The impact of marketing capability, operations capability and diversification strategy on performance: A resource-based view

Using resource-based view (RBV) of the firm as a theoretical backdrop; we aim to find out the relative impact of a firm's functional capabilities (namely, marketing and operations) and diversification strategies (product/service and international diversification) on financial performance. We hypothesize that this linkage depends on the firm's relative efficiency to integrate its resource-capabilities-performance triad. Using archival data of 102 UK based logistics companies, we find marketing capability is the key determinant for superior financial performance. This study highlights that a market-driven firm is likely to have better business performance than a firm focusing solely on operational capabilities. Also, firms are better off when they focus on a narrow portfolio of products/services for the clients and concentrate on a diverse geographical market. Our findings provide a new perspective to model a firm's functional capabilities and diversification strategy on its financial performance and offer a benchmarking tool to improve resource allocation decisions.     

Resource Dedication and New Product Performance: A Resource‐Based View

Corporate investments in new product development (NPD) initiatives are strategically effective activities that are instrumental in contributing to new product performance. Given that a fundamental nature of product development is the ability to exploit new product opportunities, the authors investigate the firm‐level impact that corporate investments in knowledge workers and financial NPD resources have on new product performance. They track the resource dedication and new product financial performance of 41 firms over a seven‐year period. Our results provide evidence that financial investments have a contemporaneous return on investment while knowledge worker investments provide companies with both contemporaneous and carryover returns. When formulating strategy and making NPD resource allocation decisions, managers must remain cognizant of the time‐dependent nature of resource investments, the need for persistent investment, and the resulting performance impact.     

Strategic Suppliers' Technical Contributions to New Product Advantage: Substitution and Configuration Options

Current theory lacks clarity on how different kinds of resources contribute to new product advantage, or how firms can combine different resources to achieve a new product advantage. While several studies have identified different firm‐specific resources that influence new product advantage, comparatively little research has explored the contribution of strategic supplier resources. Combining resource‐based and relational perspectives, this study develops a theoretical model investigating how a strategic supplier's technical capabilities impact focal firm new product advantage and how firms combine different resources to gain this advantage. The model is tested using detailed survey data collected from 153 interorganizational new product development projects in the United Kingdom within which a strategic supplier had been extensively involved. Empirical results support our research hypotheses. First, supplier technical performance is shown to have a significant positive impact on new product advantage. Next, we show that while supplier technical capabilities have a positive influence on supplier technical performance, the a priori nature of the supplier's task moderates the relationship. Finally, our data support our hypotheses related to the positive relationship between relationship‐specific absorptive capacity and new product advantage, and the proposed negative moderation of supplier technical capabilities on this relationship. Based upon these findings, we encourage managers to recognize that strategic suppliers' with greater technical capabilities perform better regardless of the degree of creativity required by their task; but that strategic suppliers with lower technical capabilities may partially compensate (substitute) for their lack of technical capabilities, if they are able to respond to high problem‐solving task requirements. Furthermore, we suggest that the firm's development of relationship‐specific absorptive capacity is much more important when a strategic supplier is less technically capable. A buying firm's relationship‐specific absorptive capacity can, according to our data, substitute for low supplier technical capabilities. On the other hand, where the supplier has strong technical capabilities, investments in relationship‐specific absorptive capacity have no effect on new product advantage. Our findings reinforce recent calls for research on how firms can combine different resources and capabilities to achieve superior performance.     

