Frontline Strategy Work has recently evolved into an important phenomenon in Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research, particularly concerning frontline employees (FLEs). FLEs are non-managerial staff with distinct roles, identities, and organisational tasks. They are typically divided into two categories: frontline workers, who handle operational, supplier, and customer-facing roles, and frontline leaders, who oversee teams and report to middle management. Despite lacking managerial privileges, FLEs play a critical role in bridging the organisation and its customers, influencing customer satisfaction and organisational outcomes. Frontline Strategy Work is crucial to understanding how strategy emerges in organisations. SAP scholars have expanded the traditional view of strategising beyond upper management. The focus on Frontline Strategy Work has brought FLEs into strategic analysis, enabling scholars to apply various theoretical lenses.

This study examines how disadvantaged foreign subsidiaries that lack the requisite resources and mandate respond to therealization that a greener technology, a form of digital innovation, is about to disrupt their business. Specifically, we foc us on asubsidiary that lacks the requisite resources and mandate for change and yet detects an important technological shift. We drawon the subsidiary issue-selling literature to explore how this subsidiary attempts to mobilize headquarters’ attention andengagement in its interests and concerns. We identify three evolutionary issue-framing mechanisms: matters of fact, concern,and urgency. These mechanisms, influenced by the subsidiary, its local strategic network, and its headquarters, shape the issue-selling process over time. Our study challenges established assumptions about subsidiary roles in MNEs and highlights theircritical role in identifying and addressing technological disruptions, thereby pushing the boundaries of current IB research. Ithighlights the critical role of foreign subsidiaries in identifying and addressing digital and technological disruptions. It shows howeven disadvantaged subsidiaries can mobilize headquarters’ attention and engagement in their interests and concerns throughissue-selling. It suggests that MNEs need to create a more supportive environment for foreign subsidiaries to engage in issue-selling, especially when it comes to technological disruptions.

During the new product development (NPD) process, exploitation and exploration are important, especially for small manufacturing firms (SMFs). However, limited resources and a lack of internal knowledge capacity have forced SMFs to work with knowledge-intensive professional service firms (KIPSFs). This article investigates the impact of SMFs’ networks with KIPSFs on the performance of NPD. Using data from 164 SMFs in the northwest of England, this article reveals a linear relationship between firm's product innovativeness and its network with KIPSFs for exploitation, and a curvilinear relationship between firm's speed to market and its network with KIPSFs for exploration. A curvilinear relationship was also found between networks with KIPSFs for ambidexterity and firm's product innovativeness and speed to market. These results lead to several practical implications for networking strategy as each network supports different innovation activities and produces different outcomes.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are major events in organizational development and the post-merger phase is widely recognised as being crucial for value creation. One of the most important decisions in this process is the speed of integration. However, despite a growing body of literature on this subject, conclusions remain a source of persistent equivocality. In fact, this debate has been dominated by diametrically opposed, and often highly normative, views advocating either fast or slow post-merger integration (PMI). One commonality within this discussion though, is the shared assumption that integration proceeds at a linear, constant rate, whatever the speed. We challenge this assumption.

We undertook a 30-month, longitudinal study of two merging, not-for-profit, organisations. Using detailed and multiple sources of process data, we were able to identify and track periods of comparatively rapid and equally comparatively slower integration during the two-and-a-half- year PMI process. We thus offer a novel empirical demonstration of the changes in speed during the PMI process. We support this with a theoretical discussion using the temporal concepts of chronos and kairos. We analyse the determinants and mechanisms of changes in speed, asking why and how these variations occur. We call this mechanism the kairotic switch and discuss its theoretical and managerial uses and implications.