Towards a comprehensive model of entry timing in the ICT industry: Direct and indirect effects

We propose and contrast a model that integrates the factors influencing entry timing and the way entry timing influences firm performance, using a sample of firms that carry out international activities from the Information and Communications Technology Industry (ICT) in Spain. We found that capabilities are the main factor influencing firm performance. We also demonstrate that entry timing plays a significant mediator role in this relationship. Furthermore, we found that the utility strategy, which combines efforts in costs and differentiation, is a basic factor that explains and reinforces sustainable competitive advantages for those firms that enter early into the market. Managers need to analyse the implications of entry timing at length. In this sense, managers should evaluate if they have a suitable configuration of capabilities for entering the market successfully. They should also try to consolidate first mover advantages (FMAs), developing hybrid strategies that combine low cost and differentiation.     

How foreign firms achieve competitive advantage in the Chinese emerging economy: Managerial ties and market orientation

As China experience unprecedented changes in its social, legal, and economic institutions, on what should foreign firms focus more to overcome this challenge, managerial ties or market orientation? This study investigates how managerial ties and market orientation affect competitive advantage and, consequently, firm performance in China. On the basis of a survey of 179 foreign firms in China, we find that both managerial ties and market orientation can lead to firm success—but in different ways. Market orientation enhances firm performance by providing differentiation and cost advantages, whereas managerial ties improve performance through an institutional advantage (i.e., superiority in securing scarce resources and institutional support). Institutional advantage, in turn, leads to differentiation and cost advantages and consequently superior performance.     

Age,order of entry,strategic orientation,and organizational performance

This paper proposes an empirical test of several hypotheses linking age, order of entry, and strategic orientations to a firm's performance. Three strategies are defined: cost-leadership strategy, innovative differentiation, and marketing differentiation. The aim is to show that the impact on performance of both age and each of the three strategic orientations may differ according to a firm's order of entry into an industry.Following Lieberman and Montgomery's (1998) evaluation of their major contribution on first mover advantage, we emphasize three points. First, we develop and test hypotheses related to early and late followers' strategic orientations, broadening the scope of traditional studies on pioneers. Second, the model combines the dimensions of a firm's age, order of entry, and strategic orientations, as well as industry conditions (stage of the industry, environmental unpredictability, and technology diffusion), to establish a contingent model of performance analysis. Finally, the empirical study deals chiefly with organizational performance and not market share, which is considered a typical advantage accruing to pioneers.In addition, the scope of the study (582 French manufacturing firms) provides the means to fill a void in empirical studies because it is a broad cross-sectional test on non-U.S. data. The firms are mainly private, small to medium-sized, and single or dominant business firms. Therefore, our assumptions must be understood as particularly applicable to this type of firm.The results reveal important lessons for practitioners. First, we did not find a first-mover advantage in terms of organizational performance. In addition, pioneers' organizational performance is enhanced by the cost leader strategy—contrary to our assumption emphasizing innovative differentiation for these firms. Second, early followers' performance benefits from innovative differentiation and marketing differentiation. Finally, late entrants developing a cost leader strategy have a significantly higher performance. All groups considered, late followers are the firms most sensitive to environmental uncertainty and age effects.Our study clarifies the impact of a firm's age and strategic orientations on its performance depending on the firm's order of entry. The implications of these results are particularly relevant for practitioners and entrepreneurs. First, a cost leadership strategy seems to be a guarantee for a pioneer to increase its organizational performance. New ventures should therefore take into consideration the fact that newness and innovative differentiation might not be the best strategic orientations for high performance in the long run. Second, as a second mover, however, developing a superior product and being able to market it efficiently appear to be the enhancing factors of firm performance. Third, for both pioneers and early followers, age does not significantly reduce their performance. However, the longer a firm waits before entering, the greater is the negative effect of age on its performance. This is due to the difficulty of resisting competitive erosion, because pioneers and early followers drive the changes in the industry. The identification of these effects should help managers and stakeholders to make more effective entry decisions to sustain a firm's advantage, leading to better performance and higher probability of survival.     

Market orientation, competitive advantage, and performance: A demand-based perspective

This study assesses how customer value affects a firm's market orientation and consequently, competitive advantage and organizational performance in a service industry — the global hotel industry. The findings show that if a firm perceives its customers as valuing service, the firm is more likely to adopt both a customer and a competitor orientation; if the firm thinks its customers are price sensitive, the firm tends to develop a competitor orientation. Moreover, the greater a firm's customer orientation, the more the firm is able to develop a competitive advantage based on innovation and market differentiation. In contrast, a competitor orientation has a negative effect on a firm's market differentiation advantage. Finally, innovation and market differentiation advantages lead to greater market performance (e.g., perceived quality, customer satisfaction) and in turn, higher financial performance (e.g., profit, market share).     

