Customer capabilities,switching costs,and bank performance

Customers develop switching costs when they invest time and effort to develop capabilities required to optimally use a given product. Such capabilities are likely to be firm specific and cannot be transferred perfectly to competitors' product offerings. Customers who face switching costs are likely to remain with the same firm and consume complementary products that meet their needs. Thus, firms can achieve competitive advantage by exploiting customers' switching costs. In this paper, we hypothesize that the extent to which firms can benefit from customers' switching costs is contingent upon the firms' internal cross‐selling capabilities. We use online banking data to test our hypotheses and find that customers' switching costs contribute to banks' profitability only in the presence of high levels of internal cross‐selling capabilities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

外包中的知识吸收对创新能力的影响研究——基于不同战略定位的分析

文章认为,战略定位分为顾客导向和公司企业家精神导向,不同的战略定位对显性知识和隐性知识的吸收会产生不同影响,获取知识、开发新知识是培养创新能力的重要途径。在外包合作中,顾客导向的中国企业获取的主要是显性知识,而过强的顾客导向会抑制隐性知识吸收。与顾客导向不同,具备公司企业家精神的企业通过外包合作努力获取未来需要的所有知识,尤其是隐性知识,而隐性知识比显性知识更有利于提高创新能力。     

Innovation dynamics in the EU: convergence or divergence? A cross-country panel data analysis

This paper investigates whether a convergence or divergence of national innovation capabilities of the 15 EU countries occurs in the course of time. An answer to this question permits immediate conclusions with regard to the success prospects of a convergence of per capita incomes and labor productivities within the EU. For the empirical analysis based on patents granted at the US-Patent and Trademark Office, unit root tests for time series and panel data are used to scrutinize the convergence hypothesis. Taking all results together, evidence points to the fact that an absolute convergence of innovation capabilities is an exception. However, for a number of countries the results suggest either conditional convergence or convergence to their own growth paths.

企业家精神、动态能力与技术创新：后发企业技术创新追赶机理与路径

基于动态能力理论,在浙江省慈溪市157家后发企业技术创新的调查数据基础上,引入企业家精神构建理论模型,利用结构方程模型巢状分析法探究企业家精神、动态能力与后发企业技术创新之间的关系。研究结论有：一,企业家精神对后发企业技术创新有正向影响。二,动态能力对后发企业技术创新有正向影响。三,动态能力在企业家精神对企业技术创新的影响作用中起部分中介作用。     

Twenty-five years of business systems research and lessons for international business studies

Since 1992, the national business systems (NBS) approach has been increasingly used to analyse not only firm characteristics, structures and strategies within NBS, but also the nature of international business and its interactions with both national and transnational institutions. In reviewing 25 years of NBS literature, we heed calls in IB journals urging researchers to use NBS notions and findings in IB research. Our systematic review of 96 articles analyses the patterns and contributions of NBS literature, revealing four thematic junctures: (1) comparative business systems, (2) firm internationalisation and the management/organisation inside MNCs, (3) the role of internationalisation in the development of organisational capabilities and innovation and (4) the emergence of transnational communities in and across firms and societies. Themes are described in terms of (a) the research questions (RQ) they focus on, (b) how NBS approach investigates the RQ and what are the major findings, (c) how IB frames and approaches the same RQ, (d) how does the NBS approach extend the perspectives of IB and (e) what are the problems faced by NBS in terms of developing further insights into the RQ. Our review contributes to the recent endeavour of IB research to institutionalism, encouraging a productive dialogue between IB and NBS research.     

