How organizational cognitive frames affect organizational capabilities: The context of corporate sustainability

We draw on the emerging literature on the micro-foundation of capability development to investigate the effects of the relative importance of corporate sustainability in a firm's organizational cognitive frame on the development of distinct organizational capabilities. Based on survey data from 124 Danish manufacturing firms and seven interviews, we find that the relative importance of corporate sustainability in a firm's organizational cognitive frame positively encourages the development of three organizational capabilities, namely, stakeholder integration, market sensing, and organizational learning. However, contrary to our expectation and reasoning, we find that the development of the strategic planning capability is negatively affected. Our findings provide novel empirical evidence and contribute to an improved understanding of the effect of a firm's organizational cognitive frame on the development of organizational capabilities.     

Towards an adaptive framework of low-end innovation capability – A systematic review and multiple case study analysis

Low-end innovations, defined as new products or services that expand a market by addressing consumers with a low willingness or ability to pay, have a dual purpose – they can be a prerequisite for firm survival and growth and a major driver of societal change. To overcome the scattered nature of existing low-end innovation research and its lack of an explicit capability conceptualization, which limits academia's ability to move extant knowledge about the domain forward and limits firms' abilities to reliably produce successful low-end innovations, we present the results of a systematic review of the literature (99 journal articles) and a multiple case study analysis (7 cases). The resulting framework helps understand what constitutes a low-end innovation capability. The findings show that firms need a specific and interdependent capability set consisting of internal dimensions (low-end culture and commitment, integrated cost-reducing innovation, high volume scaling), interface dimensions (distant customer needs acquisition, iteration, total solution development) and external dimensions (access creation, low-end support networking) to cope with low-end markets' unique characteristics. The study also identifies market- and firm-specific contingencies for each capability dimension and analyzes the relationship between low-end and “regular” innovation capability.     

Intensity, timeliness, and success of incumbent response to technological discontinuities: a synthesis and empirical investigation

The extant literature highlights numerous different factors influencing the timeliness and intensity of incumbent response to discontinuous technological change. However, this literature has so far not been synthesized and is therefore limited in its analytical, predictive, and normative power. We develop a comprehensive model of incumbent response that organizes different explanatory factors into the three distinct dimensions of (1) identification and interpretation, (2) decision making, and (3) organizational implementation. We also conceptualize how response intensity and timeliness affect business performance in new technological domains. We test the model against data from 320 firms from the German dental lab industry, finding substantial support for the majority of our hypotheses. This study offers unique empirical insight in observing that cognitive constructs such as framing and management flexibility have the strongest impact on both intensity and timeliness of incumbent response to technological, and thus, strategic discontinuities. Together, our findings have important implications for both theory and practice.     

Top Managers' cognition facilitates organisational ambidexterity: The mediating role of cognitive processes

It is empirically founded and tested that top management team group processes facilitate ambidexterity, whereas the role of top managers' cognition has remained empirically largely neglected. This study contributes to the literature of top managers' cognition by theoretically developing the relationship between cognitive frames and organisational ambidexterity, and the mediating process of cognitive differentiation and integration. The study empirically tests the proposed model in cross-sectional design by employing a sample of 101 top managers, using partial least squares structural equation modelling.The study shows that top managers' paradoxical frames encourage the engagement in cognitive differentiation and integration, whereas top managers' paradoxical frames are not significantly related to organisational ambidexterity. Solely appreciating exploitation and exploration does not foster ambidexterity, but is an antecedent for top managers' cognitive differentiation and integration. Top managers' cognitive differentiation and integration mediate the relationship between top managers' paradoxical frames and organisational ambidexterity. Additionally, top managers' cognitive integration moderates the effect between top managers' cognitive differentiation and organisational ambidexterity, which stresses the pivotal role of top managers' cognitive integration.     

协作研发与在位企业突破性技术创新及代际知识桥的中介作用——以汽车行业为例

鉴于代际知识桥对企业突破性技术创新的作用可能不同,以65家汽车行业整车在位企业为样本,对其2009~2019年的面板数据进行负二项回归分析后发现:协作研发能够直接提升在位企业的突破性技术创新绩效,且显性代际知识桥与隐性代际知识桥在其间均可发挥积极中介作用;旧技术创新绩效对协作研发与突破性技术创新绩效的关系会产生积极作用,对显性代际知识桥与突破性技术创新绩效的关系会产生消极作用,但均不显著;旧技术创新绩效对隐性代际知识桥与突破性技术创新绩效的关系会产生显著消极作用。     

Productive organizational energy mediates the impact of organizational structure on absorptive capacity

