with the unfolding of recent developments in the arab world and fall of political systems in some of arab countries as well as spread of islamic thoughts, new grounds have been created for new wave of islamic awakening. it seems that this wave has become dynamic over the past few years. islamic awakening is an opportunity for realization of the ideal of palestine. the present paper is an attemp...

We develop a typology of corporate venture units, based on their strategic role in the corporation, and specifically on (a) their relative emphasis on exploration versus exploitation and (b) the internal versus external locus of opportunity they pursue. Following configurations logic, we argue that the structures and systems used by venture units will be a function of their strategic role, and ...

The paper analyzes coalition formation in Dutch municipalities. After discussing the main features of the institutional setting, several theories are discussed, which are classified as size oriented, policy oriented and actor oriented models. A test statistic is proposed to determine the predictive power of these models. The empirical analysis shows that strategic positions as well as some of t...

While previous research considering the emergence of strategic alliances has typically viewed their formation through a single theoretical lens, we suggest that multiple theoretical perspectives are needed to understand their complexity. This research conceptually integrates the resource-based view and institutional theory to assess variations in firm-level motivations to form strategic allianc...

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the Agent-oriented paradigm to cope with the needs imposed by nowadays complex and networked systems. Developing Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) calls for addressing aspects such as interaction, autonomy, collaboration and pro-activeness. One way to cope with these needs is to have agency properties as well as intentionality in the center of the software...

The importance of IT strategy is generally accepted, though in practice this may vary from one IT organization to another. The design of a formal IT strategy may be required or not, depending on the environment, but, independently of this, strategic decisions still must be made and therefore strategic practices are performed. In order to make any improvement in strategic practices, awareness of...

An interesting problem in the economics of innovation and strategic management of labs is to explain the drivers of breakthroughs and paradigm shifts in science. This study confronts the issue by analysing a main case study: the technological determinant of the discovery of quasi-periodic materials that has generated a scientific paradigm shift in crystallography. Unlike user-friendly radical i...

R esearchers have argued that human resources may be seen as a source of sustained competitive advantage for organizations (Barney, 1991, 1995; Becker & Gerhart, 1996). The underlying assumption is that human resources are unique to the extent that competitors cannot imitate them. This research has led to the identification of a number of human resource management practices that contribute to c...

Fibroblasts in intact tendons align with stretching direction, but they tend to orient randomly in healing tendons. Therefore, a question arises: Do fibroblast responses to mechanical stretching depend on their orientation? To address this question, human patellar tendon fibroblasts were grown in custom-made silicone dishes that possess microgrooved culture surfaces. The direction of the microg...