Bridging the chasm between survey and case study research: Research methods for achieving generalization, accuracy, and complexity

This article describes how behavioral science research methods that management and marketing scholars apply in studying processes involving decisions and organizational outcomes relate to three principal research objectives: fulfilling generality of findings, achieving accuracy of process actions and outcomes, and capturing complexity of nuances and conditions. The article's unique contribution is in advocating and describing the possibilities of researchers replacing Thorngate's (1976) “postulate of commensurate complexity” - it is impossible for a theory of social behavior to be simultaneously general, accurate, and simple and as a result organizational theorists inevitably have to make tradeoffs in their theory development - with a new postulate of disproportionate achievement. This new postulate proposes the possibilities and advocates the building and testing of useful process models that achieve all three principal research objectives. Rather than assuming the stance that a researcher must make tradeoffs that permit achieving any two, but not all three, principal research objectives as Weick (1979) clock analogy shows, this article advocates embracing a property space (a three-dimensional box rather than a clock) view of research objectives and research methods. Tradeoffs need not be made; having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too is possible. The article includes a brief review of principal criticisms that case study researchers often express of surveys of respondents using fixed-point surveys. Likewise, the article reviews principal criticisms of case study research studies that researchers who favor the use of fixed-point surveys express.     

Managing Capacity in the High-Tech Industry: A Review of Literature

This article surveys a new generation of analytical tools for capacity planning and management, especially in high-tech industries such as semiconductors, electronics and bio-techs. The objectives of the article are to (1) identify fundamental theory driving current research in capacity management, (2) review emerging models in operations research, game theory, and economics that address strategic, tactical and operational decision models for high-tech capacity management, and (3) take an in-depth look at capacity-optimization models developed in the specific context of semiconductor manufacturing. The goal of this survey is to go beyond typical production-planning and capacity-management literature and to examine research that can potentially broaden capacity-planning research. For instance, we explore the role of option theory and real options in modeling capacity decisions. We not only examine capacity-planning problems from the perspective of a particular firm, but also the interaction of capacity investment among supply chain partners. Not only are these issues increasingly important in the fast-changing high-tech environment, they draw on new tools from different disciplines and pose significant intellectual challenges. We also examine papers that represent the multifaceted nature of high-tech capacity planning, integrating capacity decisions with issues related to contracting, coordination, sourcing, and capacity configurations.     

A Bibliometric Review of Open Innovation: Setting a Research Agenda

Through an objective, systematic, and comprehensive review of the literature on open innovation (OI), this article identifies gaps in existing research, and provides recommendations on how hitherto unused or underused organizational, management, and marketing theories can be applied to advance the field. This study adopts a novel approach by combining two complementary bibliometric methods of co‐citation analysis and text mining of 321 journal articles on OI that enables a robust empirical analysis of the intellectual streams and key concepts underpinning OI. Results reveal that researchers do not sufficiently draw on theoretical perspectives external to the field to examine multiple facets of OI. Research also seems confined to innovation‐specific journals with its focus restricted to a select few OI issues, thereby exerting limited influence on the wider business community. This study reveals three distinct areas within OI research: (1) firm‐centric aspects of OI, (2) management of OI networks, and (3) role of users and communities in OI. Thus far, studies have predominantly investigated the firm‐centric aspects of OI, with a particular focus on the role of knowledge, technology, and R&D from the innovating firm's perspective, while the other two areas remain relatively under‐researched. Further gaps in the literature emerge that present avenues for future research, namely to: (1) develop a more comprehensive understanding of OI by including diverse perspectives (users, networks, and communities), (2) direct increased attention to OI strategy formulation and implementation, and (3) enhance focus on customer co‐creation and conceptualize “open service innovation.” Marketing (e.g., service‐dominant logic), organizational behavior (e.g., communities of practice), and management (e.g., dynamic capabilities) offer suitable theoretical lenses and/or concepts to address these gaps.     

