Goal configuration in a global industry context

This study analyzes the goal configuration of 126 firms, based in Japan, U.K. and U.S., competing in global industries. The results indicate that firm nationality and internationalization do not affect the firm's goal configuration. The breadth of the firm's reward system was found to be related positively to a dispersed goal configuration and, within global and multifocal industry segments, a congruence between goal configuration and industry position was found to be associated positively with performance.     

参与全球生产网络对我国制造业价值链提升影响的实证研究——基于出口复杂度的分析

本文通过102个主要国家的SITC五位码贸易数据计算了我国2001—2009年24个制造业行业的出口复杂度(ESI),以此衡量各行业在全球价值链中的地位,并实证检验了全球生产网络对我国制造业价值链地位的影响。研究发现,总体而言,全球生产网络促进了我国制造业价值链提升,资本密集度和高技术资本密集度也可以显著提高价值链地位,但经济自由度、研发对我国制造业价值链提升的积极作用并不显著。进一步的研究发现,全球生产网络对我国制造业价值链地位的影响存在显著的行业差异性,具体表现为,与以零部件贸易为主的行业相比,全球生产网络对价值链提升的积极影响在以半成品贸易为主的行业中更为显著;在资本技术密集型行业中,全球生产网络有助于提升我国制造业的价值链地位,但在劳动密集型行业和资本密集型行业中这一作用并不明显。     

Global mind-sets and cognitive shift in a complex multinational corporation

This article investigates attitudes that underlie international strategy processes. We propose survey scales of these attitudes and describe tests that support their reliability and validity as measures of constructs—including integration, responsiveness, and coordination—that researchers have used for many years in case analyses of international strategy and organization. We also propose and validate scales to capture the perceived alignment with firms' international objectives of key business policies that affect individuals, including accountability for global results, career opportunity and a globally shared meaning system that informs communication and discussion about change. Our discussion of these tests offers an assessment of how changing patterns of association among the measures over time conform to expectations generated by the case-based empirical literature. We argue that these patterns document a process of organizational learning that can link managers' mind-sets with senior managers' intentions in the course of proactive international strategic change. The analysis relies on survey responses taken in 1992 and 1995 from 370 managers in 13 country affiliates and the head office of a U.S.-based diversified multinational corporation (DMNC). © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PC行业的模块化与整合研究

本文研究了模块化对PC行业的影响,在此基础上分析模块化与垂直整合的关系,得出PC行业内模块化与垂直整合的变化规律。现今PC企业的竞争集中在供应链的竞争,本文认为PC供应链管理是建立在模块化基础上的供应链整合,延迟策略与全球物流模式体现了PC供应链整合的特点。PC行业的模块化与整合研究对其他行业也有重要参考价值。     

Multinationals' diversification and the risk-return trade-off

This paper advances a theoretical rationale to explain Bowman's paradox (1980) that firms with high returns can have low risk. Here we draw on the rich body of international management research and argue that global market diversification, which provides firms with three distinct options and opportunities over domestic firms, can explain the high return-low risk profile. We also argue that no strong theoretical rationale exists in support of either related or unrelated product diversification generating such a favorable risk-return profile. By integrating both the product and the global market dimension of diversification into our analyses and by controlling for the industry effect, this paper sheds new light on the relationship between corporate diversification and the risk-return tradeoff. The results of this research, which are based on the diversification experiences of 125 multinationals, reveal the strikingly important, though so far overlooked, role that global market diversification plays in the joint management of corporate risk and return. Global market diversification here reflects both the multiplicity of international market areas in which a firm operates and the distribution pattern of a firm's industries across these multiple areas.     

Environmental scanning and organizational strategy

The purpose of this study was to test empirically the relationships between the environmental scanning activities of upper-level executives and their organizations' strategies, on the premise that executives would scan to reinforce their organization's particular basis for competing. Among the three industries studied, there were differences in the strategy–scanning link. These differences may have been attributable to different dominant environmental requirements existing in each industry.     

