Business strategy,technology policy and firm performance

This paper presents a study of the relationships among select business strategy dimensions, technology policy dimensions, and firm performance. The research sought to identify how these variables interrelate at the bivariate and multivariate levels. Data were collected from 103 manufacturing-based firms representing 28 mature industries. Results show that technology policy choices vary widely across firms with different business strategies, and that business strategy affects the strength of the relationship between firm performance and particular technology policies.     

Business networks and retail internationalization: A case analysis in the fashion industry

The paper presents different theoretical perspectives on the issue of business networks and their role in the process of internationalization. With regard to methodology, a specific case study is conducted of a vertically integrated firm in the fashion supply chain, which has implemented branding and retailing strategies in international markets. The case analysis, which is the result of a longitudinal study conducted over several years, aims at an in depth analysis of the extent to which business relationships represent a learning context involving opportunities/constraints in the internationalization process. The paper outlines the relationship between the specific business model, the international patterns followed, and business relationships. Three research questions are posed and discussed. Some final remarks on the relationships between business networks and international retail expansion conclude the work.     

Business group characteristics and affiliated firm innovation: The case of Taiwan

This paper investigates the relationship between business group factors and affiliated firm innovation in terms of patents granted. We examine the following factors for business groups: group affiliation, group diversification, inside ownership, and family ties. In emerging markets, business groups act not only as an internal capital market, but also as a platform for resource sharing among affiliates. We use Taiwan's business groups as a research sample to investigate how these group factors affect affiliated firms' innovation. The findings indicate that firms that are affiliated with business groups innovate better than their unaffiliated counterparts. Group diversification and family ties have positive effects on firm innovation, while inside ownership has no significant positive effect. Our study contributes to the innovation literature by shedding light on business group factors and firm innovation.     

CEO duality and firm performance: A contingency model

Several studies have addressed the CEO duality-performance relationship, with inconsistent results. This paper proposes that these inconsistencies can be resolved by integrating agency and stewardship perspectives on duality. Using data from 192 firms in 12 industries, both the direction and magnitude of the duality-performance relationship was found to vary systematically across Dess and Beard's (1984) environmental dimensions. These results provide partial support for both agency and stewardship perspectives.     

Business group affiliation and firm performance in a transition economy: A focus on ownership voids

In a transition economy, how does business group affiliation make a difference in firm performance? Under the broad label of institutional voids, what specific voids can business groups fill? This paper addresses these questions by drawing on insights from property rights theory and an institutional perspective. We argue that ownership voids, as a subset of institutional voids, occur due to the lack of unambiguously specified ownership of state assets in transition economies, and that business groups emerge to serve as the direct owners of state-owned enterprises to replace such voids. Based on a sample of 1,119 publicly-listed Chinese companies, we find that the interaction of business group affiliation and state ownership has a significant and positive effect on firm performance. Our findings point to business group’s substitution role in filling ownership voids in China’s transition economy.     

Innovation and the small firm

In recent years, the emphasis in studies of Science and Technology has shifted from a discussion of the production of scientific and technical ideas to concern over the implementation of utilization of these ideas. Among other things, this has led to the realization that the role played by individual innovators forms a key part of the technological innovation process.     

家纺与饭店携手营造奥运饭店风采杨东辉畅谈借奥运商机提升家纺文化

如今,简约主义大行其道,简约浪潮席卷全球,室内装饰、居室文化也在这种时尚中粉墨登场.     

China yarn guide the fashion tide

On March 27～29, the 10th China International Yarn Expo (spring and summer) was held at Beijing National Agricultural Exhibition Hall. A lot of green environmental products were displayed at the fair. A soft, skinny , renewable and green silk product was well received in the booth of Dezhou Huayuan Eco-Technology Co.,Ltd. he product has small density, light     

A two-stage fuzzy-AHP model for risk assessment of implementing green initiatives in the fashion supply chain

Green or environmental concerns are drawing more and more attention both in academia and industry. Careful deployment of green initiatives or policies could not only fulfil the requirements of environmental legislation but also lead to a competitive advantage for firms. Nevertheless, making optimal decisions in this regard is not easy. This is principally due to two reasons: (1) the qualitative nature of, and (2) the uncertainty associated with, the parameters involved in the decision-making process. Analytic hierarchy process could be a useful tool to tackle the first challenge because of its ability to handle both qualitative and quantitative variables (decision criteria). Unfortunately, this approach is inadequate at addressing the uncertainties common in real-life applications. This challenge is particularly noticeable in the fashion industry since demand is very volatile, and there are many uncertain variables associated with the whole supply chain. As a result, this paper blends fuzzy logic, which is a popular method of incorporating uncertain parameters into the decision-making process, with analytic hierarchy process to form a selection (decision-making) model for different green initiatives in the fashion industry. The rationale behind the model is to analyse the associated risk of different alternatives, subject to different factors, be they deterministic or not. A numerical example is included in this paper to demonstrate how the proposed model works.     

A process-based model of network capability development by a start-up firm

Start-up firms are notoriously resource and time poor. One way of addressing these deficits is to develop strategic capability to access, activate and co-shape resources with other firms in the start-up's network. The capability literature assumes such a development is inevitable, provided a start-up survives. But developing network capability depends on the managers of other firms, the deepening managerial understanding of business relationships, and the ability of the start-up managers to adjust to and understand interdependence in networks. We present a processual model of how managerial understanding of network capability develops, comprising of three parts each building on the earlier: (i) in relationships, (ii) through relationships and (iii) in the network. The model was inductively developed from a longitudinal study of a start-up firm. Also, two sensemaking processes were found to predominate – problem solving and social-cognitive processes. Our model highlights the role of the start-up manager in sensemaking with managers across a number of firms to resolve commercial problems. Thus, the independence many start-up managers seek must turn towards interdependence. Second, managers' temporal horizons and the specific temporal profile of events and activities inside the involved business relationships are important in understanding and developing, with other firms, network capability.     