The ability of an organization to cope with radical technological change is regarded to be heavily dependent on its ability to absorb and apply knowledge from its environment. This study investigates the role of organizational structure in driving absorptive capacity and uncovers the role of the emergent phenomenon of organizational energy as the enabler of this relationship. A field study was conducted among firms that are challenged by the disruptive nature of Cloud computing. Our results show that organizational design affects the degree of mobilization of an organization's affective, cognitive and behavioral resources, which in turn influence the effectiveness of learning processes related to the absorption and exchange of knowledge within the organization. Furthermore, they reveal the positive relationship between the enactment of absorptive capacity and the successful adoption of Cloud technology for incumbent firms. The findings contribute to our understanding of the micro-foundations of absorptive capacity and how positive organizational phenomena facilitate effective adoption and implementation of emerging technologies.     

Delayed creative destruction and the coexistence of technologies

Disruptive innovations often engage in a fierce battle with incumbent technologies for hegemony. Past studies on technological innovations are silent about factors that extend the duration of the ‘era of ferment’—that is, the period during which competing technologies fight for dominance. We argue that complexity of the underlying technology, ecological and institutional dynamics may permit coexistence of competing technology regimes. The paper illustrates such coexistence by discussing the persistence of disparate technologies in steel making and kidney disease treatment. We conclude that the process of ‘creative destruction’ can be delayed in certain settings.     

Catch-up as a Survival Strategy in the Solar Power Industry

We evaluate the strategies of the emerging market firms in the context of nascent industries. We use the Indian solar power industry as the empirical setting, against the backdrop of the evolution of the global industry, While in traditional industries emerging market firms learn from advanced economy multinational enterprises (MNEs) and slowly upgrade their capabilities, in the intensely competitive environment of nascent innovative industries, emerging market firms are exposed to global competition in their home market right from the early years. This shortens their catch-up clock. As a result, their long-term survival depends on their ability to catch-up fast, both in output and innovation capabilities. In the solar power industry, we find that innovations stem, in the main, from advanced economy firms. Further, Chinese firms are beginning to move from cost-based imitation to innovation. In contrast, with a few key exceptions, most firms in the Indian solar industry remain locked within a narrow niche of downstream site-based installation. Their operations are opportunistic, short term, and without specific catch-up goals, a scenario that does not bode well for the industry's future in India.     

Top Management Team Internationalization and Firm-level Internationalization: The Moderating Effects of Home-region Institutional Diversity and Firm Global Focus

The factors that determine firms' levels of internationalization remain a focal area of international business research. Within this research stream, studies building on the upper echelons theory have investigated the influence of the demographic characteristics of the top management team (TMT) on firms' international expansion. However, the literature to date has overlooked the TMT's overall degree of internationalization as a key driver of firm-level internationalization. In our paper, we argue that by having self-selected into careers abroad, foreign TMT members by definition have a higher cognitive tolerance of foreignness than domestic TMT members do. We theorize that foreign TMT members' higher cognitive tolerance for foreignness enhances the overall TMT's level of international attention and international trust, thereby facilitating strategic decisions that favor firm-level internationalization. Additionally, we propose two key contingencies that attenuate this relationship: the institutional diversity of the firm's home region and the firm's global focus. Analysis of Fortune Global 500 firms supports the hypothesized relationship between TMT internationalization and firm-level internationalization, as well as the two moderation effects.     

An empirical multi-level analysis for achieving balance between incremental and radical innovations

An examination of 202 innovation projects in 42 firms revealed two approaches in how firms manage employees to explore new knowledge for radical innovations and to exploit existing knowledge for incremental innovations. The first is the system of organization-level management practices, whereby employees are recruited based primarily on prior work experience in other companies and developed interdepartmentally, and compensation is based primarily on joint performance without a specific innovation project in mind. The second is the system of team-level management practices, whereby employees are selected based mainly on overlapping knowledge with team members, and are trained and rewarded for a specific innovation project. Although both systems offer employees the necessary psychological safety for attaining radical innovations and the perspective-taking capability helpful for incremental innovations, each system is better for achieving one type of innovation than the other. The system of organization-level management practices better achieves radical innovations because it provides greater psychological safety, while the system of team-level management practices better achieves incremental innovations because it develops superior perspective-taking capability. Using both systems assists in incremental innovations but not radical innovations, because contradictory expectations are placed on the employees, diminishing psychological safety. The main implication of these findings is that companies should manage their employees differently depending on the type of innovation they wish to achieve.     

