Internal multi-channel conflict: An exploratory investigation and conceptual framework

Multi-channel distribution is an increasingly important phenomenon in marketing, and the internal organizational dynamics associated with its use are strategically critical in nature. In this study, we focus on conflict internal to the supplier firm among the groups and individuals responsible for managing the various channels. We utilize a research approach consisting of four in-depth case studies with business-to-business marketing organizations to develop a holistic conceptual framework of internal multi-channel conflict and fourteen propositions for research. Results indicate that the life cycle stage plays a moderating role in determining the functionality of multi-channel conflict, that the supplier firm's internal market orientation is a determinant of the extent to which it will engage in internal multi-channel integration behaviors (i.e., superordinate goals, internal coordination and internal communication) and that internal and external multi-channel conflict are closely interrelated constructs.     

The impact of work‐life programs on firm productivity

This research examined the adoption of work‐life programs and the impact of work‐life programs on firm productivity. Human resource executives in a national sample of 658 organizations provided survey data on firm characteristics and work‐life programs. In these 658 organizations, the percentage of professionals and the percentage of women employed were positively related to the development of more extensive work‐life programs. Productivity data were obtained from CD Disclosure for 195 public, for‐profit firms. Significant interaction effects indicated that in these 195 firms work‐life programs had a stronger positive impact on productivity when women comprised a larger percentage of the workforce and when a higher percentage of professionals were employed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

企业生命周期与技术生命周期的联动机制及其组织结构特征研究

企业成长的周期性是经济周期发生的微观基础,探索技术创新与企业规模关系的微观机理可以从企业生命周期与技术生命周期的联动机制入手。在分析了企业生命周期与技术创新关系,以及技术生命周期与技术机会关系的基础上,文章提出企业生命周期与技术生命周期并非以时间为联动依据,而是在一定时间内通过分散决策与集中决策的力量对比形成联动机制,这一机制能够大致刻画出两个生命周期之间互动的传导性,最后分析了作为这种联动机制载体的组织结构特征。     

Effect of time on a marketing strategy

A firm that had enjoyed considerable success in the marketplace during the early stages of the product life cycle found itself losing market share. The firm and its competitors had not changed their marketing strategies since the introduction of the product. This article describes the results of research examining possible causes for the market reversal. It Was discovered that the nature of the organizational buyer and his buyer behavior changed in a predictable manner since product introduction progressed. These changes made the competitors' marketing strategy more effective and probably caused the market reversal. The implications for this firm and for firms marketing innovative products in general are discussed.     

A Discussion of the Link Between One Organization's Style and Structure and Its Connection With Its Market

A growing body of literature has identified some important characteristics of organizations that produce product innovations. This work demonstrates the importance of staying close to the customer and using market input for new product development. In this study, Kathleen Bentley helps us understand the relevance of this research for one small high-technology firm. She uses qualitative data to develop a detailed picture of what close customer contact means for this firm, and how the firm's ability to relate to its customers is tied to the nature of its organization. The article concludes that the organization's structure and style are tightly linked to its ability to connect with its market and maintain its competitive edge.     

Does Entry Size Matter? The Impact of the Life Cycle and Technology on Firm Survival

A wave of empirical studies has recently emerged showing that smaller-scale entry is confronted with a lower likelihood of survival than their larger counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the relationship between size of a firm when entering an industry and the likelihood of survival holds under different technological conditions and across the different stages of the industry life cycle. The empirical evidence suggests that the relationship between firm size and the likelihood of survival is shaped by technology and the stage of the industry life cycle. While the likelihood of survival confronting small entrants is generally less than that confronting their larger counterparts, the relationship does not hold for mature stages of the product life cycle, or in technologically intensive products. In mature industries that are still technologically intensive, entry may be less about radical innovation and possibly more about filling strategic niches, thus negating the impact of entry size on the likelihood of survival.     