Global strategy and population-level learning: the case of hard disk drives

Some scholars argue that firms within the same industry engage in similar foreign investment behavior irrespective of nationality because they face a common set of pressures and incentives. Others emphasize the persistent diversity in business practices and behavior of firms from different nations as they invest abroad. Using the hard disk drive industry as a case, this paper explores whether nationality or industry has the greater influence on global strategy and whether it affects industry performance. The findings suggest that firms from the same nation are likely to adopt similar global strategies initially, but that, over time, the industry as a whole converges on the same blueprint for action. At the same time, however, strategic focus and organizational characteristics moderate national influences: firms from the same nation are more likely to adopt the same global strategy if they compete in the same product segment and are of similar size and age. The evidence also indicates that the national industry that is first to select what becomes the dominant strategy acquires an advantage over competitors from other countries. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

产业发展的趋势研判与理性思考

在全球经济一体化，信息化，市场化的大背景下，国际产业发展也是呈现出新的特点，产业的集聚发展，相互间渗透发展以及产业持续发展构成了当今产业发展的主旋律。把握国际产业的发展趋势，可以在我国产业战略调整中通过簇群化进一步提高我国产业的国际竞争力；通过融合化实现产业创新和培育新的增长点；通过生态化促进我国经济的可持续发展。     

The Influence of Regulation and Disruptive Potential on Incumbents' Submarket Entry Decision and Success in the Context of a Network Industry

This paper uses the theoretical perspectives of disruptive innovation, network externalities, and regulation to study the submarket strategies of incumbent firms that operate in a regulated network industry. In this setting, the impact of potentially disruptive innovations might be different because of the tighter regulation of incumbent firms. By analyzing the entry and success patterns of incumbent mobile network operators (MNOs) in the public hotspot markets in 17 Western European countries, we focus on how regulation and network effects as well as disruption factors influence the incumbent firms' strategies. In doing so, this paper departs from prior research that has primarily focused on unregulated industries and combines contradicting explanations from disruptive innovation theory, the motivation/ability framework, regulation theory, as well as network effects to provide a comprehensive analysis on how incumbents behave in a regulated network industry that is being confronted with a potentially disruptive innovation. In particular, while disruptive innovation theory predicts that the incumbents' vast experience in an industry could cause them to avoid entering new submarkets created by potentially disruptive innovations, the desire to avoid regulation could encourage such submarket entry. Furthermore, in regulated network industries, incumbent firms might have a stronger motivation to enter new submarkets as the importance of single customers and high market shares could be substantially different. These contrasting insights are used to develop an integrative research model and to derive hypotheses on incumbents' submarket entry decision and success. Drawing on cross‐sectional, multicountry data of 62 MNOs that operate in 17 Western European countries, this study uses logit and tobit regressions to test the impact of disruption factors, regulation, and network externalities on the entry decision and success of incumbent firms. The results reveal that the incumbent MNOs are caught in an area of conflict between the regulated industry context and their international technology strategy. The findings suggest that the incumbent MNOs' motivation and ability to escape regulation positively influenced their submarket entry and success in the public hotspot market. Thus, the potentially disruptive scenario was successfully turned into a potentially sustaining one as the incumbent MNOs could enhance their presence in the mobile broadband market. The testing on a multicountry basis as well as the positive influence of ethnocentric technology strategies for public hotspots, which are devised in the headquarters' location and are then brought out internationally, shed new light on an industry that has typically been characterized by country‐by‐country decisions. These findings may also reveal challenges for future research on disruptive innovations in multinational industries and expose future challenges for regulative authorities and managers. This paper thereby adds to the theory of disruptive innovation as it includes the influence of regulation on incumbents in network industries. Additionally, this study expands on previous findings on the disruptive potential of wireless local area network technology by employing a multi‐country analysis in 17 Western European countries.     

全球价值链视角下中国纺织服装企业的升级路径选择

中国纺织服装企业在全球价值链条上处于低端环节,迫切需要升级.本文应用基于全球价值链的升级分析框架,系统分析了嵌入全球价值链的中国纺织服装企业面临的升级障碍和升级路径选择问题,提出了基于技术能力、市场扩张能力以及技术和市场相组合三种企业升级路径,并对我国亚光纺织集团和雅戈尔集团的升级实践进行了讨论,最后给出了若干政策建议.     