Search for Alternatives and Collaboration with Incumbents: Two-Sided Sourcing Behavior in Business Markets*

Sourcing strategies in business markets have been considered separately and the practice of two-sided sourcing behavior—engaging in search for alternative suppliers and collaboration with an incumbent supplier—has not been examined. To fill that gap, we first identify boundary conditions under which the poor performance of an incumbent supplier intensifies an original equipment manufacturer's (OEM) search and collaboration. Then, we examine how an OEM's two-sided sourcing behavior influences one of the critical elements of sourcing performance: the responsiveness of the incumbent supplier. Our proposed hypotheses were tested with data from a national survey of 539 OEM purchasing managers in the Japanese electronics industry. The analysis results indicate three main findings. First, two environmental conditions—pace of technological change and volume uncertainty—have contrasting influences on the link between incumbent supplier performance and an OEM's search and collaboration. While uncertainty from the upstream channel (pace of technological change) enhances an OEM's search and collaboration, uncertainty from the downstream channel (volume uncertainty) lowers an OEM's search and collaboration. Second, an OEM's dependence on its incumbent supplier has differential effects: an OEM reduces search as its dependence on incumbent supplier increases, while it enhances collaboration as its dependence on incumbent supplier increases. Third, while search alone has a negative effect on responsiveness of an incumbent supplier, engaging in two-sided sourcing behavior (i.e., combining search with collaboration) has a positive effect on responsiveness of the incumbent supplier.     

复杂情境下中国企业管理创新类型选择研究

旨在解析我国企业在多因素综合作用的复杂情境下就突变型与渐进型管理创新选择的问题。基于扎根理论、使用多案例比较研究方法,首先采用开放式译码、轴向译码、以及选择性译码析出了大连三洋冷链有限公司管理创新案例中蕴含的关键概念、范畴和故事脉络,并对初始案例研究草案和研究样本进行了发展和补充;其次,在对其他9个案例分别进行概念、范畴和故事脉络分析的基础上,对10个案例进行了比较研究,得出了我国企业在组织规模、行业环境、企业家精神和组织文化的不同组合维度下对突变型和渐进型管理创新的选择模式及其中的机理。     

技术能力演化路径与利基市场选择:MY公司的案例研究

选取一个具有50年发展历史的典型案例开展研究,通过访谈、实地研究、历史与档案数据等研究方法以及3个历史阶段的划分,考察了技术能力与利基市场之间的动态演化关系。根据利基企业在不同阶段的研究,得到了4个结论:①在创业初期(或进入新市场),成功的利基企业选择利用仿制能力,通过差异化进入低竞争和高盈利的产业环节;②进入成长期,利基企业技术能力通过扩散提升,倾向于进入多利基市场;③适度进入多元化市场与企业的技术能力提升呈正相关关系,过度进入多元化市场与企业的技术能力提升呈负相关关系;④进入成熟期,利基企业通过互补性资产的选择和自主创新,获得核心技术能力,收缩并专注于核心利基市场。基于上述结论,归纳出技术能力演化路径与利基市场选择的动态演化模型。     

How managers plan—the analysis of managers' activities

This paper analyzes the positions of Mintzberg and planning experts on the extent to which managers plan and the importance of planning to management. Mintzberg contends that managers do not plan. The ‘planning literature’ contends that planning leads to effective management. In a replication of Mintzberg's study, the authors found support for the planning literature's position. The discrepancy between Mintzberg and the planning literature is explained by the shortcomings of the observational method used by Mintzberg. A suggested modification of Mintzberg's method is given.     

Building dynamic capabilities for digital transformation: An ongoing process of strategic renewal

In this qualitative study, we explore how incumbent firms in traditional industries build dynamic capabilities for digital transformation. Digital transformation has been defined as the use of new digital technologies, such as mobile, artificial intelligence, cloud, blockchain, and the Internet of things (IoT) technologies, to enable major business improvements to augment customer experience, streamline operations, or create new business models. In making sense of digital transformation, we discovered that leaders in various industry circles use the term inconsistently to describe various strategizing and organizing activities; in addition, the term has gained limited scholarly attention as a context for study of strategic change. Drawing on senior executives' experiences with leading digitalization projects at incumbent firms, we propose a process model comprising of nine microfoundations to reveal the generic contingency factors that trigger, enable, and hinder the building of dynamic capabilities for digital transformation. Our findings reveal that digital transformation is an ongoing process of using new digital technologies in everyday organizational life, which recognizes agility as the core mechanism for the strategic renewal of an organization's (1) business model, (2) collaborative approach, and eventually the (3) culture.     