Resource allocation strategy for innovation portfolio management

Our study demonstrates empirically that the choice of resource allocation strategy affects innovation performance. Allocating resources to a broader range of innovation projects increases new product sales, an effect that appears to outweigh that of resource intensity. In addition, we find that the performance benefit of breadth is higher for firms that allocate resources selectively at later stages of the innovation process. This breadth‐selectiveness effect is greatest for firms intending to create relatively more novel products, departing further from their knowledge base. Based on these results, we theorize that breadth increases performance because it spreads firms' bets on unproven innovative endeavors. Limiting resource commitments by selecting out deteriorating projects prevents an escalation in the costs of breadth. This advantage increases with the uncertainty implicit in greater innovative intent. The paper thus contributes to theory of how resource allocation strategies influence performance outcomes of innovation project portfolios. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic orientations and new product commercialization: mediator,moderator, and interplay

Why are some firms more successful at commercializing new products than others in emerging economies? It is possible that the strategic orientations, which firms adopt as a type of business strategy, lead at least partially to the superior performance of the new products they introduce to the market. Strategic orientations facilitate a match between firm strategy and resource endowment, on the one hand, and the adaptation to market conditions, on the other. In this paper, we empirically test whether four major types of strategic orientations (market orientation, technology orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and networking orientation) are simultaneously related to new product commercialization performance using data collected from China. We find that strategic orientations are positively related to three aspects of new product commercialization, namely new product advantage, new product newness, and number of new products introduced to the market. Interestingly, we find that pairs of strategic orientations support each other in exerting their impacts on new product commercialization performance. In addition, we find that organizational learning mediates the effects of strategic orientations on new product commercialization and that environmental dynamism moderates the effect of strategic orientations on new product commercialization. We obtain the valuable insight that a firm's successful commercialization of new products hinges upon the development of critical yet complementary sets of strategic orientations, especially in a dynamic business environment.     

New Product Strategies of Large, Dominant Product Manufacturing Firms: An Exploratory Analysis

Although researchers have expended considerable effort exploring the links between new product strategy and firm-level performance, most studies of this subject focus on small- to medium-sized firms. Compared to smaller firms, however, large companies typically maintain broader portfolios of products and have easier access to capital markets. Such fundamental differences suggest the need for closer examination of the relationship between new product strategy and the performance of large firms. Based on a study of 459 new products introduced during a 5-year period, Richard W. Firth and V. K. Narayanan profile the new product strategies of 18 large companies. They examine the methods used to acquire new products (internal development or external sources) as well as three dimensions of each firm's new product introductions: newness of embodied technology, newness of market application, and innovativeness in the market. In other words, these profiles identify the degree to which a firm's new product introductions involve core technologies and markets that are new to the firm, as well as the degree to which the market views these products as innovative. Because new product strategy is an investment decision, the study also examines the relationship between these strategic profiles and two facets of firm-level performance: risk and return. The study identifies five archetypes of new product strategy: Innovators, who produce innovative products by using their existing resources; Investors in Technology, who focus on expanding their technological base. Searching for New Markets, firms that venture into unfamiliar markets by introducing products closely aligned with those in their existing portfolios; Business as Usual, firms that rely on existing technologies and products to serve existing markets; and Middle-of-the-Road, firms content to introduce new products rated as low to moderate along all three dimensions of the strategic profile. For new products closely aligned with their core markets and technologies, the firms in this study typically rely on internal development. To introduce products involving new technologies or market applications, they turn to acquisition from external sources. Firms that emphasized market innovativeness in their new product introductions enjoyed higher returns than less innovative firms. And contrary to conventional wisdom, they gained this advantage without an accompanying increase in risk. In other words, continual innovation might provide a large firm with the means for achieving higher returns without higher risk.     

Information Use and New Product Outcomes: The Contingent Role of Strategy Type

Information is an important resource for firms to develop new products successfully, and firms must rely on their ability to use information effectively. This research builds on information processing and contingency theories to explore the effect of firm strategy type and the conceptual and instrumental use of information on new product outcomes. Firms operating in high-tech industries are faced with high levels of uncertainty caused by rapidly evolving technologies. Consequently, creating innovative and successful products becomes particularly challenging. Past research examining organizational use of information points to the presence of strategic contingencies that may impact the new product outcomes that accrue to a firm. A cross-sectional study was conducted to examine how the impact of information use on new product outcomes varies by strategy type. Using data from 150 software development firms based in a developing economy, the theoretical hypotheses proposed are tested. After controlling for environmental turbulence, the research results demonstrate that firms focusing on specific types of information use innovate successfully only when that information use is congruent with an appropriate strategic orientation. Specifically, the present study finds that prospector firms focusing on conceptual information use enhance both their new product performance and new product creativity outcomes, whereas analyzer firms enhance only their new product performance outcomes. A focus on instrumental information use has different effects for firms. Defender firms enhance both their new product performance and creativity outcomes only when focusing on instrumental information use. In contrast, prospector firms detract from their new product creativity outcomes, and analyzer firms reduce their new product performance outcomes when focusing on instrumental information use.     

