Organizational innovation as an enabler of technological innovation capabilities and firm performance

This study assesses the relationship between organizational innovation and technological innovation capabilities, and analyzes their effect on firm performance using a resource-based view theoretical framework. The article presents empirical evidence from a survey of 144 Spanish industrial firms and modeling of a system of structural equations using partial least squares. The results confirm that organizational innovation favors the development of technological innovation capabilities and that both organizational innovation and technological capabilities for products and processes can lead to superior firm performance.     

对少年儿童短道速度滑冰运动员的选材及科学训练

本文就如何选材及少儿短道速滑训练中平衡支撑能力、力量、柔韧性的训练方面做以详细的阐述。     

企业招聘中能力面试的题目设计与数据处理

本文从案例入手介绍了能力面试在测评核心胜任力过程中，面试题目的设计以及相关数据的处理过程。     

Organizational antecedents of second-order competences

According to dynamic capability theory, some firms are better able than others at altering their resource base by adding, reconfiguring, and deleting resources or competences. This study focuses on the first form of dynamic capability: the competence to build new competences. Two such second-order competences are studied: the ability to explore new markets and the ability to explore new technologies—referred to as marketing and R&D second-order competences, respectively. Using two wave panel data on a sample of U.S. public manufacturing firms, five organizational antecedents of these second-order competences are examined: willingness to cannibalize, constructive conflict, tolerance for failure, environmental scanning, and resource slack. Willingness to cannibalize, constructive conflict, scanning, and slack have contemporaneous effects, while scanning also has a lagged effect and slack has a U-shaped lagged effect on marketing and R&D second-order competences. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating information technology and marketing: An examination of the drivers and outcomes of e-Marketing capability

This research examines the performance implications of integrating information technology with marketing capabilities and other firm-level resources. Specifically, this study introduces and empirically tests a model that conceptualizes e-Marketing as the integration of complementary technology, business and human resources that, when combined, positively influence firm performance. The results from a survey of 522 Belgian firms highlight the importance of how market and technology orientation leads to e-Marketing capability and that this capability is shown to positively influence firm performance by improving customer retention and satisfaction. The results suggest that researchers and practitioners should pay special attention to the complementary resources that are needed to successfully implement IT-enabled marketing initiatives and that an emphasis on the technology alone may not be sufficient.     

Exploring the contribution of management innovation to the evolution of dynamic capabilities

Companies that find innovative ways to manage capabilities gain competitive advantages. The results of multiple case studies of capital goods manufacturing companies suggest that management innovation contributes to dynamic capabilities. The findings confirm the importance of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring as dynamic capabilities. Management innovation differs in terms of whether it contributes to sensing, seizing, or reconfiguring. The findings describe issues of management innovation, such as key change agents and utilization (motivation, invention, implementation, as well as theorizing and labeling), which facilitate sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. Maintaining capability-driven competitive advantages is not limited to the innovation of products and services, but should also address management innovation that drives dynamic capabilities. The present study relies on a novel conceptualization of dynamic capabilities through management innovation. This conceptualization advances theory-building on the issue of dynamic capabilities.     

Marketing capabilities and innovation-based strategies for environmental sustainability: An exploratory investigation of B2B firms

While emerging literature on sustainability shows that environmentally responsible strategies can contribute to competitive advantage and enhanced financial performance, little is known about specific marketing capabilities that lead to sustainable consumption behavior, and whether implementing such strategies leads to firm competitive advantage. Using the case method approach, this study explores marketing-related strategies and practices pertaining to sustainable consumption as reported by leading sustainable firms in the B2B context. We examine case studies of forty seven B2B firms and identify key marketing capabilities that tie to innovation-based sustainability strategies, sustainable consumption behavior and firm performance. We use our findings to develop a conceptual framework linking marketing capabilities to innovation strategies for firm sustainability, sustainable consumption behavior and firm competitive advantage, and put forward propositions for future research.     

Capabilities, innovation and competitive advantage

This special issue was aimed at advancing the literature examining the role of capabilities in innovation-based competitive strategy. Whilst the innovation literature has over the years moved away from its ‘product innovation’ pre-occupation to capture the role of other forms of innovation in value creation, the capability view has progressed from its ‘rigid’ or ‘static’ view to a ‘dynamic’ view in an effort to capture market dynamism. Despite the recent theoretical advancements the dynamic capability view still lacks a strong empirical base. Contributors to the capability literature over the recent years have adopted multiple research methods to capture capabilities that include cross-sectional designs, case studies and longitudinal studies. Within this backdrop, the articles that were selected for this special issue covers both conceptual and empirical approaches to examine the relationship between capabilities and technical and non-technical innovations and performance outcomes. This essay provides a future research agenda to advance this promising research field. It highlights the need for clearer conceptualizations and development of measures of dynamic capabilities, environmental conditions that underpin the development of dynamic capabilities within the firm and research into the much debated relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage and organizational performance.     

Multi-focused strategy in value co-creation with customers: Examining cumulative development pattern with new capabilities

The previous research of capabilities development has largely focused on the established capabilities, i.e., quality, delivery, cost and flexibility, although there are a wide variety of possible dimensions. Few studies report the accumulation effect about adding new capabilities on an established base in a different strategic setting. Motivated by the increasingly important strategy of value co-creation with customers, this study aims to examine the patterns of capability development with consideration of adding service and customerization capabilities. Taking a downstream-focused view and based on the data collected at Chinese firms, this study extends the cumulative theory to the scenario of value co-creation with customers by identifying the mutual enhancement effect when adding new capabilities on an existing base. Specifically, this study finds that firstly, new capabilities (i.e. service and customerization) and established capabilities (i.e. flexibility and delivery) are mutually supportive in value co-creation scenario; Secondly, flexibility plays a primary role to amplify other capabilities in the new strategy; Thirdly, the capabilities development follows a sequence of flexibility, delivery, service and customerization. The findings of this study also enrich value co-creation studies by offering proposed capabilities development pattern which facilitates strategists to operationize the concept of value co-creation with customers and helps guide companies to take both upstream-focused and downstream-focused views of capabilities development to excel in coming competition.     

The co‐evolution of capabilities and transaction costs: explaining the institutional structure of production

This paper proposes that transaction costs and capabilities are fundamentally intertwined in the determination of vertical scope, and identifies the key mechanisms of their co‐evolution. Specifically, we argue that capability differences are a necessary condition for vertical specialization; and that transaction cost reductions only lead to specialization when capabilities along the value chain are heterogeneous. Furthermore, we argue that there are four evolutionary mechanisms that shape vertical scope over time. First, the selection process, itself driven by capability differences, dynamically shapes vertical scope; second, transaction costs are endogenously changed by firms that try to reshape the transactional environment to increase their profit and market share; third, changes in vertical scope affect the nature of the capability development process, i.e., the way in which firms improve their operations over time; and finally, the changes in the capability development process reshape the capability pool in the industry, changing the roster of qualified participants. These dynamics of capability and transaction cost co‐evolution are illustrated through two contrasting examples: the mortgage banking industry in the United States, which shows the shift from integrated to disintegrated production; and the Swiss watch‐manufacturing industry, which went from disintegration to integration. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.