Mimetic entry and bandwagon effect: the rise and decline of international equity joint venture in China

The rise and decline of foreign entry strategies in transition economies is an important yet largely overlooked issue in the literature. This study is a step toward filling this gap by examining how mimetic entry within reference groups and the emergence of a competing strategy affect the bandwagon phenomenon of a dominant strategy in the context of China, where international equity joint ventures (EJVs) used to be a dominant entry strategy among foreign firms in the 1990s. Findings from a sample of 1,123 EJVs formed in China's non-restricted industries from 1990 to 2003 show that the impact of home and host-country industry effects are not symmetric between the EJV rise and decline periods. Cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) as a competing strategy has an important impact during the EJV decline period but not the rise period. The interactive effects between EJV and M&A strategies occur only in the host-country industries. We discuss such results and offer suggestions for future research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the Nonlinear Impact of Organizational Integration on New Product Market Success

This article explores the nonlinear relationship between organizational integration and new product market success (NPMS). The concept of organizational integration was measured by assessing the degree of integration among various groups of people involved in the development of new products including new product development (NPD) teams that are typically the focal points of NPD efforts. New product market success was measured by examining four often‐used measures of NPD success. The mail survey research approach was used to gather empirical data from NPD managers in three major industries. The data gathered from this survey process were used as the basis from which to extract information to address this study's major research questions, which include: (1) How is the degree of new product market success related to the nonlinear degree to which groups of people (including NPD teams) integrate during NPD processes? and (2) How is the degree of new product market success related to the nonlinear degree to which separate groups of people (e.g., customers, suppliers, and functional departments) integrate during NPD processes? This study found that high levels of organizational integration (overall organizational integration and supplier organizational integration) during NPD processes are associated with high levels of new product market success. Additionally, this study found that the relationship between new product market success and organizational integration (customer organizational integration and functional organization integration) during NPD processes exhibit nonlinear, U‐shaped relationships. Therefore, the first important finding of this study confirms that various forms of organizational integration impact in a positive way the market success of new products. This suggests that management responsible for all NPD projects should consciously integrate important groups of people to support such developments. This study's findings also confirm and imply that new product developers in the studied industries should integrate marketing and research and development (R&D) over the duration of the NPD process. This suggests that new product managers must be proactive to assure that members of NPD teams are actively engaged with groups of supporting people within and outside new‐product–producing organizations. Unlike prior research, a major finding of this study suggests that the association between organizational integration and new product market success does not form inverted U‐shaped relationships. Data from this research imply that new product market success is linearly influenced by overall and supplier organizational integration. However, this study's data suggest that new product market success is nonlinearly influenced by customer and functional organizational integration. This study's data suggest that when customer organizational integration and/or functional organizational integration is increased, new product market success can be increased at a rate which is greater than a linear rate.     

战略性新兴产业集群创新网络形成机制研究——基于灰靶双边匹配的决策方法

战略性新兴产业的发展对国民经济和社会发展具有重要的战略意义,目前中国战略性新兴产业仍面临着“高端产业,低端技术”的发展困境,如何突破产业关键技术促进产业健康、可持续发展已成为亟待解决的问题。战略性新兴产业集群创新网络的形成是突破产业关键技术、共性技术及前瞻性技术的核心环节,中国正在兴起的产业技术研究院、航空高技术产业园等跨组织知识集成平台为培育和发展战略性新兴产业集群创新网络提供了重要的支撑平台。本文依托跨组织知识集成平台探究了战略性新兴产业集群创新网络的形成机制,构建了创新主体间的灰靶双边匹配模型,并采用平衡计分法建立了以创新能力为重要衡量标准的综合评价指标体系,最后通过案例进行了分析,证明了其有效性和实用性,可为促进战略性新兴产业集群创新网络的形成提供理论指导。     

Joint ventures and competitive strategy

A framework for using joint ventures (and other forms of cooperative strategy) within varying competitive environments is constructed, and hypotheses are developed concerning the impact of particular industry traits upon firms' options in pursuing them. Industry examples illustrate the framework's hypotheses. In this framework, demand traits suggest what types of cooperative strategies are needed. Competitor traits suggest how firms will respond to these needs for cooperation. Since joint ventures can be inherently unstable organizational forms, it is important for managers to (1) select the right cooperative strategy option and (2) modify the autonomy from (and coordination with) sponsoring firms that ventures enjoy as their industry structures evolve. Familiarity with cooperative strategy options is important because (1) as growth slows, (2) as markets shrink or become crowded, (3) as industries become global, or (4) as technological change accelerates to speeds where individual firms cannot recover their initial investments, managers will have less margin for error. If managers do not learn how to use cooperative strategies advantageously their firms may encounter difficulties in delivering adequate value to their customers, replenishing their base of skills, and/or safeguarding their abilities to increase long-term shareholder value.     