Innovation performance: The effect of knowledge-based dynamic capabilities in cross-country innovation ecosystems

This study operationalizes the knowledge-based dynamic capabilities (KBDC) that act as drivers of innovation performance in innovation ecosystems, across different market economies. Innovation ecosystems facilitate the flow of resources to transform ideas into reality. In turn, KBDC provide a means to create and share expertise, which contributes to the diversification of the economy, and allow businesses to reach beyond their own boundaries to create value for customers in new ways. Employing partial least squares path analysis, four constructs, namely knowledge creation, knowledge diffusion, knowledge absorption and knowledge impact, are comparatively analyzed. Across all four constructs, knowledge creation is the biggest driver of innovation performance, and the strongest predictor of innovation performance in developed and developing market economies. Knowledge absorption is the strongest predictor of innovation performance in transition economies. A KBDC-centered innovation ecosystem framework is proposed to highlight the innovation performance and competitive advantage inherent in each knowledge-related capability.     

Competitive advantage: A longitudinal analysis of the roles of data-driven innovation capabilities,marketing agility,and market turbulence

While data-driven innovation capabilities have received considerable attention from academics and practitioners, there is insufficient longitudinal evidence on how they might contribute to improved marketing agility and competitive advantage. In this study, we make a preliminary effort to address this gap by developing a model based on the dynamic capabilities view. We also explore the moderating effects of market turbulence on the link among marketing agility and competitive advantage. We used two-waves data (T = 677 and T+1 = 569) and the cross-lagged panel approach was utilised to analyse the longitudinal data. Our findings provide robust empirical evidence on the causal and predictive temporal impact of data driven innovation capabilities on marketing agility and competitive advantage. It also indicated that marketing agility mediates this relationship over time. Moreover, the analysis suggested that market turbulence reinforce the influence of marketing agility on competitive advantage. We provided significant implications for theory and practice.     

Building innovation capability: The role of top management innovativeness and relative-exploration orientation

Firms strive to develop innovation capabilities that help them achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace. This paper shows that managers can contribute to firms' innovation capabilities by involving themselves directly. Based on a unique multi-source (shareholder letters, COMPUSTAT, and World Bank Database) dataset covering 335 firms over nine years, empirical analysis reveals that top managers' innovativeness makes them more likely to adopt exploration orientation over exploitation orientation in innovation. This relative-exploration orientation is a key mediator that can transform top managers' innovativeness into better financial performance, and the effectiveness of this mediating role is contingent on a firm's resources and the industry environment.     

The Impact of Firm Capabilities and Competitive Advantages on Import Intermediary Performance

ABSTRACT

Import intermediary firms, domestic firms that serve U.S. industries by linking domestic wholesalers/retailers and foreign distributors/manufacturers, handled a whopping U.S. $1.85 trillion of commodity good imports in 2006. This study focused on these important firms by assessing the role of capabilities and competitive advantages as key determinants of import intermediary performance. The empirical results showed that market interpretation, sourcing, and service capabilities, overall, positively affected cost, product, and service competitive advantages. These competitive advantages, in turn, positively affected their relationship performance with business partners. Results, however, also indicated some interesting negative associations among sourcing capabilities, service advantages, and relationship performance with foreign partners, raising questions about extant firm performance theory.     

Selecting a marketing strategy for private hotels in Taiwan using the analytic hierarchy process

Grounded in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm to competitive advantage, the current study attempts to identify specific resources and capabilities of small ventures by focusing on private hotels and by doing so develops an evaluation framework of marketing strategy in a service industry within its unique conditions. Given the complexity and difficulty of utilizing allocated specific and limited resources with a marketing strategy toward a competitive advantage for private hotels the purpose of the current study is to employ the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to select a competitive marketing strategy for private hotels. After reviewing theory and research on competitive advantage in general and in the service industry in particular, the resources and capabilities are identified as managerial capabilities, customer-linking capabilities, market innovation capabilities, human resource assets, and reputational assets. Finally, the findings indicate that the differentiation strategy is the best strategy for private hotels. The study emphasizes the importance of allocating specific and limited resources and capabilities to evaluate and select an appropriate marketing strategy so as to capture a sustainable competitive advantage.     

