The Co-evolutional Advantage: Strategic Management Theory and the Eclectic Paradigm

The eclectic paradigm has been one of the leading frameworks for explaining multinational activity over the past two decades. Yet recent trends in international business pose a challenge to the explanatory power of the paradigm. Strategic management theory, with its focus on performance differences between firms, provides a useful complement to the OLI framework in understanding the activities of the modern multinational. In particular, global competition and the management of a firm's global stocks and flows of knowledge merit closer attention.The advent of global competition requires us to shift from the existing institutional perspective of comparisons of firms and markets or of foreign firms and local firms to a firm-level perspective of comparisons of the multinational firm to its global competitors. It also necessitates a focus on firm-level capabilities in knowledge management relative to competitors, the development of these capabilities involving both macro and micro co-evolutionary processes. Our arguments incorporate these changes to extend the OLI paradigm to accommodate both an economic and a strategic management perspective.     

Knowledge Spillovers and Alliance Formation

Our study examines the conditions under which firms enter into strategic alliances subsequent to knowledge spillovers. We propose that spillovers serve as signals of knowledge dependence and potential complementarity, encouraging alliance formation to enable better learning and limit appropriation. We posit that the likelihood of a knowledge alliance subsequent to a spillover is contingent on the specialization of each of the firms in the knowledge involved in the spillover. We also hypothesize that the effects of such specialization on knowledge alliance formation are moderated by technological ties and geographic distance between the dyad involved in the spillover. Our results demonstrate significance for the effects of specialization, supporting learning and appropriation motivations. Technological ties strengthen while geographic distance weakens the relationship between specialization and alliance formation.     

From active participation to engagement in online communities: Analysing the mediating role of trust and commitment

The advent of new media and the internet has brought social media to the fore of all brand communications. Marketers are looking at leveraging social media and all its capabilities to their advantage so as to build and manage customer relationships while also co-creating brand experiences. Online communities are one of the most preferred choices of marketers, from among all the tools and features that social media offers. The present study aims to understand how user’s active participation in online communities is instrumental in influencing their engagement with the community. The above relationship is tested on a sample of 203 respondents, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), where trust and commitment are explored as mediators. While trust is found to partially mediate the relationship between active participation and engagement, commitment acts as a full mediator. The influence of personal characteristics (membership duration, gender) is also explored as an ancillary outcome to the study.     

Relationships between prior experience of training,gender, goal orientation and training attitudes

Relationships were examined between prior experience with training, goal orientation, gender and training attitudes. Participants (n = 165) had a minimum of six months of work experience. Results from regression analyses indicated that mastery‐approach goal orientation had a beneficial effect on training attitudes for men but not for women. In addition, prior experience with training had a beneficial effect on training attitudes, and women had more favorable attitudes than men. The results provide initial evidence that gender moderates goal orientation effects in training contexts.     

Breakthrough innovations in the U.S. biotechnology industry: the effects of technological space and geographic origin

How are breakthrough innovations created? Our study suggests that the type of external knowledge sourced determines the likelihood of creation of breakthrough innovation. We characterize the external knowledge utilized on two dimensions: its technological space and geographic origin. We draw on the concepts of local search and national innovation systems to identify critical knowledge inputs. We hypothesize that external knowledge characterized by technological distance or proximity and the national or international context can have a differential impact on breakthrough innovation. This is due to the contradictory implications of its value created by distance and to absorptive capacity limitations in effectively utilizing knowledge from a different context. To test our hypotheses we use patent data from the U.S. biotechnology industry. Our findings suggest that technologically distant knowledge of national origin has a curvilinear effect and technologically proximate knowledge of international origin has a positive effect on breakthrough innovation. However, simultaneous exploration along technologically and geographic dimensions is not useful to generating breakthrough innovation; technologically distant knowledge of international origin does not have a significant impact. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumer decision‐making styles and post purchase behaviour of poor for Fast Moving Consumer Goods

More than half of the world's population is poor. Certainly, their purchasing power cannot be compared with that of the riches, but it is their collective purchase potential which makes them a substantial market. The fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs), on the other hand, are the fourth largest industry in the world. FMCGs are relatively low cost products and the poor, by necessity, spend a significant amount of their income on FMCGs. So, by virtue of being a large consumer base for FMCGs, the poor are a promising market for the FMCG marketers. But little is known about their buying behaviour for FMCGs as only a few studies have been conducted on them in this regard. This study aims to explore their shopping orientations towards price, quality and brand for FMCGs in the context of one of the largest developing countries like India by exploring their consumer decision‐making styles (CDMSs), especially their price consciousness, quality consciousness, brand consciousness and brand loyalty. Besides it, it also explores their post purchase behaviour and testifies its mechanism with the above mentioned CDMSs in the present context through structured equation modelling.