Exploitative Learning and Entrepreneurial Orientation Alignment in Emerging Young Firms: Implications for Market and Response Performance*

We examine exploitative learning and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in emerging young high technology firms located within business incubators. In the last five years, the UK government has invested approximately £125m in incubation activities. The rationale for supporting business incubation is to maximize knowledge sharing across firms with an expectation that it will leverage performance. This represents exploitative learning – the acquisition of established knowledge that carries clear known value and outcomes. Paradoxically, research into EO has repeatedly emphasized the value of knowledge created through exploratory learning mechanisms (‘play, discovery and experimentation’) in securing advantage. Theoretical and empirical questions are raised herein with regard to the value of exploitative learning within a network context which might negatively influence the impact of EO on the firm. Using configuration theory, we demonstrate that firms cannot sustain dual‐dominant orientations of exploitative learning and EO. A strongly configured EO generates high performance returns. However, multi‐group analysis reveals that these effects are particularly strong for those firms whose exploitative learning is weak. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

人力资源管理实践和企业绩效关系的中介机制研究综述

人力资源管理和企业绩效之间的中介机制研究受到了越来越多的关注.本文从理论构建和实证研究两个方面讨论了近年来该领域取得的进展和存在的局限性,并对今后的研究提出了一些建议.     

Collaborative Innovation with Customers: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for Future Research*

Collaborative innovation with customers or users is increasingly important for the development of new products and services. In this paper we provide a review of the literature, placing emphasis on how firms engage in collaborative innovation with individual and business customers. Our review develops a synthesized conceptual framework from three existing models, and other streams of research, to organize this diverse body of literature. We review studies from several disciplines including innovation, strategy, management, marketing and information technology. Although much of the literature assumes net positive benefits from such collaboration, we also discuss contrary perspectives. We highlight areas in which research is needed for greater understanding of the strategic issues and for managing the collaborative process, and provide suggestions for future studies.     

Performance Evaluation of Foreign Subsidiaries: A Review of the Literature and a Contingency Framework

During recent years, the literature on the international dimension of business has grown. In particular, the literature on headquarters–subsidiary relationships has expanded. This paper aims to review the literature on performance evaluation and elaborate an integrative contingency framework. This contingency framework helps to clarify the concept of performance evaluation and to classify existing contributions. Furthermore, the framework serves as a tool to identify potential influencing factors on performance evaluation at corporate and at subsidiary level. By reviewing existing studies, the paper analyses the impact of these influencing factors on performance evaluation and reveals mostly contradictory results or no significant impact at all. Based on the findings, more research outside the classical tradition of contingency approaches is suggested.     

International Diversification,Business Group Affiliation and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from India*

We investigate the impact of business group affiliation on the relationship between international diversification and firm performance for emerging economy firms. We develop the theoretical arguments based on an integration of the literature on international diversification with the institutional theory perspective. We argue for a U‐shaped relationship between international diversification and firm performance, and suggest that a firm's affiliation to a business group moderates the relationship between international diversification and firm performance. Based on a sample of Indian firms, we find that firm performance is positively related to the degree of internationalization, while business group affiliation reduces the positive effect of internationalization on firm performance.     

Emerging Market Penetration,Inventory Supply,and Financial Performance

Realizing potential benefits from emerging market penetration requires firms to address inherent supply chain challenges. A major challenge is for firms to manage costly inventories to address demand and supply risks in emerging markets. However, emerging market penetration may offer opportunities for firms to lower inventory levels, reduce costs, and improve operating performance. Using data for 482 manufacturing firms over the 5‐year period, 2003–2007, obtained from the COMPUSTAT Industrial and Segment Databases, this article examines the relationships between emerging market penetration, inventory supply, and financial performance. Our results show that a multinational firm's sales penetration into emerging markets is associated with fewer days of inventory supply and improved financial performance. As emerging market penetration may allow firms to operate with lower inventory supply, the positive effect from emerging market penetration, such as labor cost reductions, may be enhanced due to inventory cost savings.     