Remanufacturing decision and sustainability under product life cycle uncertainty

Abstract

For a single type of product, we study a firm's remanufacturing decisions for the product under demand uncertainty from a real options approach. Specifically, we assume that the product life cycle consists of a growth regime with the expected product demand and volatility increasing with respect to time and a decay regime with the expected product demand and volatility decreasing with respect to time while the timing of regime change itself is uncertain as well. Under this framework, this study aims to derive and analyze the demand threshold above which the firm establishes a remanufacturing process in its production system. Moreover, the number of products being remanufactured throughout the life cycle is numerically studied to assess the degree of sustainability due to remanufacturing.     

CEO founder status and firm financial performance

Founders create their organizations, yet are often expected to eventually become liabilities to these same organizations. Past empirical research on the relationship between CEO founder status (i.e., is the CEO also the founder?) and firm performance has yielded inconsistent results. This study of 94 founder‐ and nonfounder‐managed firms finds that founder management has no main effect on stock returns over a 3‐year holding period, but that firm size and firm age moderate the CEO founder status–firm performance relationship. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Configuring quality management and marketing implementation and the performance implications for industrial marketers

This study empirically examines if different configurations of quality management and marketing (Q&M) implementation exist in various industrial organizations and explores their implications for firm performance. We survey 304 organizations that have operational quality management systems and conduct in-depth interviews with selected groups of respondent organizations to understand their market-oriented behaviors. We perform cluster analysis of the survey data to empirically construct taxonomic configurations of Q&M implementation that may exist in these organizations. The results show three distinct configurations with each configuration displaying specific implementation characteristics. We label the corresponding organizations as reactive firms, progressive firms, and proactive firms, respectively. In other words, each configuration represents a different extent of implementing Q&M in organizations. We also find that the empirically-derived configurations, corroborated with in-depth interview data, are associated with various firm performance measures. The analysis reveals that proactive firms in which Q&M are implemented at a high level attain the best firm performance. Despite the exploratory nature of this study, the taxonomy developed yields valid and reliable findings that have significant theoretical and practical implications for industrial marketers.     

Extending the firm vs. industry debate: Does industry life cycle stage matter?

A series of Strategic Management Journal studies have debated the extent to which business‐unit, corporate parent, and industry effects explain variance in firm performance. Despite evidence that the industry life cycle impacts competition and performance, the life cycle concept has yet to be incorporated into the firm vs. industry debate. Building on ideas from systems theory, we use longitudinal data from 1,957 firms in 49 industries to examine the relative importance of business‐unit, corporate parent, and industry effects during the growth, maturity, and decline stages of the industry life cycle. We find that corporate parent and industry effects increase as industries move through the life cycle while business‐unit effects decrease between maturity and decline. Thus, the life cycle concept should be incorporated within the firm vs. industry debate. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

Internetworked after-sales service

Firms, even ones in relatively heavy industries, seem to be moving in a direction in which information technology (IT) is becoming more and more integrated into their organizations. This paper describes a good, perhaps model, firm that appears to be getting better by recognizing IT per se as an actor in its after-sales organization. Both a smarter product and IT produced evolutionary changes in its after-sales operations. As the product becomes self-diagnostic, it is increasingly evident that the technology is an actual participant in the organization. These developments are interpreted in terms of internetworking concepts. Perhaps one outcome of this study will be to encourage leaders/managers to utilize some of the precepts of actor network theory (ANT) in their thinking.     

An Exploratory Analysis of the Impact of Market Orientation on New Product Performance

For many firms, emphasizing the importance of market orientation has taken on a mantra-like quality. Mission statements and memos, policies, and procedures all highlight the importance of staying in touch with the customer. It is also widely assumed that the relationship between market orientation and new product performance depends on environmental conditions and product characteristics. To date, however, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the assumption that market orientation influences new product performance. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima addresses this research need in a study of 275 Australian firms. In addition to exploring the relationship between market orientation and new product development activities and performance, his study examines the effects of environmental conditions and product characteristics. Specifically, the study investigates whether the relationship between market orientation and new product performance depends on the degree of product newness to customers and the firm; the intensity of market competition and the hostility of the industry environment; and the stage of the product life cycle at which the new product was introduced. The survey results provide strong support for the basic proposition that market orientation influences new product performance and development activities. The results show a strong positive relationship between market orientation and a new product's market performance. Market orientation is also shown to have a strong positive effect on proficiency of predevelopment activity, proficiency of launch activity, service quality, product advantage, marketing synergy, and teamwork. Although market orientation is generally found to be an important factor in the success of new products, its influence varies depending on the type of new product—that is, radical versus incremental. Market orientation appears to have greater influence on new product performance when the product represents an incremental change to both the customers and the firm. However, this does not mean that a market-oriented approach is unnecessary in the development of radically hew products. Market orientation also has a greater effect when the perceived intensity of market competition and industry hostility are high, and during the early stage of the product life cycle. Because market competition and industry hostility typically intensify as the product life cycle progresses, these findings suggest that the effects of market orientation are pervasive. In other words, managers should not limit their expectations of market orientation to specific projects or specific stages of the development process and product life cycle.     

