celebration of Establishment of China-South Africa Diplomatic Ties

South Africa is to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic ofChina by the end of this year while cutting off its official ties with Taiwan.This will be a major event worthy of warm celebrations. It will usher in a newstage in the annals of bilateral relations of friendship and cooperation. The decisionfor the changeover in diplomatic recognition by the new South Africa Governmentis a wise, crucial strategic action taken after all-round deliberations on its long-termstate interests and carried out in accordance with diplomatic norms accepted in theinternational community. No doubt, it will exert positive impact worldwide.

Influence of decision makers＇ characteristics on risk analysis in strategic investment decisions

This study empirically examines the influence of decision makers＇ （DMs） characteristics on risk analysis in strategic investment decisions （SIDs） of companies operating automotive industry in India. This study has developed and tested a structural model that linking select demographics, risk propensity and risk analysis in SIDs. The primary data were collected from Senior Finance Professionals （CFOs, GMs, VPs and so on） representing 36 listed automotive companies operating in India. Based on the responses collected from a single cross-sectional mailed survey, this study finds that risk propensity has a significant positive influence on the extent of usage of risk analysis in SIDs.

Western China Development Drive——Strategic decision for improving right to subsistence and development

The implementation of the Western China Development Strategy is a concrete expression of accelerating the economic development and social progress and sateguarding and protecting the right to subsistence and development of the people in that part of the country,

Maximizing Supermarket Profits:Data-Driven Strategies for Pricing,Sales,and Forecasting

The actual circumstances of daily life are crucial for the purchasing and pricing strategies of supermarkets.Developing strategies based on these circumstances can assist businesses in ensuring profits and fostering win-win cooperation.This paper explores methods to maximize profit through purchasing and sales strategies.Initially,the relevant data for various categories of vegetables is integrated.Through histograms,their sales patterns are directly understood,highlighting the most popular vegetables.Upon analyzing each vegetable category,it becomes evident that their sales data do not conform to normal distributions.Therefore,Spearman correlation coefficients are calculated,revealing strong correlations between certain categories,such as aquatic roots and edible fungi.A line chart depicting the top ten selling vegetables indicates a noticeable periodicity.Traditional fitting methods struggle to adequately model the sales of each vegetable category and their relationship with cost-plus pricing.To address this,additional factors such as holidays,weeks,and months are incorporated using techniques like random forest regression.This approach yields cost-plus pricing dependence curves that better capture the relationship,while effectively managing noise.Regarding sales volume prediction,the original data displays significant volatility,necessitating the handling of outliers using the threshold method.For missing data,linear interpolation is employed to mitigate the impact of continuous missing values on prediction accuracy.Subsequently,Adam-optimized long short-term memory(LSTM)networks are utilized to forecast incoming quantities for the next seven days.By extrapolating from normal sales volume,market capacity is estimated,allowing for additional sales through discount strategies.This framework has the potential to increase original income by 1.1 times.

Generalization of the linguistic aggregation operator and its application in decision making

A generalization of the linguistic aggregation functions （or operators） is presented by using generalized and quasiarithmetic means. Firstly, the linguistic weighted generalized mean （LWGM） and the linguistic generalized ordered weighted averaging （LGOWA） operator are introduced. These aggregation functions use linguistic information and generalized means in the weighted average （WA） and in the ordered weighted averaging （OWA） function. They are very useful for uncertain situations where the available information cannot be assessed with numerical values but it is possible to use linguistic assessments. These aggregation operators generalize a wide range of aggregation operators that use linguistic information such as the linguistic generalized mean （LGM）, the linguistic OWA （LOWA） operator and the linguistic or- dered weighted quadratic averaging （LOWQA） operator. We also introduce a further generalization by using quasi-arithmetic means instead of generalized means obtaining the quasi-LWA and the quasi-LOWA operator. Finally, we develop an application of the new approach where we analyze a decision making problem regarding the selection of strategies.