Circular business model implementation: A capability development case study from the manufacturing industry

Circular business models (CBMs) have huge potential to deliver economic, social, and environmental benefits, but CBMs have yet to be implemented widely in industrial settings. One reason is that they are often presented as one-size-fits-all solutions, but this is misplaced because product-specific criteria and company capabilities determine the correct choice and implementation of CBMs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how CBM selection and capability development facilitates the implementation of CBMs. For this purpose, we have adopted a qualitative research approach and undertaken 25 explorative interviews in three large Swedish manufacturing companies. In this paper, a CBM implementation framework consisting of two parts has been developed. The first part addresses the choice of the appropriate CBM based on tactical configurations. The second part provides a capability development path by explicating underlying routines that need to be progressively developed in order to move smoothly to more advanced CBMs.     

The function-specific microfoundations of dynamic capabilities in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

In mergers and acquisitions, the acquiring firm must combine two firms’ resources and capabilities so that the outcome yields value. In individual firms, the marketing & sales, and R&D functions have typically developed intertwined and complex relationships over time. These multifaceted dependencies may obscure the integration of the firms and their functions. In order to reveal to what extent cross-functional relationships determine the success or failure of an acquisitions, we have made one of the first attempts to study merging firms’ function-specific capabilities, underlying microfoundations, and their cross-functional relationships during the integration process—instead of focusing on acquisition capabilities as such. We use longitudinal data from two cross-border acquisitions between US and Finnish SMEs. Our results indicate that major differences between merging firms’ cross-functional microfoundations—that is, their structures, processes, routines, and skills—might either enforce or erode the seemingly promising synergies at the product and market levels, depending on managerial awareness of their nature.     

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) to finance new ventures

In an initial coin offering (ICO), new ventures raise capital by selling tokens to a crowd of investors. Often, this token is a cryptocurrency, a digital medium of value exchange based on the distributed ledger technology. Both the number of ICOs and the amount of capital raised have exploded since 2017. Despite attracting significant attention from ventures, investors, and policy makers, little is known about the dynamics of ICOs. This initial study therefore assesses the determinants of the amount raised in 423 ICOs. Drawing on signaling theory, the study explores the role of signaling ventures' technological capabilities in ICOs. The results show that technical white papers and high-quality source codes increase the amount raised, while patents are not associated with increased amounts of funding. Exploring further determinants of the amount raised, the results indicate that some of the underlying mechanisms in ICOs resemble those found in prior research into entrepreneurial finance, while others are unique to the ICO context. The study's implications are multifold and discussed in detail. Importantly, the results enable investors to more accurately understand crucial determinants of the amount raised (e.g., technical white papers, source code quality, token supply, Ethereum-standard). This reduces the considerable uncertainty that investors face when investing in ICOs and enables more informed decision-making.     

An agile marketing capability maturity framework

This work proposes a four-stage maturity framework for the development of an agile marketing capability (AMC) in the context of MICE tourism. Through an inductive study based on 16 semi-structured interviews with CEOs and managers, we provide a snapshot of organizations at varying levels of maturity in the management and development of AMC based on the degree of “sophistication” undertaken in approximately four dimensions (customer-oriented responsiveness, high flexibility, human collaboration, quick and continuous improvement). Recommendations to further enrich the debate toward this novel line of inquiry are presented. This study also has important implications for managers, offering a useful tool to assess and improve their marketing efforts to develop AMC and achieve greater abilities to adapt to dynamic and fast-changing environments.     

Unlocking the niche potential of senior tourism through micro-firm owner-manager adaptive capability development

This paper explores the role of adaptive capability development among micro-tourism owner-managers (OMs) in pursuit of the niche potential of the evolving senior tourism market. We discuss strategic adaptive capability development in a tourism micro-firm environment, prior to outlining the research context and adopted interview method used to elicit OM views. Findings indicate that limited human resources impede the level of adaptive capability engagement in micro-tourism firms, whereby operational level capabilities act as an antecedent to adaptive capabilities. Such adaptive capabilities, including market sensing capabilities and senior tourism alignment activities, are developed by OMs as a means of differentiating their respective firms from sectoral rivals in pursuit of niche market potential. Extracted from the findings, we present a Senior Tourism Adaptive Capability Framework prior to disclosing the study's practical and theoretical implications.