Marketing capabilities and innovation-based strategies for environmental sustainability: An exploratory investigation of B2B firms

While emerging literature on sustainability shows that environmentally responsible strategies can contribute to competitive advantage and enhanced financial performance, little is known about specific marketing capabilities that lead to sustainable consumption behavior, and whether implementing such strategies leads to firm competitive advantage. Using the case method approach, this study explores marketing-related strategies and practices pertaining to sustainable consumption as reported by leading sustainable firms in the B2B context. We examine case studies of forty seven B2B firms and identify key marketing capabilities that tie to innovation-based sustainability strategies, sustainable consumption behavior and firm performance. We use our findings to develop a conceptual framework linking marketing capabilities to innovation strategies for firm sustainability, sustainable consumption behavior and firm competitive advantage, and put forward propositions for future research.     

Capabilities, innovation and competitive advantage

This special issue was aimed at advancing the literature examining the role of capabilities in innovation-based competitive strategy. Whilst the innovation literature has over the years moved away from its ‘product innovation’ pre-occupation to capture the role of other forms of innovation in value creation, the capability view has progressed from its ‘rigid’ or ‘static’ view to a ‘dynamic’ view in an effort to capture market dynamism. Despite the recent theoretical advancements the dynamic capability view still lacks a strong empirical base. Contributors to the capability literature over the recent years have adopted multiple research methods to capture capabilities that include cross-sectional designs, case studies and longitudinal studies. Within this backdrop, the articles that were selected for this special issue covers both conceptual and empirical approaches to examine the relationship between capabilities and technical and non-technical innovations and performance outcomes. This essay provides a future research agenda to advance this promising research field. It highlights the need for clearer conceptualizations and development of measures of dynamic capabilities, environmental conditions that underpin the development of dynamic capabilities within the firm and research into the much debated relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage and organizational performance.     

Multi-focused strategy in value co-creation with customers: Examining cumulative development pattern with new capabilities

The previous research of capabilities development has largely focused on the established capabilities, i.e., quality, delivery, cost and flexibility, although there are a wide variety of possible dimensions. Few studies report the accumulation effect about adding new capabilities on an established base in a different strategic setting. Motivated by the increasingly important strategy of value co-creation with customers, this study aims to examine the patterns of capability development with consideration of adding service and customerization capabilities. Taking a downstream-focused view and based on the data collected at Chinese firms, this study extends the cumulative theory to the scenario of value co-creation with customers by identifying the mutual enhancement effect when adding new capabilities on an existing base. Specifically, this study finds that firstly, new capabilities (i.e. service and customerization) and established capabilities (i.e. flexibility and delivery) are mutually supportive in value co-creation scenario; Secondly, flexibility plays a primary role to amplify other capabilities in the new strategy; Thirdly, the capabilities development follows a sequence of flexibility, delivery, service and customerization. The findings of this study also enrich value co-creation studies by offering proposed capabilities development pattern which facilitates strategists to operationize the concept of value co-creation with customers and helps guide companies to take both upstream-focused and downstream-focused views of capabilities development to excel in coming competition.     

GDDS型高性能电工电子系统实验装置快速维护方法

对快速、有效、全方位维护GDDS型高性能电工电子系统实验装置的方法进行了系统的总结，这种方法的检修思路对高校的电工实验装置维护具有实际指导意义。     

The co‐evolution of capabilities and transaction costs: explaining the institutional structure of production

This paper proposes that transaction costs and capabilities are fundamentally intertwined in the determination of vertical scope, and identifies the key mechanisms of their co‐evolution. Specifically, we argue that capability differences are a necessary condition for vertical specialization; and that transaction cost reductions only lead to specialization when capabilities along the value chain are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we argue that there are four evolutionary mechanisms that shape vertical scope over time. First, the selection process, itself driven by capability differences, dynamically shapes vertical scope; second, transaction costs are endogenously changed by firms that try to reshape the transactional environment to increase their profit and market share; third, changes in vertical scope affect the nature of the capability development process, i.e., the way in which firms improve their operations over time; and finally, the changes in the capability development process reshape the capability pool in the industry, changing the roster of qualified participants. These dynamics of capability and transaction cost co‐evolution are illustrated through two contrasting examples: the mortgage banking industry in the United States, which shows the shift from integrated to disintegrated production; and the Swiss watch‐manufacturing industry, which went from disintegration to integration. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relation‐specific capabilities and barriers to knowledge transfers: creating advantage through network relationships

This study examines the role of network knowledge resources in influencing firm performance. More specifically: Can a firm that uses the identical supplier network as competitors and purchases similar inputs from the same plants achieve a competitive advantage through that network? In a sample of U.S. automotive suppliers selling to both Toyota and U.S. automakers, we found that greater knowledge sharing on the part of Toyota resulted in a faster rate of learning within the suppliers' manufacturing operations devoted to Toyota. Indeed, from 1990 to 1996 suppliers reduced defects by 50 percent for Toyota vs. only 26 percent for their largest U.S. customer. The quality differences were found to persist within suppliers because the inter‐organizational routines and policies at GM, Ford, and Chrysler acted as barriers to knowledge transfers within suppliers' plants. These findings empirically demonstrate that network resources have a significant influence on firm performance. We also show that some firm resources and capabilities are relation‐specific and are not easily transferable (redeployable) to other buyers or networks. This result implies that a firm may be on its production possibility frontier for each customer but the productivity frontier will be different for each customer owing to constraints associated with the customer's network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic capabilities,social capital,and rent appropriation: ties that split pies

Who reaps the fruits of a dynamic capability? We argue that while social capital is essential for the acquisition, integration, and release of resources at the core of a dynamic capability, actors can also use social capital for personal gain. Thus, social capital may be a key to understanding both rent generation and rent appropriation. Even when causal ambiguity obscures individual contributions, they may use their social capital to establish credible claims on the rent. Specifically, employees who occupy structural holes, span organizational boundaries, or who are highly central may be most able to appropriate rent because their social capital grants credibility to their claims. Rent that is appropriated in this way may be unobservable in performance measures that fail to distinguish normal compensation from rent. We contribute by identifying the specific role of social capital in a dynamic capability and linking social capital to rent appropriation patterns. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

试析中国中小企业跨国能力的培养

在循环经济模式下企业采取循环经济生产模式时必须具有显著的竞争优势,对循环经济模式下企业竞争优势的形成条件进行分析,实现资源价格向其价值的回归,加大对企业技术创新的支持力度,建立起完善的绿色认证制度体系和信息披露制度,将有助于政府制定特定的激励和约束机制,引导企业走循环经济道路。     

对综合配套改革的几点思考

在改革攻坚阶段,最艰难和最重要的是进一步突破制度和机制的约束,推进综合配套改革,为业已建立的市场经济和开放型经济提供制度保证和支撑。因此,我们需要新的改革动力,新的改革思路,新的改革示范。综合配套改革是国家经济社会发展、实施改革开放战略的非常重大的战略布局,要继续为全国的经济体制改革、政治体制改革、文化体制改革和社会各方面的改革提供新的经验和思路。