Internationalization, resource allocation and firm performance

In this paper, we examine the effects of internationalization and resource allocation on firm performance. We argue that resource allocation plays a pivotal role in determining a firm's international growth. Using a sample of Taiwanese firms, we find an optimal level of internationalization, in terms of the number of countries, as well as the level of investment towards value appropriation that is necessary to start creating a positive impact on firm performance. As a result of our study, we propose that Taiwanese firms would likely benefit by shifting their focus of resource allocation from R&D to marketing.     

Organizational Learning Ambidexterity,Strategic Flexibility,and New Product Development

Although organizational ambidexterity has gained momentum in recent innovation research, previous literature still offers a confusing and partial picture about how to leverage ambidexterity for new product development because of two limitations. First, previous research mainly focuses on static resource endowment and thus offers little insight about how firms should dynamically reconfigure resource portfolios to leverage organizational ambidexterity. Second, conceptual confusion on the notion of the balance dimension of organization ambidexterity still exists. This study seeks to explore how firms should dynamically reconfigure resource portfolios to leverage organizational ambidexterity for new product development and to bring greater conceptual clarity to the notion of balance. By extending the static resource assumption, which is central to the extant debate in organizational ambidexterity literature, this research unpacks ambidexterity into a relative exploratory dimension and an interactive dimension. We further investigated the moderating effect of resource flexibility and coordination flexibility on the impacts of the two dimensions on new product development performance. Based on the dynamic resource management view and organizational learning theory, we proposed six hypotheses and collected data from 213 firms through a survey to examine the hypotheses. Our results indicate that relative exploratory dimension and interactive dimension have different effects on new product development. Specifically, the relative exploratory dimension has an inverse U‐shaped effect on new product development while the interactive dimension has a positive effect. Furthermore, we find that resource flexibility and coordination flexibility have positive moderating effects on the relationships between the two dimensions of ambidexterity and new product development performance. Our study contributes to the ambidexterity research in three ways. First, from a dynamic resource management view, this study extends previous ambidexterity research from a static view to a dynamic view by exploring the moderating effects of resource flexibility and coordination flexibility. Second, we extend the understanding on ambidexterity by bringing greater conceptual clarity to the notion of balance. Third, this research provides new evidence on the effects of ambidextrous learning on new product development performance in transition economy such as China, where ambidextrous learning is crucial for firms to adapt to a dynamic environment.     

Supportiveness of Organizational Climate, Market Orientation, and New Product Performance in Chinese Firms

