Technological diversity,related diversification,and firm performance

Previous findings that related diversification creates value have been called into question over concerns about methodology and measures. Reviewing existing theory to consider how a firm's knowledge base interacts with its product market activity, I address several of these concerns by creating a measure of technological diversity based on citation‐weighted patents. The measure indicates a firm's opportunity for corporate diversification based on economies of scope in valuable knowledge assets, is defined for both single‐ and multibusiness firms, and is not correlated with more fundamental aspects of diversification, such as the number of businesses in the corporate portfolio. Evidence from a large sample of firms shows the positive relationship between diversification based on technological diversity and market‐based measures of performance, controlling for R&D intensity and capital intensity as further indicators of the type of assets underlying diversification. Results hold when controlling for the endogeneity of diversification and performance in a cross‐sectional sample or when controlling for unobserved factors using panel data. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economies of Scope,Resource Relatedness,and the Dynamics of Corporate Diversification

Research summary: The dominant view has been that businesses that are more related to each other are more often combined within diversified firms. This study uses a dynamic model to demonstrate that, with inter‐temporal economies of scope, diversified firms are more likely to combine moderately related businesses than the most‐related businesses. That effect occurs because strong relatedness reduces redeployment costs and makes firms redeploy all resources to better performing businesses. The strength of that effect depends on inducements for redeployment measured as the current return advantage of one business over another business, volatilities of business returns, and correlation of those returns. This study develops hypotheses for those relationships and suggests empirical operationalizations, encouraging empiricists to retest the implications of relatedness for the dynamics of corporate diversification. Managerial summary: It is believed that diversified firms are more likely to combine more‐related businesses because relatedness enables sharing of resources between businesses. Indeed, a firm can apply knowledge created in one business to another business, avoiding costly duplication in knowledge development. Resource sharing also adds value when a firm offers several products, adding the convenience of one‐stop shopping and charging higher prices. However, resource sharing is not the only motivation for corporate diversification. In environments where profitability of businesses changes frequently, firms diversify by redeploying part of resources from an underperforming business to a better performing business. This study uses a dynamic model to demonstrate that, with that second motivation for corporate diversification, firms end up combining moderately related businesses rather than the most‐related businesses. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Getting beyond relatedness as a driver of corporate value

Our paper scrutinizes how corporate value derives from redeployability of firms' resources to new product markets. We focus on the underexplored determinant of redeployability, inducements, defined as advantages in returns in new over existing markets. We assemble separate dimensions of inducements from research on corporate diversification and real options and consider inducements in their entirety. A simulation model casts redeployability as a real option to switch the use of resources across markets and explicates important interdependences among the dimensions of inducements. The model also demonstrates that inducements modify the effect of relatedness on corporate value. Our theoretical arguments amend existing theory and have important implications for corporate diversification research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resource relatedness and the mode of entry into new businesses: Internal resource accumulation vs. access by collaborative arrangement

When firms seek to enter a new business segment, they have to decide how to best gain access to the required resources. This paper analyzes how resource relatedness influences a firm's decision between internal development and collaborative arrangement as modes of entry. We distinguish between a firm's capacity to transfer its established resources to the new segment (resource transferability) and the integration and synergistic combination of current firm resources with target segment resources in day‐to‐day operations (resource complementarity). Resource transferability makes entry by internal development more likely, but this effect depends on segment characteristics. Synergies from complementary resources can be exploited more easily within firm boundaries than across an alliance interface. However, certain partner characteristics can substitute in part for belonging to the same firm. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Firms' technological resources and the performance effects of diversification: a longitudinal study

While agency theory claims managerial self‐interest creates a diversification discount, strategic theory explains that firms with certain kinds of resources should diversify. Longitudinal data on 227 firms that diversify between 1980 and 1992 reveal that the sample firms invest less in R&D and have greater breadth of technology (based on patent citations) than their industry peers prior to the diversification event. Also, acquiring firms may appear to have lower performance because of accounting conventions and because firms that use internal growth rather than acquisition pursue less extensive diversification. These findings help explain how diversification and financial performance are endogenous. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Skill relatedness and firm diversification