Absorptive Capacity, Coauthoring Behavior, and the Organization of Research in Drug Discovery

We examine the interface between for-profit and publicly funded research in pharmaceuticals. Firms access upstream basic research through investments in absorptive capacity in the form of in-house basic research and 'pro-publication' internal incentives. Some firms also maintain extensive connections to the wider scientific community, which we measure using data on coauthorship of scientific papers between pharmaceutical company scientists and publicly funded researchers. 'Connectedness' is significantly correlated with firms' internal organization, as well as their performance in drug discovery. The estimated impact of 'connectedness' on private research productivity implies a substantial return to public investments in basic research.     

筛选理论研究述评及展望

文章介绍了筛选理论的产生过程,并对国外筛选理论的研究状况进行了分类归纳和述评。在此基础上,提出了目前筛选理论研究面临的问题和未来的研究方向。     

A Review of Longitudinal Research in the Product Innovation Field,with Discussion of Utility and Conduct of Sequence Analysis

This paper examines how longitudinality is investigated in innovation research. A review of longitudinal methods in innovation articles, published between 2000 and 2011, is undertaken. Our findings show that longitudinal approaches to data collection are gaining some credence, in line with increased criticism of the overuse of positivist methods to study process‐based phenomena. However, results demonstrate a dearth of systematic longitudinal analytical methods employed in product innovation research. Static analytical methods are prominent. These inevitably lead to static presentation of results, and this is borne out in our findings. Second, the paper discusses the conduct and utility of a specific technique for product innovation research: sequence analysis. By drawing on two studies, which apply sequence analysis in product innovation research, sequence analysis is shown to be a useful technique to achieve rigor in analyzing longitudinal data. The paper concludes by discussing how such systematic methods for analyzing longitudinality in the innovation field demand greater usage and exploration.     

国外品牌犯错研究述评与展望

以往的品牌犯错事件主要以产品伤害危机为主,近年来在社会规范和道德层面上也逐渐地有所体现,给企业和利益相关者带来了更广泛的影响,而现有品牌犯错的述评仍主要停留在品牌功能层面上（以产品伤害危机为主）,缺少系统全面的分析。本文在梳理国外文献基础上,围绕品牌犯错的含义、分类、相关变量及影响结果、应对策略等主题进行述评,探讨该领域的未来研究方向,以期为我国的品牌犯错理论研究和实践操作提供参考借鉴。     

Integrating R&D and Marketing: A Review and Analysis of the Literature

During the past 20 years, numerous studies have explored the R&D—marketing interface and its role in the new product development (NPD) process. Academics and practitioners (including a PDMA task force) have examined commonly used measures of success, the underlying reasons for the success or failure of NPD projects, and the effects of R&D—marketing integration on both project- and company-level success. Does this mean we have all the answers when it comes to ensuring the necessary level of cooperation and interaction between R&D and marketing? Of course not. Abbie Griffin and John R. Hauser note that prior research on R&D—marketing integration is being reassessed in light of the movement toward flatter organizational structures and cross-functional teams. To facilitate that reassessment, and to help guide future research in this area, they review recent research on the methods employed for integrating R&D and marketing, and they propose several hypotheses regarding those methods. They present their review and hypotheses within the framework of a causal map they have developed for studying functional integration. The causal map links cooperation to NPD success along situational dimensions, structural and process dimensions, and outcome dimensions. The desired outcome in any NPD effort is the timely commercialization of a profitable product. The situational dimensions address the amount and types of integration needed in a project, which depend on such factors as the project phase and the level of project uncertainty. The structural and process dimensions focus on the actions taken to achieve functional integration. These include relocation and physical facilities design, personnel movement, informal social systems, organizational structures, incentives and rewards, and formal integrative management processes. The proposed hypotheses focus on the methods for achieving functional integration—that is, the structural and process dimensions of the causal map. At first glance, these hypotheses seem to state the obvious. For example, few would challenge the notion that quality function deployment eliminates barriers to functional integration and improves information sharing between functions. However, achieving those benefits requires the presence of other factors such as senior management involvement. Rather than examine these hypotheses separately, researchers should explore the relative merits of the methods for achieving functional integration. In other words, future research must consider both the situational and the structural and process dimensions of this framework.     

