Generic manufacturing strategies: A conceptual synthesis

This paper provides a conceptual framework that links manufacturing to business unit strategy and focuses on developing the notion of ‘generic manufacturing strategies’ at the strategic business unit (SBU) level. Specifically, an explicit conceptual link is drawn between ‘generic’ business unit strategies and ‘generic’ functional structures in manufacturing. It is proposed that the alternate manufacturing structures implicitly represent ‘generic manufacturing strategies’. Drawing on ideas and concepts from the business strategy literature and manufacturing literature the paper links Porter's generic strategy framework to a complementary manufacturing structure framework that uses three dimensions: process structure complexity, product line complexity, and organizational scope. Viewed from different perspectives, the ‘manufacturing contingency theory’ concepts presented implicitly in the paper can be viewed as an extension of classic research on the interdependence between strategy and structure. The frameworks developed here provide a partial synthesis of knowledge in the broader disciplines of engineering and management without sacrificing academic rigor and practitioner relevance.     

Innovation management techniques and tools: a review from theory and practice

Knowledge is considered to be an economic driver in today's economy. It has become a commodity, a resource that can be packed and transferred. The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the scope, trends and major actors (firms, organizations, government, consultants, academia, etc.) in the development and use of methods to manage innovation in a knowledge-driven economy. The paper identifies the main innovation management techniques (IMTs) aiming at the improvement of firm competitiveness by means of knowledge management. It will specifically focus on those IMTs for which knowledge is a relevant part of the innovation process. The research study, based on a survey at the European level, concludes that a knowledge-driven economy affects the innovation process and approach. The traditional idea that innovation is based on research (technology-push theory) and interaction between firms and other actors has been replaced by the current social network theory of innovation, where knowledge plays a crucial role in fostering innovation. Simultaneously, organizations in both public and private sectors have launched initiatives to develop methodologies and tools to support business innovation management. Higher education establishments, business schools and consulting companies are developing innovative and adequate methodologies and tools, while public authorities are designing and setting up education and training schemes aimed at disseminating best practices among all kinds of businesses.     

The roles of internet of things technology in enabling servitized business models: A systematic literature review

The internet of things (IoT) is gaining attention from both scholars and practitioners regarding its potential as a key enabler of servitized business models; academic research on this emerging concept is increasing but overall underexplored, however. This paper comprehensively analyses and consolidates the relevant literature on the emerging concept of IoT and servitized business models through conducting a systematic literature review. Based on an analysis of 74 articles, four archetypes of business models are identified that are enabled by the IoT: add-on, sharing, usage-based and solution-oriented and supplemented with information on what role IoT adoption takes, benefits from the provider perspective, and the inhibiting factors per archetype. A framework draws the findings together and forms five propositions about these elements and their corresponding business models that may guide future empirical research and serve as a common typology. Therefore, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on innovative servitized business models by classifying emergent business models utilising IoT and what is currently known about them. For practice, this paper provides an overview for initial consideration by practitioners before adopting IoT in enabling servitized business models and the range of applications IoT may have in enabling servitized business models with examples.     

Solution business models: Transformation along four continua

Using a business model perspective, we identify four continua that are of specific relevance for industrial firms transforming toward solution business models: customer embeddedness, offering integratedness, operational adaptiveness, and organizational networkedness. Using these continua, we explore the opportunities and challenges related to solution business model development in two different business logics that are of particular importance in an industrial context: ‘installed-base’ (IB) and ‘input-to-process’ (I2P). The paper draws on eight independent research projects, spanning an eleven-year period, involving a total of 52 multinational enterprises. The findings show that the nature and importance of the continua differ between the I2P and IB business logics. IB firms can almost naturally transition toward solutions, usually through increasing customer embeddedness and offering integratedness, and then by addressing issues around the other continua. For I2P firms, the changes needed are less transitional. Rather, they have to completely change their mental models and address the development needs on all continua simultaneously.     

Beyond research method to research collaboration: Research co-production relationships with practitioners

The IMP 2018 Conference theme “From Business to Research and Back Again”, highlights the importance of academic research providing and effectively communicating findings that have value for non-academic communities. This paper argues that engaged and reciprocal research relationships with the business community can provide this value. The traditional character of a relationship between the academic researcher and the “researched” is one where researchers dictate the terms of the research, i.e. they choose what topics to consider and to try to get funding for, the modes of investigating, and ways findings are gathered, interpreted and communicated. Extending a recently-published book of readings about doing research WITH managers (Freytag & Young, 2018), the work of a number of the contributors is used as a basis for an argument that increased value is created and greater relevance is achieved by deeper forms of reciprocal research collaboration with business and government practitioners. The foundations of this kind of win-win research collaboration include epistemological compatibility, solid theoretical grounding, relevant research practices and systematic co-evaluation that are geared to specific collaborative settings. The resulting research can better advance not only practice-related knowledge but also the theoretical and empirical knowledge of business academia. This is illustrated with examples of several projects and programmes where research is effectively co-produced and benefits accrue to all.     