Because of the importance of human capital, a firm's choice of diversification targets will depend on whether these targets offer opportunities for leveraging existing human resources. We propose to quantify the similarity of different industries' human capital or skill requirements, that is, the industries' skill relatedness, by using information on cross‐industry labor flows. Labor flows among industries can be used to identify skill relatedness, because individuals changing jobs will likely remain in industries that value the skills associated with their previous work. Estimates show that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that have ties to the firms' core activities in terms of our skill‐relatedness measure than into industries without such ties or into industries that are linked by value chain linkages or by classification‐based relatedness. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stock market undervaluation of resource redeployability

Research Summary : Stock market undervaluation of resources was often assumed to have strategic implications. Such undervaluation lets firms buy resources relatively cheaply, but it can also constrain resource deployment. This article shows that the option to redeploy a firm's resources to a new business can be undervalued in stock markets when investors face ambiguity about that option due to uniqueness of redeployment. The developed formal model derives conditions under which stock markets undervalue resources. Those conditions are summarized with an empirical operationalization that can be tested with a broad range of strategic implications. Besides, the model provides a more complete account of resource redeployability by demonstrating the redeployability paradox. The paradox highlights that some determinants of redeployability enhance undervaluation, while simultaneously increasing objective value of redeployable resources. Managerial Summary : Stock markets can systematically undervalue resources. On the one hand, such undervaluation creates a profitable opportunity for a firm that needs some resources for its growth and compares the option to buy stock in another firm, whose resource are undervalued, with the option to build those resources internally. On the other hand, such undervaluation poses limits to resource deployment strategies of the undervalued firm. When does such undervaluation occur? This study highlights one possible source for undervaluation, ambiguity that is faced by stock market investors about the option to redeploy a firm's resources to a new business. The study specifies conditions under which stock markets are more likely to undervalue resources. The understanding of those conditions can guide managers toward strategic opportunities.     

Corporate diversification and the value of individual firms: A Bayesian approach

Research summary: Prior theory suggests that the performance effects of a firm's diversification strategy depend on a firm's individual resources and capabilities and the setting within which it is operating. However, prior tests of this theory have examined the average diversification‐performance relationship across all firms, instead of estimating the diversification‐performance relationship at the individual firm level. Efforts to estimate this average relationship are inconsistent with a central assumption of much of strategic management theory—that firms maximize value by choosing strategies that exploit their heterogeneous resources and individual situation. By adopting an approach that allows an evaluation of the diversification‐performance relationship for individual firms, this article shows that firms, both focused and diversified, tend to choose that diversification strategy—focus, related diversification, or unrelated diversification—that maximizes value. Managerial summary: Instead of a universal diversification discount or premium, this article shows that the effect of diversification on performance is heterogeneously distributed across firms and that firms tend to be rational in their diversification decisions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resource ambidexterity through alliance portfolios and firm performance

Research summary : Partner resources can be an important alternative to internal firm resources for attaining dual and seemingly incompatible strategic objectives. We extend arguments about managing conflicting objectives typically made at the firm level to the level of a firm's alliance portfolio. Specifically, will a balance between revenue enhancement and cost reduction attained collectively through partner resources accessed via a firm's various alliances be similarly beneficial for firm performance? Additionally, how do strategic attributes of alliance portfolio configuration, specifically alliance portfolio size and partner resource scope, condition the balance‐performance relationship? Based on data from the global airline industry, we find support for the balance‐performance relationship, though such balance is less beneficial for firms in the case of access to a broader resource scope per partner . Managerial summary : Increasing revenue and reducing costs simultaneously can potentially enhance firm competitiveness. We highlight that an alliance strategy can be an important alternative to internal resources for attaining such dual strategic objectives, particularly when partner resources accessed through alliances are treated collectively as portfolios. We examine the importance of balancing product‐market extending and efficiency‐improving partner resources in the global airline industry as well as the impact of two alternate strategies for accessing resources through alliances: fewer partners with more resources per partner or more partners with fewer resources per partner. We find that resource balance at the portfolio level helps airlines improve performance. Our results also suggest that managers should be cautious of accessing too many resources through just a few partners . Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The independent and joint effects of the skill and physical bases of relatedness in diversification