Organizational Learning and New Product Introductions

Organizational learning widely is believed to be important to competitive performance of companies. The purpose of this article is to examine how organizations learn from their experiences in new product introductions. Theory suggests that organizations will display a “competency trap” that reduces their ability to learn from organizational experience. Often initial success can cause a firm to rely on a single or a few experiences to develop routines, discounting later experiences. Therefore it is expected that organizations will have trouble learning from experience. The theory was tested by examining all new product introductions in the U.S. shampoo industry from 1974–1987. The dynamic nature of the business—the average brand survives about two years—made this an attractive research venue. Using the econometric technique of survival time modeling, a model was fitted of survival of brands as a function of organizational experience and organizational experience squared. The model also included controls for financial resources available to the firm and the level of first year's advertising. The model confirmed the general hypothesis that firms' brands are less successful the more experience they have. This study interprets this as evidence of a competency trap in new product introductions. The results broadly are supportive of the hypothesis that organizations find it harder to learn from experience as experience grows. Untangling the source of this problem is a goal of further research. For practice, the article suggests caution to brand managers in experienced companies. There is no guarantee that firms grow in their ability to build brands; results here suggest the opposite. Formal reviews of the new product, its process, and its performance by senior managers for lessons learned is desirable. Management of individuals and organizations may facilitate learning from experience. For managing individuals, often product success brings about a reassignment of successful personnel; care should be taken to insure that individuals' learning is captured by the new product organization before reassignment. On the organizational level, formal brand management may be a highly effective method for managing an ongoing stable of long‐lived brands but may be a poor choice in a dynamic market like shampoo. Companies may explore new organizational structures and departments to conceive and to develop new products since the skills required for managing ongoing brands may be different from creating new ones.     

The impact of stocks and flows of organizational knowledge on firm performance: an empirical investigation of the biotechnology industry

The knowledge‐based view of the firm is a recent approach to understanding the relationship between firm capabilities and firm performance. Specifically, this approach suggests that knowledge generation, accumulation and application may be the source of superior performance. Other research has conceptualized organizational knowledge in terms of stocks of accumulated knowledge in the firm and flows of knowledge into the firm. This paper tests the relationship between stocks and flows of organizational knowledge and firm performance in the biotechnology industry. We suggest that a firm’s geographic location, alliances with other institutions and organizations and R&D expenditures are representative of knowledge flows, while products in the pipeline, firm citations and patents are indicative of knowledge stocks. Through factor analysis, we develop an aggregated measure of location from several variables. A regression model suggests that location is a significant predictor of firm performance as are products in the pipeline and firm citations. A major contribution of this investigation is the operationalization of geographic location and its statistically significant link to firm performance. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An empirical investigation of network-oriented behaviors in business-to-business markets

This study is concerned with the extent to which network-oriented behaviors directly and/or indirectly affect firm performance. It argues that a firm's interaction behaviors in relation to an embedded network structure are key mechanisms that facilitate the development of important organizational capabilities in dealing with business partners. Such network-oriented behaviors, which are aimed at affecting the position of a company in the network, are consequently important drivers of firm performance, rather than the network structure alone. We develop a conceptual model that captures network-oriented behaviors as a driving force of firm performance in relation to three other key organizational behaviors, i.e., customer-oriented, competitor-oriented and relationship-oriented behaviors. We test the hypothesized model using a dataset of 354 responses collected via an on-line questionnaire from UK managers, whose organizations operate in business-to-business markets in either the manufacturing or services sectors. This study provides four key findings. First, a firm's network-oriented behaviors positively affect the development of customer-oriented and competitor-oriented behaviors. Secondly, they also foster relationship coordination with its important business partners within the network. Thirdly, the effective management of the firm's portfolio of relationships is found to mediate the positive impact of network-oriented behaviors on firm profitability. Lastly, closeness to end-users amplifies the positive effect of network-oriented behaviors on relationship portfolio effectiveness.     