A group decision model for credit granting in the financial market

Group decision models that contemplate the particularities of the decision-making process help organizations pursue their strategic objectives.In the financial market,the primary interest of organizations consists in ensuring financial returns,which guarantee stability for the organization.This study identifies major problems in the current process of credit granting in the financial market and argues the need for automatizing the organizational decision process while respecting the autonomy of decision-makers.To this end,this study proposes a group decision model based on the Strategic Choice Approach(SCA)for granting credit in a financial market organization.The results show that the adoption of the proposed model offers considerable gains in terms of organizational goals,transparency of the decision-making process,security for decision-makers,and reduction of organizational conflicts.

Tri-Intersectional Model of Leadership by Values:A Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Open Technology Assessment System

Purpose-Nowadays successful organizations need to be masters at leadership by values to play in a constantly changing and transforming environment.But how can leaders and organizations effectively convene strategic and culture development based on values?This paper presents the Tri-Intersectional Model of Leadership by Values(TMLV)in which leaders and organizations can integrate a sustainable strategy,as well as a culture and value-based management system that simultaneously leverages human,financial,and social resources.With its three essential axes of values(economic-pragmatic,emotional-development,and ethical-social)at their intersection points,it allows leaders to focus on the strategy linkages:innovation-intersection between the economic-pragmatic values axis and the emotional-development values axis-allows them to develop sustainable innovations;survival-intersection between the economic-pragmatic values axis and the ethical-social values axis-enhances their organization’s survival;finally,sensibility-intersection between the economic-pragmatic values axis and the ethical-social values axis-makes them more humane and more socially-responsible.The application of the TMLV,using the Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Open Technology Assessment System,can be a great inspiration for stimulating and working with values in organizations,as well as allowing leaders to develop a values-based,high-involvement,and performance-oriented culture.Methodology/Approach-This research considers empirical data analysis of the 37 case studies of the EU-InnovatE project(http//www.euinnovate.com)-a pioneering initiative to align innovation values to integrate the end user into the process of innovation and entrepreneurship related to a sustainable lifestyle and the green economy in Europe-using a fuzzy multiple-criteria decision making method and open technologies system,such as server-side PHP language,MariaDB Database,fork of MYSQL Database Management System,and JavaScript libraries to perform operation directly on the user’s browser.Findings-The application of the TMLV model,considering empirical analysis of the extracted values from the case studies,using the Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Open Technology Assessment System,can be a great inspiration for stimulating and working with values in João organizations,as well as allowing leaders to develop suitable strategies and interventions for shaping a sustainable high-performance culture.Research implications-This research can be a starting point for further research to assess the effectiveness of the leadership model based on a decision-making open technology system in any given organization,as well as to invite researchers who have positive passion about working with values to participate in the improvement of this tool.Originality/value-The Tri-Intersectional Model of Leadership by Values using the Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Open Technology Assessment System is presented as an evolution in leadership models that may be used to fuel innovation,survival,and a sensibility strategic focus that is necessary to optimize human and organizational performance and deliver effective solutions to the massive array of human,financial,and social problems we face today.

Development of a Strategic Planning Model for a Municipal Water Supply Scheme Using System Dynamics

This paper reports the development of a system dynamics model for the strategic planning of a municipal water supply scheme. The model is capable of handling the critical variables that impact on the operations of a water supply scheme. The model was developed using the dynamo programming software to handle the process dynamics. Other supporting softwares—Fortran, Clipper 5, and Epiglue are used to handle data input, analysis and presentation of results in a user-friendly environment. The model was validated by applying it to the simulation of the University of Ibadan Water Supply Scheme for which extensive data of operations were collected over a period of ten years. The results obtained were found to be realistic and useful for the planning of plant operations. It is concluded that the model developed is sensitive to variable changes and has the capability of answering various operational “what-if” questions. As a strategic planning tool, the present model generates, for different scenarios, important operational information for the management of the water supply scheme. It is concluded that SD model is a useful tool to assist water managers and policy makers in making decisions and evolving strategic planning for water supply.