Learning orientation, firm innovation capability, and firm performance

Contemporary organizations require a strong learning orientation to gain competitive advantage. Based on in-depth interviews with senior executives and a review of the literature, the present investigation delineates four components of learning orientation: commitment to learning, shared vision, open-mindedness, and intraorganizational knowledge sharing. A framework is tested using data from a broad spectrum of US industries. Learning orientation is conceptualized as a second-order construct. Its effect on firm innovativeness, which in turn affects firm performance, is examined. The results generally support theoretical predictions, and some interesting findings emerge.     

The fit between product market strategy and business model: implications for firm performance

We examine the fit between a firm's product market strategy and its business model. We develop a formal model in order to analyze the contingent effects of product market strategy and business model choices on firm performance. We investigate a unique, manually collected dataset, and find that novelty‐centered business models—coupled with product market strategies that emphasize differentiation, cost leadership, or early market entry—can enhance firm performance. Our data suggest that business model and product market strategy are complements, not substitutes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recombinant innovation and the boundaries of the firm

Recombinant innovation, the combination of existing ideas, is important for technological progress; we want to understand how important market frictions are in stifling the transmission of ideas from one firm to another. Although the theoretical literature emphasizes the importance of these frictions, direct empirical evidence on them is limited. We use comprehensive data on patent applications from the European Patent Office and a multiple spells duration model to provide estimates that suggest that they are substantial. It is around 30% more costly to successfully discover and utilize new ideas created in another firm than in your own. This compares to the increased costs of accessing new ideas across national borders of around 7%, and across technologies of around 20%. These result point towards substantial imperfections in the market for technology.     

Product radicalness and firm performance in B2B marketing: A moderated mediation model

There has been ambiguity and controversy in establishing the links between the introduction of radical innovations and firm performance. While radical innovations create customer value and grow product sales, they are also fraught with uncertainty due to customer resistance to innovative products and significant costs associated with commercialization. This research aims to explain the contrarian findings between radical innovations and firm performance in a business-to-business (B2B) context by examining two mediating variables – new product advantage and customer unfamiliarity. Using a multi-informant approach, the authors collected survey data from a sample of 170 Spanish B2B firms engaged in new product development, provided by 357 managers. The authors find that, while new product advantage positively mediates the relationship between product radicalness and firm performance, customer unfamiliarity has a negative mediation effect on this relationship. Furthermore, the authors examine the moderated mediation effect by industry type, manufacturing vs. service, and find that it moderates the mediation of customer unfamiliarity: The negative impact of product radicalness on customer unfamiliarity is greater for manufacturing firms than for service firms. With these findings, the authors discuss implications for development and marketing of radical innovations and how those implications facilitate firm performance in the B2B context.     

M-form organization and firm profitability

Theoretical discussions of internal organization stress the importance of organization for firm success and profitability. The Williamsonian hypothesis that firms organized using M-form should be more profitable than firms organized using U-form or other organizational structures is the focus of empirical testing in this paper. Pairs of firms are observed over two periods of time. In the first period, the principal firm adopts M-form while the control firm is organized with a non-M-form structure. In the second period, the control firm adopts the M-form structure. Using this matched firm technique across a number of industries, we find the adoption of M-form leads to statistically significant increases in return on asset and return on equity measures.     

The evolution of firm networks: from emergence to early growth of the firm

This paper addresses whether cohesive networks of socially embedded ties or sparse networks rich in structural holes are more conducive to the success of new firms. We propose that the networks of emerging firms evolve in order to adapt to the firm's changing resource needs and resource challenges. As firms emerge, their networks consist primarily of socially embedded ties drawn from dense, cohesive sets of connections. We label these networks identity based. As firms move into the early growth stage, their networks evolve toward more ties based on a calculation of economic costs and benefits. This shift from identity-based to more calculative networks is manifested in the evolution of the firm networks: (1) from primarily socially embedded ties to a balance of embedded and arm's-length relations; (2) from networks that emphasize cohesion to those that exploit structural holes; and (3) from a more path-dependent to a more intentionally managed network. Thus, this paper suggests that both cohesive and sparse networks are conducive to firm performance when they are aligned with and address firms' evolving resource challenges. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teamwork and delegation of decisions within the firm

Teamwork effort is related to a number of firm and workers’ outcomes such as firm productivity, innovation or job satisfaction. Thus, it becomes important to understand the factors conducive to teamwork. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between teamwork and the firm organizational design, with a particular emphasis on the decentralization of decision rights. We develop a simple model allowing for different organizational structures, according to whether or not production and firm strategic decisions are delegated. We find that overall delegation of decision making is positively associated with teamwork. However, when we distinguish between delegation of firm strategic decisions and delegation of production decisions, we obtain that it is just the delegation of firm strategic decisions that induces teamwork. We test the model predictions on a unique dataset of Spanish small and medium size firms that contains information on worker self-reported importance of teamwork. The empirical analysis also corroborates previous findings in the literature regarding the positive relation between cooperation and pay incentives.     

Skill relatedness and firm diversification

Because of the importance of human capital, a firm's choice of diversification targets will depend on whether these targets offer opportunities for leveraging existing human resources. We propose to quantify the similarity of different industries' human capital or skill requirements, that is, the industries' skill relatedness, by using information on cross‐industry labor flows. Labor flows among industries can be used to identify skill relatedness, because individuals changing jobs will likely remain in industries that value the skills associated with their previous work. Estimates show that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that have ties to the firms' core activities in terms of our skill‐relatedness measure than into industries without such ties or into industries that are linked by value chain linkages or by classification‐based relatedness. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.