Most knowledge development efforts in new product development have focused on Western economies and companies. However, due to its size, rapid growth rate, and market reforms, China has emerged as an important new context for new product development. Unfortunately, current understanding of the factors associated with new product success in China remains limited. We address this knowledge gap using mixed methods. First, we conducted 19 in‐depth interviews with managers involved in new product development in 11 different Chinese firms. The qualitative fieldwork indicated that firm behaviors and employee perceptions consistent with the phenomena of market orientation and the supportiveness of organizational climate both are viewed as important drivers of the new product performance of Chinese firms. Drawing on the marketing, management, and new product development literature this study develops a hypothetical model linking market orientation, supportiveness of organizational climate, and firms' new product performance. Direct relationships are hypothesized between both market orientation and supportiveness of organizational climate and firms' new product performance, as well as a relationship between supportiveness of organizational climate and market orientation. Data to test the hypothetical model were collected via an on‐site administered questionnaire from 110 manufacturing firms in China. The hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicate a positive direct relationship of market orientation on firms' new product performance, with an indirect positive effect of supportiveness of organizational climate via its impact on market orientation. However, no support is found for a direct relationship between the supportiveness of a firm's organizational climate and its new product performance. These findings are consistent with resource‐based view theory propositions in the marketing literature indicating that market orientation is a valuable, nonsubstitutable, and inimitable resource and with similar propositions in the management literature concerning organizational culture. However, this study's findings also indicate that in contrast to a number of organizational culture theory propositions and empirical findings in some consumer service industries, the impact of organizational climate on firm performance in a new product context is indirect via the firm's generation, dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence. These results suggest that an effort to improve firms' new product performance by enhancing the flow and utilization of market intelligence is an appropriate allocation of resources. Further, this study's findings indicate that managers should direct at least some of their efforts to enhance a firm's market orientation at improving employee perceptions of the supportiveness of the firm's management and of their peers. This study indicates a need for further research concerning the role of different dimensions of organizational climate in firms' new product processes.     

Understanding firms’ relative strategic emphases: An entrepreneurial orientation explanation

Top management’s choices regarding strategic emphases (e.g., value-creation versus value-appropriation) are an important component of firms’ success. While extant research has explored the effects of strategic emphasis on firm performance, few studies have examined the factors that affect top management’s strategic emphasis choices. The study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between management’s entrepreneurial orientation and its relative strategic emphasis on value-creation versus value-appropriation. In addition, it investigates the moderating roles of relative performance, compensation strategy, and capital market patience, on the above relationship. Using a multi-source dataset of 337 Standard & Poor (S&P) 500 companies from 2007-2015, we find that entrepreneurially oriented managers tend to focus more on value-creation (e.g., new product development) over value-appropriation (e.g., advertising), but this influence is contingent on, at least, three factors: (1) relative firm performance, (2) compensation strategy, and (3) capital market patience. The study provides a broad theoretical foundation that explicates key factors that influence firms’ resource allocation decisions.     

RETRACTED: Integrated knowledge exploitation: The complementarity of product development and technology licensing

In light of increasing licensing, we challenge the common assumption that product development and technology licensing are substitutes. We develop a resource‐based framework, which distinguishes a firm's technological resource base and technology exploitation processes. We further combine survey, patent, and financial data of 228 medium‐sized and large industrial companies to examine the interactions of firms' product development processes and technology licensing processes in order to explain heterogeneity in new product revenues, licensing performance, and firm performance. The results underscore that product development, which indicates innovative capacity, and technology licensing, which indicates desorptive capacity, are complements rather than substitutes in integrated knowledge exploitation in medium‐sized and large firms. This complementarity is particularly pronounced in firms with an emphasis on cross‐licensing and with a strong patent portfolio. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategy making as iterated processes of resource allocation

Capitalizing on the Bower-Burgelman process model of strategy making in a large, complex organization, we investigate the multilevel managerial activities that lead firms facing similar new business opportunities to respond with different strategic commitments. Our field-based data provide evidence on (I) the role of ‘corporate contexts’ that reflects top managers' crude strategic intent in shaping strategic initiatives of business-unit managers; (2) the critical influence of early business development results on increasing or decreasing middle managers' enthusiasm to the new businesses and top managers' confidence in these middle managers in a resource allocation; (3) the escalation or deescalation of a firm's strategic commitment to the new businesses as a consequence of iterations of resource allocation. We conclude that it is useful to conceptualize strategy making in a large, complex firm as an iterated process of resource allocation.     