企业衍生研究述评

通过对企业衍生领域已有典型研究成果的回顾,从企业衍生的概念、分类、动因、衍生企业发展阶段、成功要素及其与母体组织和集群发展的关系等方面评述了已有研究的成就与不足,剖析了研究热点与主要观点,给出了完善相关研究的具体建议。     

The Impact of Alliance Management Capabilities on Alliance Attributes and Performance: A Literature Review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter‐firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) – firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge – as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner‐specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge‐sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.     

Strategic Flexibility: A Review of the Literature

Previous literature reviews of strategic flexibility have a number of shortcomings: they lack a specific focus in the field, provide an excessive definitional focus or lack a clear empirical overview of research in the field. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper aims to systematically analyse the literature on strategic flexibility by identifying its main characteristics, linking the different aspects together in a new conceptual framework, and considering the means to measure it. This comprehensive analytical model analyses various aspects of strategic flexibility in the relevant literature (156 contributions). Thus, the systematic and critical approach of this paper offers a novel perspective in understanding strategic flexibility, and contributes to the field by providing a consolidation of the literature and indicating future research avenues.     

战略与结构匹配对新兴市场企业集团绩效的影响

本文采用市场制度演化的视角研究战略与结构匹配对我国台湾地区企业集团绩效的影响作用。本文发现,战略与结构匹配带来的效率优势能否转化为较高的企业集团绩效取决于市场制度。在我国台湾地区市场尚未完全开放、市场制度相对欠发达时,战略与结构的匹配仅有微弱的积极作用,而构建社会关系以及争取政治保护能够给企业带来更直接的利益。随着市场的发展和竞争机制的完善,战略与结构匹配对企业集团绩效的促进作用得到显著加强。     

Syndication and Foreignness: Venture Capital Investments in Emerging and Developed Markets

This paper aims to understand when foreign and domestic firms have different likelihoods of syndication in venture capital investments. Although current theory may imply that foreign firms face the liability of foreignness that constrain their syndication opportunities, empirical studies provide quite mixed evidence. To address this issue, this study emphasizes the contingency roles of settings, experience, and reputation. In particular, I argue that foreign firms are more likely to syndicate, compared with domestic ones, when focal investments are less mature, or when local markets are colder and less capitalized. However, the difference in syndication between foreign and domestic firms decreases when they accumulate more experience or when they acquire higher reputation. I find empirical evidence from a sample of venture capital investments in China, UK, and the Netherlands. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end.     

全球战略:一个文献综述

全球战略是国际商务和战略管理领域的一个重要研究问题。本文通过对相关文献进行考察,试图提出一个对全球战略的综合认识。我们的文献回顾显示:(1)全球战略包含多种要素,这些要素可能单独存在,也可能同时存在并起作用;(2)组织设计、组织协调和战略制定过程的公正程度影响全球战略的执行;(3)全球战略对企业绩效的影响受到全球战略类型、企业层面因素和外部环境因素的调节;(4)竞争环境的变化影响全球战略的演变,在一定条件下,全球战略也会向多国战略和地区战略转变。     

Value of Formalization for Women Entrepreneurs in Developing Contexts: A Review and Research Agenda

Formalization is constantly being proposed as being of great benefit to business expansion and success. This claim, however, has not been previously tested through a review of the empirical evidence, especially in relation to the large number of women in the developing world that operate in the informal economy. Therefore, the aim of this review is to systematize the current empirical evidence on gender, the informal economy and formalization, using a narrative synthesis of 76 papers. The papers were analysed along three main analytical themes – identity, institutions, and constraints and preferences – highlighting their conceptualization in studies of different academic disciplines – economics, sociology, entrepreneurship and development. The review calls for more accurate accounts of formalization decisions by widening the lens through which formalization decisions are conceptualized. These should take account of the rich contextual and temporal dimensions central to these decisions, and recognize that gender alone is not a sufficient factor in explaining women's choices in the informal economy. The review also highlights limitations in relation to the limited conceptual and empirical evidence on which development priorities such as formalization are set. The authors propose a research agenda centred on the need for conceptual frameworks that are more sensitive towards the multidimensional contexts of women's choices.     