Top executive commitment to the status quo: Some tests of its determinants

Some top executives are more committed to the status quo—particularly to their organization's current strategy and leadership profile—than are others. Most empirical research on upper echelons treats psychological phenomena as a ‘black box’—the unobserved intervening mechanisms—that causes associations between more observable executive characteristics and organizational outcomes. In contrast, this paper attempts to directly examine the determinants of an important element of an executive's psychological orientation—commitment to the status quo (CSQ). We focus on a select set of variables which have been posited in prior research as determinants of executive CSQ, but which have not been directly tested for such a relationship. Based on a large-scale survey methodology, results suggest that an executive's tenure in an industry is a pronounced determinant of CSQ, and has significantly more impact than organizational tenure. As expected, the firm's current performance was found to be positively related to CSQ; this relationship was stronger in high-discretion than in low-discretion industries. Finally, the project reaffirms a well known human tendency: incumbent CEOs tend to believe that their eventual successors should be just like them.     

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.     

New venture strategies: Theory development with an empirical base

The strategy focus of over 2500 new ventures across six different industries was examined to identify what dimensions coalesce into distinct configurations. The supposition that traditional strategy typologies are inadequate to describe the breadth of differentiation exhibited among new ventures was supported. Factor and cluster analysis revealed six generic new venture strategy archetypes that can be distinguished along two dimensions; scope of segmentation, and product vs. marketing emphasis. The extent to which the archetypes tend to dominate in different industries was found to vary according to the industry's position on the industry supply chain. Strategies with a narrow scope of segmentation tended to prevail in industries near the end of the supply chain, whereas those that adopted a broad approach tended to predominate in industries near the beginning or middle of the supply chain.     

Who needs experts most? Board industry expertise and strategic change—a contingency perspective

Research summary: We analyze the effects of board industry expertise on corporate strategic change and the moderating role of institutional quality. We suggest that country‐level contingency factors mitigate the effect of experienced boards on strategy formation by providing alternative sources of information and control in strategic matters. We develop institutional quality as institutional information provision and institutional control provision to test our hypotheses on a sample of firms from MSCI Europe and the S&P 500. Our findings confirm that industry expertise is a salient driver of strategic change across countries. The strength of the effect, however, depends on the institutional quality. We submit that weak institutions require greater board industry expertise as an alternative channel of information and control. Management summary: This study provides new empirical evidence that experience in the firms' industries enables directors to increase strategic change. Our findings show that this effect is even stronger in countries with weak regulatory environments. We hereby provide guidance for multiple stakeholders. First, shareholders seeking a more active adjustment of their firms' strategies may want to compose boards that leverage such experienced directors. Second, directors can use their industry experience to control and to challenge managers better to move beyond the status quo. Third, managers lacking access to information on potential strategic change can use such experienced directors for strategic advice and as a source of information. Overall, we add to the understanding of the corporate board's role in shaping strategy and the influence of weak regulations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A study on forward and backward linkage effects in South Korea's telecom industry across generations

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the spillover effect of South Korea's telecom industry on other industries until its evolution to the 4th generation. By using Input-Output Table Data to compute Forward and Backward Linkage Effects in South Korea's telecom industry throughout Generational Changes, this study aims to analyze South Korea's telecom industry's impacts and changes on upstream and downstream industries to offer implications for its evolution to the 5th generation. This study used empirical input-output data for the period between the years 2000–2014 to conduct input-output analysis to evaluate forward and backward linkages in South Korea's telecom industry for each generation of it. The results revealed that (1) Korea's telecom industry can be defined as a dependent manufacturing industry due to its below-average forward linkage and above-average backward linkage over the whole study period, and (2) backward linkage in South Korea's telecom industry was higher than the economy-wide average value during our study period although it decreased with the industry's generational shifts. The results indicate that telecommunications companies should create new markets in which they can propagate emerging technologies of the 4IR (4th Industrial Revolution) to other industries, in order to ensure that the 5th generation telecom industry maintain its position as a key industry. On the other hand, the government should make policies to support start-ups and SMEs in telecom industry and implement structural reforms in Korea's oligopolistic telecom market.     

价值模块的虚拟再整合:以IC产业为例

价值链分解和模块化导致了IC产业的价值转移，模块化背景下的虚拟再整合是IC产业的发展趋势。本文分析了价值链与价值模块的区别和联系，以集成电路产业(IC产业)为例研究了产业的价值转移和虚拟再整合，探讨了产业内部企业之间的关系，认为EMS(工程、制造、服务)和CMM(零组件模块化快速出货)模式是IC产业虚拟再整合的重要经营模式，以地方政府或模块架构设计者等主导者为中心实施价值模块协同网战略(VMCN)将会促进我国全球制造中心的形成。