Technological Discontinuities: Is Co-operation an Option?

At times of discontinuous technological change co-operation represents a viable strategy for both incumbents and new-entrants, provided that the choice of co-operation is consistent with the firm’s business strategy (market-pull and generalist vs. technology-push and specialist) and with its degree of organizational and technological flexibility. A clear understanding of these two elements constitutes a necessary managerial pre-requisite for an effective co-operative strategy. Evidence from the UK fibre-optics industry suggests that managers can choose between two ideal types of co-operation. On the one hand, structured co-operation involves highly engineered partnerships at the inter-organizational level designed to gain control over, or access to, the commercialisation of the new technology for standard applications in the wider market; on the other hand, unstructured co-operation relies on informal relationships between individuals in separate organizations, with the intention of sustaining the development of innovative applications of the new technology for specialist market niches. Being a new-entrant or an incumbent does not necessarily explain the type of co-operation adopted - but there is evidence that market-pull, generalist strategies and lower levels of technological and organizational flexibility are associated with structured co-operation, whereas technology-push, specialist strategies and higher levels of flexibility combine with co-operative strategies of the unstructured type.     

Enabling disruptive innovations through the use of customer analysis methods

The theory of disruptive innovation has had a profound effect on academic literature and management mindsets. Nevertheless, the processes that are required to develop disruptive innovations are not yet well understood. An essential part of creating disruptive innovations is gathering the right information on potential and current customers. The research questions that are addressed in this paper deal with the suitability of customer analysis methods for providing this information. The customer analysis model that is formulated in this paper summarizes the results of a literature review regarding the requirements of customer analysis for the success of disruptive innovations. With insights on context, customers, constraints and effects, the model reveals what information is needed to successfully shape the disruptive innovation process. Following the literature on disruptive and radical innovation, a group of eight customer analysis methods is selected and assessed. The analysis reveals that none of the existing methods can generate all of the required information. By combining and modifying the associated methods, the requirements of the proposed model and, by extension, the market can be met. Managers who follow the suggestions of this paper will develop a better understanding of current and potential customers and, therefore, unveil the potential of disruptive innovations.     

CEO satisfaction and intended strategic changes: The moderating role of performance cues

How do CEOs react to attainment discrepancies in their organizations' performance? Scholars have generally argued that (only) when performance falls below a certain aspiration level do CEOs intend to change the organization's strategy. However, empirical evidence on this issue is ambiguous and inconclusive. We address this puzzle directly by studying how CEOs' cognitive interpretations of performance (their satisfaction with the firm's performance) affect the magnitude of intended strategic changes, and we explore the moderating effect of the context (performance compared to the industry) on this relationship. Using a sample of medium-sized organizations, we find that CEOs' satisfaction with performance is negatively related to intended strategic changes, as expected, but only in contexts of poor performance compared to the industry. The negative relationship becomes less pronounced when performance compared to the industry reaches a certain threshold and even appears to reverse when the latter is extremely high. Moreover, exploratory post hoc analyses tentatively suggest the existence of two alternative intended change trajectories: contractive as a reaction to dissatisfaction and poor performance, and expansive as a response to satisfaction and high performance. These findings help to contextualize the effects of attainment discrepancies in light of conventional performance feedback theory and alternative theoretical perspectives.     

Food manufacturing: The future prospect

This article provides an analysis of the environmental factors which are likely to influence the nature and level of activity in Britain's food industry over the next 10–15 years, and in particular planning for human resources. The article covers the historical perspective: the present market position and the consequences of misplaced optimism; examines the prospects for the medium and longer term in relation to the world food problem and the industry's opportunities: and considers some of the manpower implications.     

Cost‐Reducing Innovation and the Role of Patent Intermediaries in Increasing Market Efficiency

Patent intermediaries have gained importance as non‐practicing entities in the innovation domain, buying innovations from an external provider and then licensing them to practicing firms. In this study, we analyze the competition between two identical incumbent firms and a patent intermediary for the acquisition and licensing of a cost‐reducing innovation developed by an external innovator. We show that the outcome of the IP acquisition and licensing game critically depends on the degree of the cost‐reducing innovation. Patent intermediaries win IP rights in patent markets if the innovation is incremental. They also win the IP rights when the innovation is moderate or radical, providing they have significant efficiency advantages over incumbent firms and the uncertainty about the degree of innovation is low. We also show that patent intermediaries serve to make markets more efficient. When the innovation is incremental or moderate, they help ensure a lower cost of production and a lower price for customers, and when the innovation is radical, they help increase the profits of the incumbent firms.