我国海运服务贸易竞争力的国际比较

本文从国际比较的角度分析了我国海运服务业面临的竞争环境及其国际竞争力现状,在此基础上提出了进一步提升我国海运业国际竞争力的竞争策略:规模化经营,调整船队结构,提高航运企业综合技术水平,以及政府给予合理扶持和保护。     

Market Orientation,Learning Orientation and Product Innovation: Delving into the Organization's Black Box

Many scholars now agree that market orientation is necessary, but not sufficient to facilitate the type of innovation that breeds long-term competitive advantage (cf. Dickson, 1996). In addition to a strong market orientation, a firm must also be able to institutionalize higher order learning processes, the type of learning that enables radical innovation. Recent research (cf. Baker and Sinkula, 1999) has empirically established a synergistic effect of market orientation and learning orientation on organizational performance. This paper attempts to add to the literature by offering a more complete theoretical explanation of how these two constructs interact to affect product innovation capabilities. Three types of marketing firms are identified. Phase I firms learn primarily through modeling and are typically limited to manager-driven incremental innovation. Phase II firms learn primarily through adaptive learning and are typically limited to market-driven incremental innovation. Phase III firms engage in generative learning and pursue ongoing radical innovation. We propose that only Phase III firms are capable of maintaining competitive advantage in dynamic market environments.     

Strategic Capabilities and Performance in Women‐Owned Businesses in Mexico

The dire economic situation in Mexico, with its high rate of unemployment, makes it necessary for many women to find some form of economic activity to provide income for their families. Although such conditions could encourage the creation of new firms, the results of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2006 Report show a gap between the number of women involved in nascent and young entrepreneurship initiatives and the number who owns established firms. This gap may indicate that the firms created need to improve their competitiveness and their ability to survive. The model proposed adopts the resource‐based view of the firm as a theoretical framework from which to study how entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and learning orientation, as well as the interactions between them, influence the achievement of competitive advantage and superior performance in businesses owned by women. Our investigation analyzes businesses established and managed by women in Mexico and registered with the Asociación Mexicana de Mujeres Empresarias A.C. (Mexican Association of Business Women) and the Red de Empresarias del Instituto Nacional de Mujeres (Women Entrepreneurs Network of the National Women's Institute). To gather the information needed, the study used a questionnaire as a measuring instrument. The results are based on the 90 complete answers received from the questionnaires distributed. The results show that all of relationships in our model are positive except the hypothesis that learning orientation mediates in the relationship between market orientation and performance. The results suggest that entrepreneurial orientation reinforces the effect of two capabilities, market orientation and learning orientation, on firm performance. They also reaffirm that the three capabilities assessed may lead an organization to differentiate itself from its competitors by improving its performance. In addition to contributing to the literature on female entrepreneurship, the results have important implications for management. Understanding the relationships between capabilities and the performance of women‐owned businesses in Mexico can permit the identification of areas for improvement to promote the growth and survival of this type of firm.     

Marketing's Role in the Development of Competitive Advantage: Evidence from the Motor Carrier Industry

Marketing capabilities have been theorized as important factors inachieving a competitive advantage. To date, research in this area has beenmostly theoretical in nature. This study presents empirical evidence thatfirms developing superior marketing capabilities outperform their lesscapable rivals in terms of growth, market position, and profitability, anddo so without incurring efficiency penalties. In addition, evidence ispresented that superior marketers can achieve these positive performanceresults by emphasizing differentiation and cost based business strategiessimultaneously, without becoming 'stuck-in-the-middle.'     

Information technology-enabled dynamic capabilities and their indirect effect on competitive performance: Findings from PLS-SEM and fsQCA

A central question for researchers and practitioners is whether and how IT (information technology) can help build a competitive advantage in uncertain environments. To address this question, the present study seeks to empirically explore the relationship between IT-enabled dynamic capabilities and competitive performance. By drawing upon recent thinking in the strategy and IT management literatures, this paper argues that the impact of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities on competitive performance is mediated by organizational agility. Using survey data from 274 international firms and by applying structural equation modelling (SEM), outcomes suggest that IT-enabled dynamic capabilities facilitate two types of agility, market capitalizing and operational adjustment agility, which in sequence enhance competitive performance. The confluence of environmental factors is examined by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results of fsQCA reinforce and refine findings of the PLS analysis concerning the limits and conditions to which IT-enabled dynamic capabilities add value.     