Different Rationales of Coalition Formation and Incentives for Strategic Voting

Research on strategic voting has mainly focused on electoral system effects but largely neglected the impact of different rationales of coalition formation. Based on a formal model of rational party choice and a simulation study, we systematically investigate this impact and explore the implications. We show that the logic of the underlying coalition formation procedure clearly affects the degree to which the electorate is exposed to strategic incentives regarding the vote choice. The key implications are that sincere voting is more often in the voter’s best interest if parties are policy-seeking and if there is increased uncertainty during the stage of coalition formation. Furthermore, we explore how different types of coalition formation affect strategic incentives across the policy space.

The Principles behind a Strategic Plan

This strategic planning has changed dramatically between the 1960’s and 1970’s. Having survived its original design flaws, it has evolved into a practical system of strategic management. Planning systems, in fact, have become more sophisticated in their selection of planning approach and techniques. The approach to the strategic plan should involve different methods and techniques, more complete and more sensitive to the critical uncertainty of many of the variables that planning must address. This change represents a recognition of the basis of a strategic plan that are able to determinate its success. Implementing this strategic approach, focused on method and technique, can play a variety of important and useful roles peripheral to the strategy development and implementation process.

Understanding the Impact of Economic Crisis on the Distribution of Organizational Decision-Making Authority

Understanding the dynamics of decision making in the right way is an important problem for the management of organizations.In today’s business life organizations are becoming more complex,and the environments they are operating in,are becoming increasingly uncertain.The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of managerial decision-making process in complex internal and external environments by sharing the results of an empirical study(Onuk,2009).While taking the levels of the organizational structure as one of the important dimensions of complex internal environment,complex external environment is reflected within the study as economic crisis.Using the survey tool developed by Onuk(2009),the empirical study realized in the Turkish organization of a large global company investigated decision-making process to understand how decision-making authority for different types of decisions,identified as strategic,tactical,and operational level decisions,was distributed throughout the organization levels,and how this distribution was impacted by economic crisis.The results of the study confirmed the following common expectations:(1)Strategic decisions are mostly taken at upper hierarchical levels of the organizational structure;(2)during times of economic crisis strategic decision making is centralized;and(3)during times of economic crisis distribution of decision-making authority is concentrated at upper management levels.

The Effects of Business Intelligence on Strategic Management of Enterprises

Discipline of informatics must contain one of the significant issues that need to develop for especially processing systems of large-scale enterprises. At this point, a well-designed business intelligence （BI） system, which includes a structure of regular business activities and analyses within whole an enterprise, requires to manage stored data and transform the data into information as an output and forecasting targets and provide sustainable growth for an enterprise or an organization. Information systems （IS） support to constitute these processes by using the information technologies （IT） that cause to capture data which will be transformed into information and integrate whole subsystems that need to develop for all departments of the enterprise. BI tools organize all parts of these business analysis and processes and effect on the top management level of enterprises or organizations. Decision makers at the top-level of management must use these information and knowledge to orient future decisions for the enterprise that includes investments, company policies, precautions for the future negations, etc. This study shows that the BI is not only an IS, but also reinforcement for strategic decisions of the enterprises and/or organizations.

Strategic Management Accounting Research of Insurance Companies under the Internet Background

With the development of Internet information technology, public financial management reform deepening, accounting focus Universities facing the management accounting change, the financial sector as a core sector universities, data centers will become a big school and participate in school management, decision-making, analysis and forecasting. We analyzed the development of university management accounting brings opportunities and challenges, and puts forward some countermeasures. The arrival of the era of big data, data important asset cause rapid Internet Insurance sector is concerned. This paper describes the development of the insurance status of the Internet, combined with the opportunities and challenges facing the era of big data Internet Insurance is proposed under the era of big data Internet Insurance Development Strategy in order to provide reference for the healthy and rapid development of the Internet insurance. For the “Internet ＋”, Big Data applications in other industries to produce value-added effect polymerization, and the lack of coal mine large data mining the potential value of the use of problems in the research of coal mine production safety monitoring enterprise warning, large-scale mining and material handling equipment safety standard remote control of the whole life cycle, coal mining enterprises at all levels of production safety data sharing cloud services platform, cross-dimensional aspects of supply and demand and price forecasting perspective platform for big data application mode analysis, data mining by large technical team unified programming model and set standards in the interface protocol, security co-ordination and so do the pre-proposals. He pointed out that “Internet ＋”, the comprehensive application of big data will become an important means and ways to improve mine safety and production, to achieve lower costs, increase efficiency role.