Understanding attractiveness in business relationships — A complete literature review

The concept of attraction has received surprisingly little attention within business relationship research. Yet, recently, more and more authors have argued that attraction may contribute to the motivation and willingness of a buyer and supplier to engage in and develop a business relationship. However, the concept of attraction is relatively new and there have been diverse interpretations of it. This literature review collates those interpretations with the aim of enhancing current understanding and creating fundamental knowledge of the current streams of literature on the concept. In examining how the concept has been investigated, the paper aims to establish the direction that the understanding and use of the concept of attractiveness may take in the future in the context of business research. The literature review indicates that attraction has been used in three research areas to explain or resolve a particular construct: 1) attraction in the development of buyer–supplier relationships, 2) customer attractiveness to suppliers, and 3) attractiveness in portfolio and key account management. This literature review contributes to the understanding of how knowledge of the power of attraction could enrich the theory and practice of business relationships.     

Strategy and the research process: A comment

The purpose of this paper is to expand the discussion of the ‘state-of-the-science’ in strategy research. We critically examine the role that theory plays in strategic research, and describe the principles underlying good theory. From a philosophy of science perspective, we argue that: (1) both inductive and deductive methods are valid ways of generating theory; (2) the falsificationist perspective provides an inadequate model for describing the process of theory testing; and (3) managers, researchers, public policy-makers, the popular press, and the public at large all have important roles to play in the knowledge development process.     

Open R&D and open innovation: exploring the phenomenon

There is currently a broad awareness of open innovation and its relevance to corporate R&D. The implications and trends that underpin open innovation are actively discussed in terms of strategic, organizational, behavioral, knowledge, legal and business perspectives, and its economic implications. This special issue aims to advance the R&D, innovation, and technology management perspective by building on past and present studies in the field and providing future directions. Recent research, including the papers in this special issue, demonstrates an increasing range of situations where the concept is regarded as applicable. Most research to date has followed the outside-in process of open innovation, while the inside-out process remains less explored. A third coupled process of open innovation is also attracting significant research attention. These different processes show why it is necessary to have a full understanding of how and where open innovation can add value in knowledge-intensive processes. There may be a need for a creative interpretation and adaptation of the value propositions, or business models, in each situation. In other words, there are important implications for new and emerging methods of R&D management.     

Networks,ecosystems, fields,market systems? Making sense of the business environment

This positioning paper is informed by our judgment that the mainstream research on business marketing and marketing in general is losing its relevance and vigor because it views business environments as narrow “markets” and focuses primarily on dyadic business relationships and their management. Sticking to this limited, economics-driven market view has detached the discipline from major real-world phenomena, leaving it with scant understanding of the contemporary environmental context of marketing and business strategy. Based on a focused reading of literature on business fields, business networks, business ecosystems, and market systems, we venture our own comprehensive theoretical framing of complex business environments summarized in two frameworks. In the pursuit of relevance our integration is avowedly simplifying as we strive for parsimony. Key points explicate the nested, multi-layered, multimodal, transitional and conditioned character of the business environment, and the dynamics, phases and processes of the evolution of that nested environment. We use the frameworks constructed, which form an initial theory of complex business environments, to supply a research agenda for business marketing and offer brief managerial conclusions.     

Customer reference marketing: Conceptualization,measurement and link to selling performance

The use of customer references to facilitate marketing and sales in business markets has received growing interest among practitioners and academics. The importance of references has been highlighted in a wide range of contexts, such as customer relationship management, customer value management, sales, and marketing communications. Yet knowledge about the effective application of references in business remains scant, and studies have not addressed in-depth what constitutes customer reference marketing or studied its relation to firm performance. This study contributes to this important but underdeveloped business marketing topic by 1) conceptualizing customer reference marketing based on theory and an extensive qualitative field study, 2) building a measure for the construct using survey data, and 3) demonstrating its relevance by linking the construct to firms' selling performance with additional collected data. The results broaden and specify the current understanding of how to effectively deploy references in business markets and provide evidence of the hypothesized performance, as well as contingency effects. The established conceptual foundations for the phenomenon provide substantial opportunities for practitioners and theory-testing oriented business marketing research.     

