Cognitive antecedents of business models: Exploring the link between attention and business model design over time

A firm's ability to conceive performance-enhancing business models (BMs) has become a cornerstone of competitive advantage. There is consensus that external triggers spur such BM change, but the literature has remained silent on the role of internal and cognitive antecedents such as managerial attention. In our inductive case study of four corporate spin-offs, we find that top management teams (TMTs) with a specific set of attention patterns are more likely to develop performance-enhancing BM designs. However, our findings provide evidence that specific attention foci are not sufficient to enhance particular BM designs, as it is also a matter of the intensity of attention. We further find that, over time, TMTs attention patterns shift and cause changes in BM designs. The emergent theoretical framework highlights that attention is an antecedent in explaining BM designs.     

Agency conflict in diversified business groups and performance of affiliated firms in India: Contingent effect of external constraint and internal governance

This study examines how diversification in Indian business groups creates multiple forms of agency problems and has performance implications for group-affiliated firms. Departing from prior literature which emphasizes the principal–principal agency conflict in business groups, we argue that business group diversification leads to dual agency problems between controlling and minority shareholders (principal–principal) and shareholders and managers (principal–agent) in affiliated firms. Both these agency problems arise in diversified business groups through cross-subsidization of affiliated firms by inefficient capital investment, continuing presence of affiliated firms in declining industries, tunneling of resources from profitable affiliated firms, lack of attention by business group headquarters to affiliated firms, and affiliated firm managers' sense of perceived security, which negatively impacts affiliated firms’ performance. These agency issues are reduced with the increase in product market competition from exposure to international markets and through concentrated promoter ownership in the affiliated firms. Our hypothesized model finds empirical support in a sample of 828 business group–affiliated firms in India.     

Measuring business performance in the high-tech manufacturing industry: A case study of Taiwan's large-sized TFT-LCD panel companies

The nature of competition in the high-technology manufacturing industry has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and any of the traditional indicators of business performance are insufficient today. We have identified a new set of financial and non-financial performance indicators that can be used by high-tech manufacturing companies and have developed a business performance evaluation model. A data envelopment analysis (DEA), an analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach are used in the model. Data from large-sized thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display panel companies in Taiwan were collected via a field survey and from various published databases and were fed into the model to determine the relative business performance of the companies. We hope that our findings will help high-tech manufacturing executives determine their companies’ strengths and weaknesses and lead to future improvements in business operations.     

Inclusive innovation and the role of technological capability-building: The social business Grameen Danone Foods Limited in Bangladesh

This article examines how a least developed country-based social business first creates operational capabilities (OCs) and then, over time, builds innovative capabilities (ICs) to fulfil a social need, be self-sustainable and achieve inclusive innovation. This relationship is examined in Bangladesh's Grameen Danone Foods Limited (GDFL) by integrating the technological capability and inclusive innovation theoretical frameworks and by using data gathered through extensive fieldwork. Broadly, our findings show how GDFL built and accumulated basic and intermediate ICs to undertake innovative activities in all areas of operation. Specifically, our findings scrutinize the process in which a social business develops and organizes its resources to initially build OCs and engage in the creation of ICs through various learning mechanisms to deliver inclusive innovation. From this process, we also observe a set of unpredicted positive spillovers to the community, which expands the inclusiveness effect. The findings also suggest that having a social orientation, triggers the use of different resources from within and outside the firm to achieve inclusive innovation. We conclude by discussing the study's implications for scholars, policy-makers and managers of multinational's social businesses. We also highlight future research areas, and crucially those related to key emerging conceptual limitations of inclusive innovation and development.     

Strategic responses to imposed innovation projects: The case of carbon capture and storage in the Alberta oil sands industry

Today's ‘activist’ attitudes and strong power of non-market stakeholders (such as government agencies, non-governmental organizations, labor unions) have triggered the phenomenon of imposed innovation projects. These are investment projects carried out by profit-seeking firms primarily in response to the demands of influential non-market stakeholders. Such projects are supposedly instrumental to the emergence of new, socially beneficial products and production processes. We use a stakeholder management perspective to analyze the case study of a set of salient imposed innovation projects in the realm of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, pursued in the 2011–2014 period by a number of energy companies in Western Canada. We describe the peculiarities of these projects and reveal the scope and drivers of firm-level actions in response to the pressure to pursue imposed innovations. The findings reveal a spectrum of strategic responses to imposed innovation pressures, with varying degrees of cooperation with other economic actors, and varying levels of engagement to tailor the imposed innovation to the firm's technological profile. We develop a set of propositions on the performance implications for firms implementing imposed innovation projects. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy makers concerned with the improved diffusion and effectiveness of such projects.     

From imagination to application: Making the case for the general method of theory-building research in applied disciplines

The author examines what factors determine leadership success in UK social enterprises. Despite the attention prompted by the UK government's ‘Big Society’ policies, this remains a relatively unexplored field in the leadership literature. Based on in-depth interviews with successful social enterprise chief executives, carried out between April and December 2010, this article challenges the dominance of competency models, based on purely behaviourist tradition. It examines the impact of personality, values, circumstance and career arc on the way these leaders perform in an attempt to take a fresh look at the interaction of traits, behaviours and situational flexibility in determining successful leadership in this type of organization. A number of key factors are identified and categorized as dimensions of ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘style’. Consistent contra-indicators are also identified, providing the basis for an approach to both leadership selection and development in this growing sector of the economy.