By examining the independent and joint effects of the skill and physical bases of relatedness, this study develops a multidimensional view of relatedness in diversification. The paper compares the ways the two bases identify relatedness, and examines empirically the relationship between relatedness and performance for a sample of 158 large diversified manufacturing firms. Each base of relatedness alone had no significant effect on financial performance. However, when the two approaches were combined, there was a strong positive effect on most indicators of performance. The findings demonstrate how different bases of relatedness complement and extend one another, and they clarify findings of previous studies that used a single base of relatedness. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relationship between portfolio diversification and firm value: The evidence from corporate venture capital activity

Corporate venture capital (CVC) activity exposes firms to new technologies and markets. An important but as yet unexplored question is the relationship of the industry diversification profile of the portfolio of venture companies to corporate value creation. Insights from options and diversification perspectives support our hypothesis that diversification of a corporate investor's portfolio of venture companies is related to corporate wealth creation in a U‐shaped relationship. We also propose that a corporate investor's financial constraints moderate the relationship between the diversification profile of its CVC portfolio and value creation. When we tested our hypotheses using a sample of CVC investments across multiple industries, we found support for them, and these findings may inform the CVC activities of corporate investors. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Opportunity costs and non‐scale free capabilities: profit maximization,corporate scope,and profit margins

The resource‐based view on firm diversification, subsequent to Penrose ( 1959 ), has focused primarily on the fungibility of resources across domains. We make a clear analytical distinction between scale free capabilities and those that are subject to opportunity costs and must be allocated to one use or another, thereby shifting the discourse back to Penrose's ( 1959 ) original argument regarding the stock of organizational capabilities. The existence of resources and capabilities that must be allocated across alternative uses implies that profit‐maximizing diversification decisions should be based upon the opportunity cost of their use in one domain or another. This opportunity cost logic provides a rational explanation for the divergence between total profits and profit margins. Firms make profit‐maximizing decisions to increase total profit via diversification when the industries in which they are currently competing become relatively mature. Due to the spreading of these capabilities across more segments, we may observe that firms' profit‐maximizing diversification actions lead to total profit growth but lower average returns. The model provides an alternative explanation for empirical observations regarding the diversification discount. The self‐selection effect noted in recent work in corporate finance may not be indicative of inferior capabilities of diversifying firms but of the limited opportunity contexts in which these firms are operating. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowledge relatedness and the performance of multibusiness firms

This study examines corporate performance effects of cross‐business knowledge synergies in multibusiness firms. It synthesizes the resource‐based view of diversification and the economic theory of complementarities to conceptualize cross‐business knowledge synergies in terms of the relatedness and the complementarity of knowledge resources across business units of the multibusiness firm. The study hypothesizes that corporate performance is improved when the firm simultaneously exploits a complementary set of related knowledge resources across its business units. In a sample of 303 multibusiness firms, the study finds that synergies arising from product knowledge relatedness, customer knowledge relatedness, or managerial knowledge relatedness do not improve corporate performance on their own. Synergies arising from the complementarity of the three types of knowledge relatedness significantly improve both market‐based and accounting‐based performance of the multibusiness corporation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Creating value in the face of declining performance: firm strategies and organizational recovery

Firms that have failed to meet the performance expectations of investors must seek new ways of creating value or face the loss of financial support. Using resource‐based arguments, we find that valuable and difficult‐to‐imitate strategies that recombine the firm's existing stock of resources to create new products, processes, or technologies have a positive effect on organizational recovery as measured by investors' expectations. Similarly, acquiring new resources through mergers or acquisitions also has positive effects on investors' expectations. In contrast, valuable and difficult‐to‐imitate strategies that provide the firm with access to new resources through alliances or joint ventures do not affect investors' expectations of performance. We also find that taking actions that are not valuable and difficult‐to‐imitate either have no effect on performance or may lead to further performance declines. Lastly, our results show that valuable and difficult‐to‐imitate strategic actions that use existing resources in new ways contribute the most to organizational recovery. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relationship between product and international diversification: the effects of short‐run constraints and endogeneity