Smart Products: Conceptual Review,Synthesis, and Research Directions*

Smart products have received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners alike. One limitation of the existing literature, however, is that the term is often used as a blanket term and that there is no consensus on what a smart product actually is. Because different studies rely on differing conceptualizations, the current body of knowledge is scattered and lacks a uniform language and conceptual boundaries. Specifically, existing research has subsumed inherently different products under one collective term, has relied on a multitude of ad hoc criteria to define smart products or has conflated smart products with the services they render and/or the wider ecosystem, in which they operate. These developments limit the systematic advancement of the field and impede the integration of the smart product concept into related concepts such as the Internet of Things. To address these issues, this article provides an extensive analysis of the status quo of the field, with the goal of developing a common language and comprehensive conceptualization of smart products. First, existing studies on smart products were systematically reviewed across contributing disciplines and supplemented with a bibliometric analysis that allowed for a deeper understanding of the smart product concept within and across disciplines. This analysis revealed an initial set of 16 capability-based criteria that are currently applied to conceptualize smart products. Second, based on a systematic coding procedure, these criteria were synthesized and organized within a comprehensive framework delineating four distinct product archetypes for the digital age: (1) Digital, (2) Connected, (3) Responsive, and (4) Intelligent. Third, three major conceptual themes that arise from this framework are identified and possibilities for future research are pointed out. In sum, this work contributes to the literature by improving the understanding of smart products as an epistemic object and by laying the ground for more cumulative research endeavors.     

高层管理团队认知研究综述

自1984年Hambrick和Mason提出高层梯队理论以来,学术界掀起了对高层管理团队研究的热潮,近来对高层管理团队认知成为学者们研究的热点并取得了大量的研究成果。通过对这些成果进行综述,探讨认知派别、共享心智模型、社会认知等认知理论对企业战略决策进而对组织绩效的影响,分析已有研究中存在的局限并提出从人力资本的视角,将高层管理团队的认知特征与人力资本的产权与积累状况联系起来,明确高层管理团队认知特征与战略决策之间的作用机制。     

Social capital in buyer-supplier relationships: A review of antecedents,benefits, risks,and boundary conditions

The concept of social capital advocates that the goodwill available from relations is a valuable resource that can facilitate collective actions. Although social capital has recently gained momentum in the buyer-supplier relationship (BSR) literature, there is a surprising lack of consensus about its antecedents, benefits, risks, and boundary conditions in such relationships. To address this void, a systematic literature review of seventy articles published in peer-reviewed journals between 2002 and 2018 was undertaken. The review identified and discusses two types of antecedents that can give rise to social capital in BSRs, namely intrafirm-level and relationship-level antecedents (i.e., structural and relational). It reveals that social capital can lead to a variety of benefits, in the form of direct performance improvements (e.g., operational) and relationship benefits (e.g., knowledge sharing), however that these benefits may vary depending on a number of boundary conditions in BSRs (e.g., contract specificity). The review also highlights that although social capital can generate benefits, it can also lead to risks that can undermine the performance and evolution of BSRs (e.g., reduced exploratory learning), suggesting a ‘double-edged sword’ effect. The paper concludes by summarizing current research gaps and outlining promising directions for future research.     