SMEs and Marketing: A Systematic Literature Review

This paper presents a systematic review of recent academic literature analysing the role, organization and management of marketing activities in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). To this end, 310 articles published between 2006 and 2015 in 69 main journals devoted to small firms/entrepreneurship and management/marketing fields were analysed. This review shows that SMEs’ marketing has received great attention in both management and marketing literature in recent years. Findings reveal, on the one hand, the emerging role of networks and information and communication technologies in marketing behaviour by SMEs, and on the other hand a research gap in terms of specific marketing practices. Entrepreneurial marketing has been used as the main conceptual framework in reviewed studies, even if findings overall still point out a distance between the theoretical bases of reviewed contributions and the study of SMEs’ marketing behaviour and practices. Therefore, future research on the role of resources, relationships and networks could benefit from the combination of theories developed within the field of entrepreneurship with other approaches such as the resource‐based view, the dynamic capabilities theory and the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) framework.     

Technological Diversification: A Systematic Review of Antecedents,Outcomes and Moderating Effects

Technological diversification has been linked to a wide range of phenomena, including financial performance, innovation, product diversification and inter‐organizational relationships. This is the first systematic review of this literature and provides an overview of its historical development and conceptual foundations. It finds that the role of contingency factors impacting the positive relationship between technological diversification and financial performance needs further exploration. Also, it finds that the research on the links between technological diversification and inter‐organizational relationships requires consolidation. This paper suggests three avenues for further research. First, it sets out an agenda for identifying the antecedents of technological diversification. Second, it identifies contextual factors that could shape the relationship between technological diversification and performance. Third, it argues that technological diversification research must engage with contemporary technological and organizational developments such as digital organizations, open boundaries and networks.     

组织环境的不确定性研究综述

不确定性作为组织理论研究中的一个重要概念一直在解释组织与环境的关系上占有重要的地位。本文首先探讨了环境不确定性概念的演化过程,然后对环境不确定性的来源和度量进行了总结,并在此基础对环境不确定性对组织的影响进行了归纳和分析,最后提出一些有待继续研究的方向和建议。     

国外企业不道德行为研究述评

近年来,由企业不道德行为引发的企业"丑闻"已经导致许多著名企业的破产,这也使得企业不道德行为成为管理者和学术界关注的焦点。然而,目前国内关于企业不道德行为的研究相对薄弱。有鉴于此,本文在梳理国外对于企业不道德行为研究文献的基础上,总结了不道德行为的内涵和测量;接下来梳理了不道德行为的理论研究流派,对不道德行为的前因和结果进行了回顾,并讨论了对企业不道德行为的管理方式;最后对当前研究的不足和未来的研究方向进行了展望,以期对今后的相关研究提供一些启示。     

Organizational Risk Perception and Reduction: A Literature Review

Despite there being a considerable literature concerning risk in organizational buyer behaviour, necessary reviews of the area are not easy to find. This article attempts to organize, describe and appraise the current literature with a view to gaining a critical perspective for the benefit of future researchers. The discussion begins with the way managers view risk and factors which affect that perception and then considers the role of various risk reducing strategies employed in the organizational setting. Comments are made on the state of the literature and the further research required.     

职场友谊:研究综述与本土化思考

从职场友谊的概念、结构、测量和实证研究等方面出发,梳理总结了国内外最新研究进展,并探讨了中国本土文化的权变作用,以及未来研究的发展方向。     

Human Resource Development in SMEs: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Human Resource Development (HRD) in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is a significant area of scholarship. However, the cumulativeness of research on HRD in SMEs remains relatively low when compared to HRD generally. This paper reports a systematic literature review (SLR) to synthesise research in this area. A disciplined screening process resulted in a final sample of 117 papers published in 31 journals from 1995 to 2014. The synthesis of these empirical and theoretical studies revealed that: (a) the literature utilises a narrow range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives; (b) HRD is being investigated across a variety of SME contexts, themes and units of analysis; (c) researchers define HRD in multiple ways and use a diverse set of measures of HRD activity; (d) there is significant potential for future research across the SME and HRD disciplines, SME settings and beyond existing theoretical perspectives. We offer suggestions for further advancing the development of this area of research in terms of theory, content and methodology.