Are family‐friendly workplace practices a valuable firm resource?

We study the determinants and consequences of family‐friendly workplace practices (FFWP) using a sample of over 450 manufacturing firms in Germany, France, U.K., and U.S. We find a positive correlation between firm productivity and FFWP. This association disappears, however, once we control for a measure of the quality of management practices. We further find that firms with a higher proportion of female managers and more skilled workers, as well as well‐managed firms, tend to implement more FFWP. Conversely, a firm's environment does not have a significant impact on the FFWP it provides. © 2010 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.     

Are there always synergies between productive resources and resource deployment capabilities?

While the independent impacts of particular firm resources and deployment capabilities on firm performance are unambiguous cornerstones of the strategy field, it is commonly assumed that their joint impacts are synergistic. This article seeks to understand whether this common misconception of resource‐based theory can be refuted empirically. Using data from hospitals conducting specialist surgery, I find hospital performance improves independently through better surgical resource quality and from more use of a streamlined form of resource management in which overall patient team leadership and operating team leadership are held by the same physician. Generally the interaction of these two firm activities had no impact on performance. These results contribute to the strategy field's understanding of whether and when internal fit affects performance, clarifying an incorrect inference commonly made about resource‐based theory. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Network resource stocks and flows: how do alliance portfolios affect the value of new alliance formations?

We examine how new network resources accessed through alliance formations interact with network resources present in a firm's alliance portfolio. We test our theoretical model using event study methodology and data from the global air transportation industry. We find that the market rewards firms forming alliances that contribute resources that can be synergistically combined with firms' own resources as well as with network resources accessed through their alliance portfolios. Our results also indicate that the market penalizes firms entering into alliances that create resource combinations that are substitutes to resource combinations deployed by existing alliance partners. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

战略管理领域中的厂商理论评述

厂商理论不仅在经济学中占有重要地位,对战略管理领域也有深刻的影响,尤其是＂能力＂和＂契约＂观点的厂商理论,对战略管理的影响最为显著。＂契约＂观点所延伸的交易成本理论,已对管理领域——如营销管理、战略管理及组织理论造成了深远的影响,但＂契约＂观点的限制使其无法处理动态的问题,因而有＂能力＂观点的出现。＂能力＂观点的影响正在扩大,尤其是在战略管理领域,资源基础观点即是承继能力视角的观念。而资源基础观点可以说是近年来战略管理的主流观点。在此针对厂商理论做一简单的文献回顾,并特别针对＂契约＂及＂能力＂观点进行探讨,希望能厘清影响战略管理的厂商理论的概念。     

Does group membership matter? Evidence from the Japanese steel industry

In this study we address criticism that performance differences among strategic groups found in past research may be spurious and attributable to firm effects. The Japanese steel industry provides the setting for the study. Our analysis is based on data from the carbon steel sector of the Japanese steel industry for the periods 1980–87 and 1988–93. A one-way ANOVA indicated that the average performance of firms in the two technology-based groups in this industry—the integrated mills and the minimills—were significantly different during the two periods. Subsequently, we performed a regression analysis to examine the residual group effect after controlling for both environment and firm-specific effects. We found that even after controlling for both environment and firm-specific effects group membership was significantly associated with firm performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Management heterogeneity,competitive interaction groups,and firm performance

One of the fundamental problems in strategic management is to map a heterogeneous set of firms in an industry into subsets of firms within which firms are homogeneous in their conduct and performance. The strategic group concept provides an answer to this intriguing question. Researchers in strategic group theory argue that firms within the same strategic group are behaviorally similar and thus tend to compete more fiercely within the group than across groups. In this paper, we focus on the question whether firms within the same group show similar decision‐making characteristics. Strategic‐choice theorists argue that top management teams in firms have substantial discretion in determining the future strategic contour of firms. Upper‐echelon theorists also argue that top managers are the strategists who set the direction of firms and the pace of competition in the industry. Further, they argue that top management team characteristics are an important element that determines the market niche in which a firm competes and the strategic direction a firm follows. Based on these arguments, we expect that there will be a significant link between grouping of firms by the patterns of competitive interactions and grouping of firms by top management team heterogeneity. Moreover, we argue that the closer the TMT heterogeneity of a firm is to the dominant heterogeneity in the competitive interaction group, the better it performs. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.