Perspective: A Review of Marketing Research on Product Design with Directions for Future Research

The authors provide synthesized summaries of research on product design conducted over the 20‐year period from 1995 to 2014, as well as suggestions for future research. Building on the conceptual model of product design proposed by Luchs and Swan, the current project describes research findings based on a review of 252 articles drawn from eight of the academic journals most influential to marketing thought, and identified by their inclusion of the terms “product design” or “industrial design” within their abstracts, subject terms, and/or author supplied keywords. Specifically, the authors provide integrated summaries of 25 product design subtopics organized within Luchs and Swan's original 11 product design research topic categories, which, in turn, address the following three general product design research categories: context and strategy, product design process, and product design consequences. These summaries are followed by suggested future research opportunities to address gaps in the literature. In addition to seeking inspiration for future research based on a review of extant research, the authors illustrate an approach for exploring research opportunities based on current and emerging industry trends, such as sustainability, the sharing economy, and the emergence of consumer‐oriented health and performance management products. For each identified industry trend, the authors provide illustrative design implications with consequent illustrative research opportunities. This balanced approach to identifying near‐term research opportunities based on extant research and based on industry trends, i.e., looking forward and externally, may in turn improve the potential impact of future research on both knowledge development and on industry practice.     

西方家族企业利他主义与代理问题研究述评

家族企业这一企业形态正受到国内学者越来越多的关注。然而家庭内部的利他主义及可能产生的代理问题却没有引起学者们足够的重视。家族企业中的代理问题存在着独特之处,这正是因为其嵌入到以亲子关系为代表的、以利他主义为特色的家庭关系之中。为填补和充实国内相关研究领域,本文根据国外有关家族企业的文献,对其中利他主义与代理问题的研究专门进行了梳理和总结,并做出了评论与展望。     

Disruptive Technology Reconsidered: A Critique and Research Agenda

The popular work by Clayton Christensen and colleagues on disruptive technology serves as a springboard to examine five key issues concerning the effect of technological change on firms and industries. This article challenges and integrates current theory in this domain, and raises questions to initiate new work. The discussion is organized around the following themes: the definition of disruptive technology, the predictive use of the theory of technological disruption, explaining the success of incumbents, the implications of the theory for the merits of being customer-oriented, and the merits of creating a spin-off to commercialize the disruptive technology. Examination of these themes shows the relationship of the disruptive technology work with research in a variety of related areas. Many of these links have not been made explicit before, and several of them have been misunderstood. This article is intended to encourage further research on disruptive technology and spur debate by practitioners and scholars alike.     

Radical Product Innovation Capability: Literature Review,Synthesis, and Illustrative Research Propositions

Product innovation is a key to organizational renewal and success. Relative to other forms of innovation, radical product innovations offer unprecedented customer benefits, substantial cost reductions, or the ability to create new businesses, any of which should lead to superior organizational performance. In other words, a radical product innovation capability is a dynamic capability, one that enables the organization to maintain alignment with rapidly evolving customer needs in high‐velocity environments. Extensive research has been conducted on the antecedents to an incremental/general product innovation capability, and meta‐analyses have been conducted to integrate the results from the various studies. However, whether and how a radical product innovation capability differs from an incremental product innovation capability is also critical. The purpose of this work is to develop a testable model of the antecedents to radical product innovation success. Based on an extensive literature review, a comprehensive set of organizational components that comprise a firm's radical product innovation capability is identified. These organizational components include senior leadership, organizational culture, organizational architecture, the radical product innovation development process, and the product launch strategy. Of course, each of these components has subcomponents that provide even more texture. This review highlights how the components of a radical innovation capability function differently from those for an incremental capability. In addition, this review strongly suggests that the direct effects models that dominate this literature underestimate the complexity of the interplay of components that comprise a radical product innovation capability. Thus, a model to demonstrate this interplay of these organizational components is provided. Illustrative research propositions are offered to provide guidance to researchers. Suggestions for executives and managers who are involved in the product development process and for scholars who seek to advance the state of knowledge in this area are offered in the conclusion.     