We examine the relationship between growth along the product and international dimension in the short run. We argue that while the presence of fungible intangible resources and economies of scope may create opportunities for a firm to expand along both dimensions, the effect of short‐ run constraints may lead to a trade‐off and a negative association between the two dimensions. In addition, we suggest that rather than being independent, decisions concerning the extent of growth along the two dimensions are likely to be made simultaneously and endogenously by firms after taking into consideration the availability of various resources. We test these propositions by observing a sample of 1,299 firms over the period of 1993–1997. Our results show strong evidence of endogeneity and a negative association between growth along the two dimensions. These findings provide important support for theories of firm growth that have long held that firms are limited in the number of opportunities they can exploit in the short run by various constraints. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resource orchestration in practice: CEO emphasis on SHRM,commitment‐based HR systems,and firm performance

In order to be effective, managers at all levels of the firm must engage in resource management activities, and these efforts are synchronized and orchestrated by top management. Using a specific type of strategic resource, commitment‐based human resource systems, we examine the effect of CEO resource orchestration in a multi‐industry sample of 190 Korean firms. Our results demonstrate that CEO emphasis on strategic HRM is a significant antecedent to commitment‐based HR systems. Furthermore, our results also suggest that CEO emphasis on strategic HRM has its primary effects on firm performance through commitment‐based HR systems. This finding underscores the importance of middle managers in operationalizing top management's strategic emphasis, lending empirical support to a fundamental tenet of resource orchestration arguments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Talented people and strong brands: The contribution of human capital and brand equity to firm value

Research and managerial practice generally contend that human capital and brand equity constitute a company's most valuable resources. Relying on similar underlying theoretical rationales, research on the value relevance of these two resources has developed in different disciplines. Combining diverse data sources, the authors examine the simultaneous effects of brand equity and human capital on firm value. In addition, they consider how much the effects of these two resources differ between services and manufacturing. Results provide evidence for a complementary relationship between human capital and brand equity and show that both resources create relatively more value in a service setting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empirical research on the resource‐based view of the firm: an assessment and suggestions for future research

The resource‐based view (RBV) is one of the most widely accepted theories of strategic management. However, to date no systematic assessment of the RBV's level of empirical support has been conducted. In response, a sample of RBV‐grounded empirical articles was analyzed from which it was found that the RBV has received only modest support overall and that this support varies considerably with the independent variable and theoretical approach employed. It is therefore suggested that scholars avoid the tendency to test models reflecting early incarnations of the RBV and instead test those that incorporate its more contemporary theoretical extensions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Market orientation,job satisfaction,product quality,and firm performance: evidence from China

This article examines the processes by which market orientation (MO) affects performance using a cross‐level approach. The results of a survey of 2,754 employees from 180 firms in China show that organization‐level MO culture leads to unit‐level MO behavior, which improves employee‐level job satisfaction and then product quality, which in turn fosters organizational performance. In particular, MO behavior fully mediates the effects of MO culture on employee satisfaction, product quality, and organizational performance. Leadership quality strengthens the effect of MO culture on unit‐level MO behavior. Moreover, MO behavior enhances firm performance indirectly through employee job satisfaction and product quality. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowledge inventories and managerial myopia

Managing knowledge inventories is the central issue posed by the knowledge‐based view of the firm. Knowledge inventory management involves acquiring, retaining, deploying, idling, and abandoning technologies. Because of future opportunities to switch technologies over time, managing knowledge inventories requires valuing flexibility. Real option theory presents normative conceptual frameworks and pricing formulas for valuing flexibility. These formulas assume managers consider the full time horizon of technologies as well as all available substituting and complementary technologies. This study considers the implications of violations of these assumptions (i.e., temporal and spatial myopia) for managers' technology investment decisions. Specifying decision criteria under alternative forms of myopia reveals possible sources and patterns of technology management decision errors. This study highlights the cognitive sources of path dependencies and organizational rigidities. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.