战略决策逻辑、冗余资源与数字商业模式构建——基于浙江177家企业数据的fsQCA分析

研究旨在探讨企业如何组合战略决策逻辑与冗余资源来构建数字商业模式。研究分析了战略决策逻辑与冗余资源对数字商业模式构建的单独与联合作用。在此基础上,通过对浙江177家企业数据应用模糊集定性比较分析方法,研究了数字商业模式构建所需的战略决策逻辑与冗余资源组态。结果显示,企业构建数字商业模式的组态是多样的,主要包括稳健的外部机会探索型、积极的内部条件利用型与双元型3种类型;构建效率型数字商业模式的组态与构建新颖型数字商业模式的组态存在显著的差异。研究结果也发现构建新颖型数字商业模式相比于构建效率型数字商业模式更强调投入企业内化的冗余资源与弱化因果逻辑影响而显得更激进。

环境扫描、机会窗口与后发企业颠覆性创新模式选择——基于吉利和比亚迪的案例研究

[研究目的]快速变化的技术环境和丰富多样的市场需求,为后发企业提供了实施颠覆性赶超的机会,如何辨识和把握外部环境机会窗口并能否契合组织内部动态能力转化为创新决策和行动是企业成败的关键。[研究方法]该文通过对浙江吉利控股集团有限公司和深圳比亚迪股份有限公司的双案例对比分析,探讨环境扫描对企业识别外部环境多重机会窗口的意义及企业内部环境与机会窗口的适配性对于企业进行颠覆性创新模式选择的重要性。[研究结论]研究发现:面对不确定性激增的商业世界,战略决策前的环境扫描可以帮助后发企业有效识别技术机会窗口、需求机会窗口及制度机会窗口,而企业内部环境的充分考量有利于后发企业将自身优势最大化,从而成功实现颠覆性创新。

情报产品模糊性的塑造机理研究

[研究目的]情报产品用语含糊现象并不鲜见,其与情报产品质量标准,如“准确、客观”等要求背道而驰,不加以规制将影响到情报的决策辅助功能。[研究方法]该文首先对模糊性及相关概念进行了界定与区分,阐明了该议题研究的重要意义。在此基础上,重点从三个方面剖析了情报产品模糊性的塑造机理。[研究结论]情报产品模糊性有其主客观原因。其中情报分析人员的角色模糊、情报工作的目标模糊、决策者的战略性模糊构成了情报产品模糊性的主要发生机理。缓解的思路在于,密切情报人员与决策者之间的交流,弥合两者之间因可能存在的“地位”差异而导致的服务妥协;强化情报生产过程的精细度和透明度等等。

山区公路交叉口驾驶避险决策行为特性分析

为研究驾驶特征指标与驾驶避险行为决策的关联规则以提升驾驶安全,将驾驶避险决策行为划分为纵向“停车避险”和横向“转向避险”,并运用驾驶模拟系统构建12种山区公路交叉口交通冲突虚拟场景,招募38名驾驶人进行试验,采集车辆特征和驾驶人扫视、眨眼、注视等眼动特征数据。基于随机森林构建驾驶避险决策行为模型,然后引入沙普利加和解释(SHapley Additive exPlanation, SHAP)框架进一步分析车辆、眼动特征与驾驶避险行为之间的非线性关系。结果表明:模型对纵、横向避险行为预测的准确率分别为84.77%、94.70%;纵向速度标准差、扫视持续时间标准差、轨迹偏差标准差、侧向速度标准差与驾驶避险决策行为存在明显关联,如纵向速度标准差过大(约大于10 km/h),纵向“停车避险”可能性明显增加。