The organizational influence of the Chief Technology Officer

The proposition that the Chief Technology Officer's (CTO) primary bases for power and influence are in technical expertise and position power is critically analyzed from the perspective of upper echelons research. This fresh perspective suggests that CTOs who aspire to have significant influence in their organizations should also build their power bases on broad knowledge of the firm and its environment, a network of personal relationships inside and outside the firm, ownership position in the firm, and intuitive understanding of the business. The CEO's leadership style can also enhance or curtail the influence of the CTO. Research and managerial implications are drawn.     

Value creation in innovation ecosystems: how the structure of technological interdependence affects firm performance in new technology generations

The success of an innovating firm often depends on the efforts of other innovators in its environment. How do the challenges faced by external innovators affect the focal firm's outcomes? To address this question we first characterize the external environment according to the structure of interdependence. We follow the flow of inputs and outputs in the ecosystem to distinguish between upstream components that are bundled by the focal firm, and downstream complements that are bundled by the firm's customers. We hypothesize that the effects of external innovation challenges depend not only on their magnitude, but also on their location in the ecosystem relative to the focal firm. We identify a key asymmetry that results from the location of challenges relative to a focal firm—greater upstream innovation challenges in components enhance the benefits that accrue to technology leaders, while greater downstream innovation challenges in complements erode these benefits. We further propose that the effectiveness of vertical integration as a strategy to manage ecosystem interdependence increases over the course of the technology life cycle. We explore these arguments in the context of the global semiconductor lithography equipment industry from its emergence in 1962 to 2005 across nine distinct technology generations. We find strong empirical support for our framework. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nested identities as cognitive drivers of strategy

Research Summary: Organizations face tensions to conform to industry norms for legitimacy yet differentiate for competitive advantage when implementing strategies. We suggest this tension is due to and resolved through organizations’ cognitive negotiations of multiple levels of identity. Through an inductive study in the recreational vehicle industry, we find that organizations concurrently draw on identities at the organizational, industry, and strategic group levels to formulate and enact specific competitive actions. Specifically, we find that organizational identity relates to decisions on product offerings; industry identity relates to downstream strategy; and strategic group identity relates to upstream strategy, firm boundaries, and expansion mode. Our findings highlight the importance of strategic group identity and inform a grounded model describing how organizations draw upon different levels of identity to influence strategy. Managerial Summary: Many managers experience tensions of differentiating their firms’ competitive actions from rivals, while conforming with industry norms and practices. In this article, we argue that a manager can navigate these tensions by understanding their firm, strategic group, and industry identities and how these identities interrelate. Through a qualitative case study of the U.S. recreational vehicle industry, we show that each level of identity influences different competitive actions, with firm identity connected to product offerings, industry identity related to managing downstream distribution, and strategic group identity related to firm boundary and acquisition strategies. Overall, strategic group identity is the most critical for managers as this level filters how they view competitors and provides the rules of competition.     

The effect of CEOs on firm performance

The extent to which CEOs influence firm performance is fundamental to scholarly understanding of how organizations work; yet, this linkage is poorly understood. Previous empirical efforts to examine the link between CEOs and firm performance using variance decomposition, while provocative, nevertheless suffer from methodological problems that systematically understate the relative impact of CEOs on firm performance compared to industry and firm effects. This study addresses these methodological problems and reexamines the percentage of the variance in firm performance explained by heterogeneity in CEOs. The results of this study suggest that in certain settings the ‘CEO effect’ on corporate‐parent performance is substantially more important than that of industry and firm effects, but only moderately more important than industry and firm effects on business‐segment performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.