企业逆向跨国并购后的组织身份管理模式研究

“逆向跨国并购”(即并购发达国家企业)已成为中国企业获取海外战略性资产、提升全球竞争力的重要“跳板”。然而,与传统跨国并购相比,逆向跨国并购呈现“以弱并强”甚至“蛇吞象”的独特特征,导致并购双方存在显著的身份落差。身份落差使得并购后的“组织身份管理”变得尤为重要,因为不恰当的身份管理模式会对并购整合产生负面影响。基于此,本文综合采用探索性案例研究方法与大样本统计方法,探究中国企业逆向跨国并购后的组织身份管理模式。研究发现,组织身份落差的方向和强度是决定并购后组织身份管理模式选择的重要因素;高强度身份逆差与“单一隔离型”模式匹配,低强度身份逆差与“双元联邦型”模式匹配,身份顺差与“统一吸收型”模式匹配;不同身份管理模式在话语建构、业务运营、权力关系、象征行为等方面存在显著差异。进一步大样本统计研究表明,身份落差与身份管理模式的匹配关系具有较高普适性,但也受核心业务相关性、业务分割等因素影响。本文不仅揭示身份落差与身份管理模式之间的匹配关系,构建逆向跨国并购后的组织身份管理理论,也对中国企业在逆向跨国并购后有效管理双方组织身份、提升并购整合绩效具有启示意义。     

Network pictures as a research device: Developing a tool to capture actors' perceptions in organizational networks

In business networks, strategic actions are believed to be guided by actors' subjective views or perceptions of their surroundings. Researchers thus consider these perceptions as important for understanding network related phenomena. Despite their recognized importance, there has not been much research aimed at developing a way to systematically capture these perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to show how actors' subjective views of the business network can be analyzed using the research device of network pictures. This is accomplished by developing an empirically derived dimensional model for capturing different aspects of an actor's subjective view. We exemplify how the developed device can be applied, and illustrate how there seem to be ‘types’ of ways of perceiving the business network. This paper therefore represents a methodological contribution through the development of a tool that may change researchers' practices in understanding business networks.     

Networking capability in business relationships — Concept and scale development

In previous research on inter-organizational marketing and supply chain management the processes through which a focal company deals with the dynamic nature of its business relationships is not fully addressed or understood. To address this gap in the literature, this study proposes the concept of networking capability (NC) as the complex organizational capability oriented towards managing business relationships along all their main development stages. The main proposition is that such a NC capability exists and can be measured, for various types of business partners (especially customers and suppliers), and that NC represents an important aspect that influences firm performance significantly. In order to define the NC concept and develop as test a measurement model, this study uses empirical research and integrates it with the existing literature on business networking-related capabilities. This study distinguishes itself from previous research on networking-related capabilities which not only utilize activities and routines at the company level to measure relational capabilities, but incorporate instead emotions and attitudes of managers towards their exchange partners. Our study, on the other hand, develops and tests a measurement model of NC that is consistent with a grounding in the resource-based view of the firm, specifically the dynamic capability view of the firm. It thereby contributes to the theory and practice of relationship management by proposing a conceptualization and measurement model of NC with regard to all main relationship stages and main types of business partners. Our study adopts a three-stage process of scale development, including qualitative and quantitative research. In summary, our empirical research suggests our NC measurement model as reliable and valid with regard to two main exchange partners: suppliers and business customers. Nomological validity of NC construct is also supported through regression model with company performance as the dependent variable.     

Developing business customer engagement through social media engagement-platforms: An integrative S-D logic/RBV-informed model

While the service-dominant logic-informed nature of customer engagement in social media has been recognized in business-to-consumer contexts, little is known regarding this theoretical interface in business-to-business (B2B) settings. Insight into business customer engagement (BCE), as expressed through social media and/or other B2B engagement-platforms (e.g. trade shows) and its S-D logic-based antecedents and consequences thus remains limited. Based on the observed gap, this paper integrates the theoretical entities of BCE, B2B social media engagement-platforms, and S-D logic and through its analyses, uncovers the related importance of the resource-based view (RBV) in affecting this association. An integrative S-D logic/RBV-informed model is developed, where BCE denotes an industrial customer's investment of operant/operand resources in supplier interactions via particular B2B engagement-platforms, including social media. The model considers business customer actors and resources in driving business customer resource integration, business customer resource integration effectiveness, and business customer resource integration efficiency, which act as BCE antecedents that extend to coincide with BCE. BCE, in turn, triggers business customer cocreation and relationship productivity, which subsequently, contribute to business customer relationship quality and ultimately, supplier performance. A set of research propositions is derived from the model, which serves as a useful guide for further research. Managerial implications focused on B2B social media marketing are discussed, before we conclude with an overview of research limitations and future research directions.     