Factors enhancing the choice of higher resource commitment entry modes in international new ventures

The choice of entry mode in foreign markets is an important strategic decision with major consequences for the success of international new ventures (INVs). It is generally accepted that these firms choose relatively low-resource commitment entry modes to operate in foreign markets. Nevertheless, some researchers have suggested that higher resource commitment entry modes in foreign markets also seem to be competitive strategies for INVs. In this study, from a marketing/international entrepreneurship interface perspective and focusing on organizational issues, we center our attention on international market orientation as a neglected yet important factor in INVs’ choice of higher resource commitment entry modes in foreign markets. We suggest that an entrepreneurial orientation and the timing of international entry are important correlates to an international market orientation. We also suggest that the international learning effort of INVs through their international market orientation has a direct, positive impact on the resources these companies commit to their foreign markets through the use of higher resource commitment entry modes. Accordingly, the model proposes a positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation and early international entry on international market orientation which, in turn, is positively related to higher resource commitment entry modes. The hypotheses were tested on country-level data from Spain, using a structural equation model to analyze relationships between the latent variables.This study extends previous international entrepreneurship research, including insights on antecedents of international new ventures’ choice of resource commitment entry modes in foreign markets. The paper also goes further than previous international entrepreneurship research, by addressing the strategic consequences of rapid entry into foreign markets. Additionally, the results of this work encourage international entrepreneurs to look beyond the explicit value of experiential market knowledge to realize the potential value of international market orientation as an antecedent to higher resource commitment entry modes.     

Performance or learning goal orientation: Implications for business performance

An organization's long-term effectiveness and efficiency reflect its learning goal or performance goal orientation. Goal orientation concepts originate in psychology of achievement motivation theory. Goal orientations drive the development and deployment of organizational capabilities, such as market orientation and innovativeness to achieve organizational performance outcomes. Extant research pays little attention to whether or not industry type (services or manufacturing) operates as a significant moderating factor in the relationships among an organization's capabilities, goal orientation, and performance outcomes. This study addresses this gap. The study results indicate a significant moderating effect of industry type on relationship between goal orientation and performance but not between goal orientation and either market orientation or innovativeness. Goal orientation appears to be more important for service industries than for manufacturing.     

Performance of professional service firms from emerging markets: Role of innovative services and firm capabilities

Professional service firms (PSF) from emerging markets face a financial dilemma: PSFs tend to utilize high-wage labor, yet their emerging market status makes foreign clients cautious regarding quality and less willing to pay high prices. To allay these concerns, PSFs may be able to develop attractive, highly innovative services, but as the resource-based view (RBV) notes, this requires emerging market firms to possess critical capabilities to support such a competitive advantage. Relying on services theory, we propose that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of management and expert human capital (HC) are critical capabilities, enabling a PSF to develop and market innovative services profitably. In testing our model on 201 Indian PSFs, we find a mediating role for innovativeness whereby EO and HC drive service innovation which, in turn, accounts for financial performance. Further, we find EO positively moderates the innovative service–performance relationship as proactive, risk-tolerant managers improve foreign marketing. Insights for theory and practice are provided that enable PSFs to overcome the constraints and challenges of their emerging market origin.     

The performance effect of network and managerial capabilities of entrepreneurial firms

Building on the organizational capabilities view, this study explores the impact of network and managerial capabilities on the performance of entrepreneurial firms in the architecture and real estate sector. We apply an extended organizational capabilities model by integrating Porter’s value chain model and Grant’s hierarchy of organizational capabilities. Starting from differences in entrepreneurial orientation between architecture and real estate development firms, we argue that under higher environmental uncertainty, network capabilities are more important for the performance of architecture firms whereas managerial capabilities are more important for the performance of real estate development firms. Employing data from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, the research results support the hypotheses. This study integrates Porter’s value chain concept and the organizational capabilities model and delivers a contribution to the organizational capability theory. In addition, it contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by showing that network capabilities are more important for creating competitive advantage in entrepreneurial firms than in other firms.     

Advantage by design: Competing with opportunity-based organizations

Organization design is becoming more and more a cornerstone of competitive advantage in today's increasingly complex companies. Our research on firms that have achieved significant advantage suggests that many did so by creating powerful synergies among their capabilities, among market opportunities, and between the two. But the way they recognized and realized these synergies was through their multidimensional organizational designs. Such designs not only reify and empower the dimensions within or across which synergies can occur (function, product, market segment, customer, etc.), they also define and manage the collaborative interfaces needed to discover, exploit, and renew those synergies.