New Product Strategy, Structure, Process, and Performance in the Telecommunications Industry

A continuous flow of new products is the lifeblood for firms that hope to remain competitive in high-technology industries such as telecommunications. Faced with rapidly shrinking product life cycles, these firms must aggressively pursue the quest for more effective new product development (NPD). Ongoing success in such industries is dependent on choosing the right mix of new product strategy, organizational structure, and NPD processes. Rather than considering the interrelationships among these success factors, however, most previous studies of NPD have examined these issues individually. This shortcoming is compounded by the fact that past studies of NPD have typically cut across industry lines. Gloria Barczak addresses these problems by proposing that a firm's choice of new product strategy, structure, and process are interrelated, as are the effects of those choices on NPD performance. Because these choices and their effects also may be dependent on the unique characteristics of the industry in which a firm competes, her study focuses exclusively on firms in a specific, high-technology industry, telecommunications. The study finds that no single NPD strategy, in and of itself, stands out as being better than any other for the telecommunications industry. Instead, it appears that a company's focus should be on ensuring the best possible fit between its chosen NPD strategy and its corporate goals and capabilities. In keeping with the current focus on cross-functional teams, the study results indicate that project teams and R&D teams are the most effective means for organizing NPD efforts in the telecommunications industry. Perhaps not surprisingly, R&D teams are more important for first-to-market firms than they are for fast followers and late entrants. An R&D team provides the technical skills necessary for playing the role of pioneer. Regardless of the firm's NPD strategy and structure, the presence of a product champion is an important element in the success of new product efforts. In an era of rapid, technological advances, idea generation and screening efforts are essential to the success of telecommunications firms. To ensure that they do not fall into the trap of introducing technology for technology's sake, pioneering and fast-follower firms in particular must recognize the importance of staying in touch with their markets. Such market-oriented activities as customer prototype testing and concept definition and testing can help these firms ensure that their technological developments are in line with customer needs and requirements.     

Reconciling the paradox of supply-side and demand-side strategies in industrial innovation

Abernathy and Utterback [Abernathy, W.J. & Utterback, J.M., (1978). Patterns of industrial innovation. In Burgelman, R.A., Maidique, M.A. and Wheelwright, S.C., Strategic management of technology and innovation: 149-155. McGraw Hill.] argued that successful firms seek a functional product performance strategy in the early stage of industrial innovation and seek a cost reduction strategy in the late stage. However, Adner and Levinthal [Adner, R. & Levinthal, D., (2001). Demand heterogeneity and technology evolution: Implications for product and process. Management Science, 47(5), 611-628.] argued firms enhance functionality or reduce prices to a level that corresponds to consumer willingness to pay in the early stage, and increase performance at a relatively stable product price (i.e. new strategy they claimed) in the late stage. This study reconciles this paradox of choosing strategies using an integrative framework for theory development. Generated from the framework, a numerical indicator of performance/cost ratio directs firm strategy choices in industrial innovation when an environment changes. This study justifies the popular use of performance/cost ratio in practices as primary criteria to predict the winning dominant standard from a value creation perspective and elucidates an evolution of industrial innovations by using a three-year field study.     

The Relationships between Resource Configurations and Launch Strategies in Taiwan's IC Design Industry: An Exploratory Study

Within the last decade, the link between launch strategies and new product performance has been widely investigated. However, the relationship between resource configurations and launch strategies has received little attention. This study endeavors to fill that void by examining the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of market growth and competitiveness on the relationship between resources and launch strategies. Drawing on contingency theory and strategic studies, this study proposes that resource contingencies affect changes in launch strategies. This study also suggests that market characteristics play a contingent role in the relationships between the configurations of resources and launch strategy choices. Based on extensive studies reporting on market characteristics and their links to strategies, this study proposes that two market characteristics—market growth and competitiveness—are relevant for launch strategy decision making. Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design industry has been used as the analytical sample, as it has been identified as a promising sector for new product development. Based on the result of investigating 90 firms, four resource configurations are identified: (1) strategic and organizational abilities; (2) technological capabilities; (3) societal assets and goodwill; and (4) physical assets. Furthermore, two different launch strategies—innovative and product advantage and cost oriented—also are discovered. The results from a seemingly unrelated regression model reveal that technological capabilities and societal assets and goodwill contribute to the variation in the firms' choices of launch strategies. This study further conducted the simple slope analysis to observe the effect of the technological capabilities on the innovative and product advantage strategy under different levels of the market growth rate. The results interestingly showed that firms with technological capabilities demonstrated different degree of tendencies in employing this strategy in alignment with various market growth rates. The finding sheds some lights on the moderating role market characteristics play on the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. Academic implications and suggestions for practitioners also are provided.     