Creating value in business relationships: The role of sales

Understanding the creation of value in business relationships has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers alike. By adopting a relational perspective, recent research on business relationships has made much progress in understanding value-creating processes. As the sales function is thought to be a pivotal part of the value-creating processes in business relationships, the evolving view on creating relationship value clearly has implications for our understanding of the role of sales in these processes. In contrast to its importance, the question of how the sales function contributes to creating value in business relationships has been largely neglected in extant literature. The objective of our paper is to answer this question by systematically linking the relational value creating process to the sales function's content. Interpreting value creation as interaction process, we identify four features of value-creating processes in business relationships suggested in recent research (i.e., jointness, balanced initiative, interacted value, and socio-cognitive construction) and, based on these, outline a framework that is used to define a set of tasks that are key to creating value in business relationships and hence become critical for sales in its hitherto neglected role as co-creator of relationship value. We illustrate the various tasks of this new role of sales with data from 43 interviews with sales managers and salespeople. Along with related normative recommendations in extant literature, the interviews provide support for the validity and relevance of our framework for understanding the role of sales in creating relationship value. This framework puts forward a much-needed first effort towards a theory of sales' role in creating relationship value and offers several opportunities for future research.     

Value creation by knowledge‐based ecosystems: evidence from a field study

A growing number of research and development‐driven companies are located in knowledge‐based ecosystems. Value creation by these ecosystems draws on the dynamics of single firms (interacting and partnering) as well as the ecosystem at large. Drawing on a field study of a Dutch high‐tech campus, two key sources of value creation are identified: (1) facilitation of the innovation process for individual companies and (2) creation of an innovation community. Furthermore, the coevolution of the ecosystem's business model with firm‐level business models explains why technology‐based firms join, stay in, or leave the ecosystem at a certain point in time. A remarkable finding is that ecosystem managers have to deliberately facilitate exit routes for companies that no longer fit the ecosystem in order to enhance and reinforce its business model. As such, this study suggests a dynamic capability perspective on knowledge‐based ecosystems that need to develop a business model at the ecosystem level to create sufficient innovative capacity and entrepreneurial fitness.     

The antecedents of open business models: an exploratory study of incumbent firms

Firms engage increasingly in open business models. While most research has previously focused on typologies or challenges of open business models, their specific antecedents have not been studied so far. We use data from eight open business model cases to explore this question and identify five main antecedents of open business models: (1) business model inconsistency, (2) need to create and capture new value, (3) previous experience with collaboration, (4) open business model patterns, and (5) industry convergence. Based on openness characteristics from the existing literature, we differentiate four basic types of open business models and develop an initial understanding of the relevance of the identified antecedents for each of them. We thereby provide first guidelines for practitioners in choosing the right form of business model openness for their company.     

A NICE agenda for IMP research

The IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group has engaged in a number of interesting developments in the past few years. Particularly adventurous have been the agendas of ‘pictures’ and sense-making and of time. In this paper we argue that borrowing and combining contemporary foci within social science on narratives, identity, culture and epoché temporality (for which we use the acronym N.I.C.E) allows the construction of an approach that can integrate these IMP agendas into a new research direction for the group that will keep it at the leading edge of marketing research. The purpose of our paper is to introduce and integrate discursive and temporal elements into the understanding and research of business networks to develop a more dynamic and hermeneutic approach. Our purpose is to provide a contribution to the field in exploring how identities are formed within business networks through narrative episodes in interconnecting relationships over time. We bring together all of the elements of a NICE agenda in an attempt to provide an integrative, ‘multi-lens’ theory of business networks focussed within the IMP research tradition. In doing so, we construct meaning as itself networked; sense-making involves relating presently narrated episodes to symbolic and material aspects of other narrative network episodes and events through emplotment and storying.     

Return on marketing investments in B2B customer relationships: A decision-making and optimization approach

The basic notion of relationship marketing entails that firms should strive for mutually beneficial customer relationships. By combining relationship marketing theory and operations research methods, this paper aims to develop and demonstrate a managerial decision-making model that business market managers can use to optimize and evaluate marketing investments in both a customer-oriented and economically feasible manner. The intended contributions of our work are as follows. First, we add to the return on marketing literature by providing a first decision-making approach that explicitly assesses the optimization of marketing investments in terms of profitability, effort, and resource allocation. Second, we show how the risk of marketing investments can be assessed using sensitivity analysis. By means of an empirical study the versatility of our decision-making approach is demonstrated by assessing various critical decision making issues for business marketing managers in detail.     

The impact of aligning business,IT, and marketing strategies on firm performance

In order to succeed in today's competitive business environment, a firm should have a clear business strategy that is supported by other organizational strategies. While prior studies argue that strategic alignment enhances firm performance, either strategic alignment including multiple factors or strategic orientation of firms has received little attention. This study, drawing on contingency theory and configuration theory, investigates the performance impact of triadic strategic alignment among business, IT, and marketing strategies while simultaneously considers strategic orientation of firms. A research model is tested through SEM and MANOVA using data collected in a questionnaire survey of 242 Yemen managers. The findings indicate that (1) triadic strategic alignment has a positive impact on firm performance and (2) there is an ideal triadic strategic alignment for prospectors and defenders. This research contributes to strategic alignment literature and managers' understanding of how to align business, IT and marketing strategies to improve firm performance.