Research findings in strategic management with implications for R&D management

Abstract
The author has reviewed the literature, predominantly North American, on the relationships between corporate strategy and corporate performance.
The general context is the question of where and how a firm should diversify. The author considers three areas of decision: corporate strategy, (where to compete), business strategy, (how to compete), and corporate organization (receptiveness to diversification). It appears that the most advantageous corporate strategy is to diversify into a high-profit area but to maintain a substantial relatedness to existing businesses; the best business strategy is to have a market-related perspective, to use R&D to develop new products with a marked competitive advantage rather than new processes, to minimise investment but to enter the market on a sufficiently large scale. This last condition presupposes a high degree of top-management commitment to the venture. Furthermore, consideration has to be given to whether the organizational culture is such as to nurture rather than stifle the venture by insisting on administrative controls appropriate to the firm's traditional base.
The author points to three areas deserving of further investigation: How a firm in a mature industry can find a related area that is sufficiently attractive; how to fix on the correct scale of an entry taking into account the long lead times before the venture shows a net return; and how to ensure that the corporate culture will be able to accommodate novel interests and procedures.
All the above matters pose questions for the management of technology and the direction of R&D.     

Order management for profit on the Internet

To succeed, Internet retailers must make a profit on the goods and services they sell. But e-tailers are still searching for strategies that work. To test current practices, we became “phantom shoppers” and bought a randomly chosen set of CDs from a variety of Internet retailers. Our findings suggest that order management and logistics skills are pivotal for selling profitably on the Internet. In this article, we show how Internet retailers can deploy resources creatively to attract the right shoppers, convert these shoppers into buyers, and improve the chances of repeat purchase while maintaining profit margins.     

Hedonic shopping motivations in collectivistic and individualistic consumer cultures

We reinvestigate what constitutes hedonic customer experiences in collectivistic versus individualistic cultures using four country samples (N=2,336) in Germany and the U.S. as well as Oman and India. Across country samples, intrinsically enjoyable customer experiences are associated with the same underlying hedonic shopping motivations as shown in the original U.S. context. In comparison with individualistic cultures, we find that a hedonic shopping experience in collectivistic cultures is less strongly associated with selforiented gratification shopping, yet more strongly associated with others-oriented role shopping.     

Commerce with a conscience: corporate control and academic investment

Corporations have been investing in academia to an extent that could be classified as a corporate takeover of universities. Intra‐university critics see this as an ethical problem, because of the degree of business control over university policies and decisions which accompanies the funding. University critics rarely suggest that the corporate funding be given up, returned, or even limited. What they protest against is corporate control, which they see as threatening university autonomy, and as inimical to the public good. Multi‐university conferences have been held focusing on this problem, and the most serious solution proposed thus far is to construct a relevant code of ethics regulating and limiting corporate involvement, through standards and guidelines which corporations will then have to subscribe to, in order to fund universities. However, there is a conflict of interest here. Universities have a public trust and a fiduciary duty not to compromise education. This implies a covenant not to cede power to outside interests, not to use university resources, or faculty and students, as a means to an educationally irrelevant end. Universities cannot sell out. However, it seems equally dishonest not to offer their students a well‐funded first‐rate, quality education in applied fields with current skills, maximum research opportunity, and the corporate ties that would allow them to obtain jobs. We examine three cases showing errors made by universities in ceding control to corporate investment, and draw some policy conclusions.     

Financial market and housing wealth effects on consumption: a permanent income approach

The objective of this study is to examine the financial market and housing wealth effects on consumption. Housing has the dual functions as both a commodity yielding a flow of housing services and an investment asset yielding a flow of capital income. With the construction of an empirical framework based on the vector autoregression approach, the findings from this study suggest that a rise in housing price has both a positive wealth effect and a negative price effect on consumption. While the positive wealth effect is caused by an increase in capital income, the negative price effect is caused by an increase in the cost of housing services. In addition, the housing market wealth effect increases, at the expense of the price effect, with the level of housing-market leverage. These findings imply that the government policy of land supply aiming to stimulate the economy should strike a balance between the possible wealth and price effects of the housing market.     

Technology readiness and usage: a global-identity perspective

The past several decades have witnessed the rapid globalization of consumption markets and widespread diffusion of information and communication technologies. However, the use of technology by consumers is not a foregone conclusion. We investigate the role of global self-identity on the orientation toward technology readiness and usage. Relying on a social-identity model of motivation as our theoretical framework, we propose a model which incorporates global self-identity (i.e., cosmopolitanism/parochialism and global/local identification) and self-regulation (i.e., promotion and prevention focus) in predicting technology readiness and usage in a self-service technology context. The proposed model is tested in two different cultures, the U.S. and China, and is contrasted with two theoretically-competing models as well. Results provide support for the hypothesized model, and a number of limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed.     

TV Kills Social Capital?

The concept of social capital was introduced into public discussion by Robert Putnam in the mid-nineties. Since Putnam diagnosed a decline in social capital and, as a consequence thereof, a weakening of democracy and civic society in the USA, the concept gained theoretical and political meaning in German public debate as well. The major culprit contributing to the dramatic loss of social capital is said to be an old acquaintance: television. According to Putnam, about 40 percent of the decline is caused by electronic entertainment media, especially television. This article critically reflects on the theoretical foundations of Putnam’s construct of social capital. Using data from a representative survey in the German states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, we examine the relations between social capital on one hand, and television and Internet use on the other. Basically we confirm Putnam’s findings — but only to a degree not even close to the strength Putnam claims to ascertain.