贸易自由化与企业内的产品质量调整

多产品出口企业是中国出口贸易的重要组成部分。在贸易自由化冲击下,该类企业如何调整其核心产品与非核心产品的生产,对于提升企业乃至整体产业的国际竞争力具有重要意义。本文在异质性企业模型基础上内生化产品质量构建理论模型,并使用中国工业企业数据和中国海关数据对模型进行实证检验。研究发现,中间产品进口关税的下降会促使多产品企业对出口产品的质量进行升级,从而提高出口产品定价,且企业的非核心产品质量提升的幅度相对更高,出口价格上升的幅度也更大,即中间品贸易自由化可以缩小多产品企业内的非核心产品和核心产品的质量和价格差距,从而优化企业内的资源配置。异质性分析发现,对于异质性商品而言,关税下降使企业出口产品质量和出口产品价格变化更大,而同质性产品的质量和价格变化则不明显。本文进行了一系列稳健性检验,结果均支持本文的基本结论。     

Integration,knowledge creation and B2B governance: The role of resource hierarchies in financial performance

Knowledge is a critical competitive resource for firms that increasingly exploit resources and capabilities combined with those of channel partners to create new knowledge. However, the opportunism risks inherent in any B2B relationship require firms to employ governance mechanisms to protect their interests. These tensions call for further study of how B2B partners exploit combined resources to produce new knowledge. This research employs a Resource Hierarchy View of resource bundling to describe the ways that firms integrate internal and external processes to achieve financial performance through knowledge creation, and the role that relational governance approaches play in enabling those resource combinations. The study finds that normative and formalized governance forms both enable complex combinations of knowledge creation and integration resources in a way that affects financial performance more than either resource could in simpler combination. However, there are differences in how knowledge is created through internal and external process integration.     

Coopetition and product innovation performance: The role of internal knowledge sharing mechanisms and formal knowledge protection mechanisms

Coopetition is an important new product development strategy; yet, studies addressing the impact of collaboration with competitors on product innovation performance provide mixed evidence. Conducting Tobit analyses on a sample of 627 manufacturing firms that responded to the fifth wave of the Flemish Community Innovation Survey, we find that the innovation performance implications of competitor collaboration depend on fine-grained intra-organizational design characteristics. In particular, our results show that competitor collaboration has a significant positive impact on product innovation performance only when internal knowledge sharing mechanisms and formal knowledge protection mechanisms are present. These findings contribute to the emerging contingency perspective on coopetition and provide specific recommendations to managers that are involved in coopetitive endeavors.     

Bricolage as a Path to Innovativeness for Resource‐Constrained New Firms

Evidence suggests that both nascent and young firms (henceforth: “new firms”)—despite typically being small and resource‐constrained—are sometimes able to innovate effectively. Such firms are seldom able to invest in lengthy and expensive development processes, which suggests that they may frequently rely instead on other pathways to generate innovativeness within the firm. In this paper, we develop and test arguments that “bricolage,” defined as making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities, provides an important pathway to achieve innovation for new resource‐constrained firms. Through bricolage, resource‐constrained firms engage in the processes of “recombination” that are core to creating innovative outcomes. Based on a large longitudinal dataset, our results suggest that variations in the degree to which firms engage in bricolage behaviors can provide a broadly applicable explanation of innovativeness under resource constraints by new firms. We find no general support for our competing hypothesis that the positive effects may level off or even turn negative at high levels of bricolage.