基于国内外旅游业经营绩效的文献评述及研究展望

经营绩效研究可以促进旅游业经济的健康快速发展。通过对国内外30年旅游业经营绩效文献进行对比,从时间角度和研究内容角度评述两者间的研究区分与侧度,并在此基础上对未来旅游业经营绩效研究方向进行展望。     

Other voices,other rooms: differentiating social identity development in organisational and Pro‐Am virtual teams

This paper advocates a social identity approach as a way to overcome the normative limitations of existing virtual team identity research. We also explore how social identity understandings of virtual team identity could benefit from incorporating comparisons between organisational and professional amateur virtual teams; and a focus on technologically mediated dialogues.     

Leveraging External Sources of Innovation: A Review of Research on Open Innovation

This paper reviews research on open innovation that considers how and why firms commercialize external sources of innovations. It examines both the “outside‐in” and “coupled” modes of open innovation. From an analysis of prior research on how firms leverage external sources of innovation, it suggests a four‐phase model in which a linear process—(1) obtaining, (2) integrating, and (3) commercializing external innovations—is combined with (4) interaction between the firm and its collaborators. This model is used to classify papers taken from the top 25 innovation journals, complemented by highly cited work beyond those journals. A review of 291 open innovation‐related publications from these sources shows that the majority of these articles indeed address elements of this inbound open innovation process model. Specifically, it finds that researchers have front‐loaded their examination of the leveraging process, with an emphasis on obtaining innovations from external sources. However, there is a relative dearth of research related to integrating and commercializing these innovations. Research on obtaining innovations includes searching, enabling, filtering, and acquiring—each category with its own specific set of mechanisms and conditions. Integrating innovations has been mostly studied from an absorptive capacity perspective, with less attention given to the impact of competencies and culture (including “not invented here”). Commercializing innovations puts the most emphasis on how external innovations create value rather than how firms capture value from those innovations. Finally, the interaction phase considers both feedback for the linear process and reciprocal innovation processes such as cocreation, network collaboration, and community innovation. This review and synthesis suggests several gaps in prior research. One is a tendency to ignore the importance of business models, despite their central role in distinguishing open innovation from earlier research on interorganizational collaboration in innovation. Another gap is a tendency in open innovation to use “innovation” in a way inconsistent with earlier definitions in innovation management. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research that include examining the end‐to‐end innovation commercialization process, and studying the moderators and limits of leveraging external sources of innovation.     

IBM's service journey: A summary sketch

IBM is an iconic corporation, whose history of innovation and growth has been told many times in many ways. In this short retelling, the focus is from the perspective of service and service growth. In the early 1990s, during what was arguably IBM's darkest days, it was a return to service and service growth that saved IBM and dramatically grew the IT services industry. This paper shares some personal reflections on the history of IBM from a service perspective, and advocates for more service research to advance our understanding of service systems and service growth.     

Revisiting the firm,industry, and country effects on profitability under recessionary and expansion periods: A multilevel analysis

Research summary: Despite voluminous past research, the relevance of firm, industry, and country effects on profitability, particularly under adverse contexts, is still unclear. We reconcile institutional theory with the resource‐based view and industrial organization economics to investigate the effects of economic adversity, such as the 2008 global economic crisis. Using a three‐level random coefficient model, we examine 15,008 firms across 10 emerging and 10 developed countries for the 2005–2011 period. We find that firm effects become stronger under adversity, whereas industry effects become weaker, as well as country main and interaction effects, particularly among the emerging economies. These findings confirm our assumptions that the firm's own fate is, to a great extent, self‐determined; a reality that is even more pronounced during periods of extreme economic hardship. Managerial summary: In this research, we examine how generalized economic adversity affects the balance across the firm‐, industry‐, and country‐specific factors determining firm profitability. We specifically examine 15,008 firms from 10 emerging and 10 developed countries during the 2005–2011 period to investigate the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis on firm performance. We find that in such adverse conditions, the role of the industry and the country are reduced and the firm's own resources and capabilities become more pertinent for firm performance. This phenomenon is more pronounced across emerging markets. We conclude that the firm's own fate is, to a great extent, self‐determined, a reality that is markedly more evident during periods of extreme economic hardship. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.