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In the literature it is proposed that high adaptive capability is associated with high costs and internal inefficiency, despite the potential benefits to be gained from being adaptive. Investigates a set of adaptability variables that have not been previously researched and, therefore, takes an alternative focus on adaptive capability. Identifies two distinct degrees of high and low adaptive capability in an empirical UK study. Suggests that companies with high adaptive capability seemingly perform better than low adapters, despite the implication of high costs and inefficiency. High adapters also seem to have more comprehensive market orientation and decision‐making style, although they appear to operate in more turbulent external environments. The results extend the current adaptive capability literature, and directions for further research are proposed.

How top management teams (TMTs) adapt and change to create and sustain competitive advantage is a fundamental challenge for human resource management studies. This paper examines the effects of TMT composition (human capital) and managerial ties (social capital) as factors that interactively explain managerial adaptive capability and organizational performance.

A unique survey dataset, derived through privileged access to organizational CEOs and CFOs of 101 Chinese organizations, was used to investigate a path between TMT functional diversity and organizational performance through adaptive managerial capability. Data were analysed using hierarchical multiple regression and Hayes (2012) PROCESS macro for SPSS.

Unexpectedly, the results show that functional diversity has no direct positive effect on firm performance; however when functionally-diverse TMTs are embedded in external networks, there is a significant positive impact on managerial adaptive capability and, through this, competitive advantage.

By identifying TMT functional diversity as an important driver of adaptive managerial capability, contingent on managerial ties, this study addresses a significant research gap pertaining to how TMT characteristics potentially contribute to the development of a core organizational capability.

The authors’ results highlight the importance of ensuring that recruitment into TMTs considers the complementarity of member functional background; however, benefit is only achieved when TMT members establish external ties with other organizations.

The authors’ findings provide evidence of the interactive effect of human and social capital on adaptive capability development and, through this, organizational performance.

In this study, we examine the influence of different components of dynamic capabilities on value-based pricing and export performance. We develop a research model investigating the three component factors of dynamic capabilities, that is, adaptive capability, absorptive capability, and innovative capability, and their respective influence on value-based pricing and export performance. Furthermore, we hypothesize a relationship between value-based pricing and export performance. Building upon a sample of 172 Austrian CEOs and marketing managers, we test our hypotheses through structural equation modeling using partial least squares. The results reveal that a firm’s adaptive capability and innovative capability both positively influence value-based pricing. Furthermore, our results show that adaptive capability has a positive influence on export performance. The relationship between value-based pricing and export performance could not be supported. Hence, we conclude that a firm’s adaptive capability plays a central role in international pricing and leads to enhanced export performance.

The academic inquiry of operational capabilities (OCs) has claimed focal interest in mainstream strategy research. Recent theoretical advances suggest these capabilities are a fundamental trigger to the identification and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the extant literature has been, at best, partial with regard to empirical insights that integrate OCs with entrepreneurial opportunities. Addressing this theoretical lacuna from the standpoint of organisational learning theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the interplay between OCs and entrepreneurial opportunities and their overall impact on exporting SME’s growth.

To realise the empirical aims a descriptive research design employing a survey methodology was used. The authors are generated data from a sample of 117 exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Croatia. Ordinary least squares regression was employed to test the conceptual model and five derived hypotheses.

The findings demonstrate that market-sensing capabilities are vital in enhancing exporting SME’s opportunity recognition capacity and the rate of international opportunity exploitation that leads to increased firm growth. Also, study findings show that the link between the increased rate of international opportunity exploitation contributes more to the growth when exporting SMEs have highly developed adaptive and innovation capabilities.

This study brings to surface some novel insights about how exporting SMEs can better design their export marketing strategy. The results suggest, OCs occupy key role in the exporting SMEs international venturing efforts by delivering higher growth.

The study contributes to the export marketing strategy field by offering empirical evidence that both capability and opportunity-based views should be assessed simultaneously in explaining exporting SME’s competitiveness. Finally, we offer valuable theoretical and practical implications as well as avenues for further research that should extend our knowledge in the field.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize how information technology (IT) enables supply chain (SC) network capabilities, which is to capitalize on SC’s existing set of resources and, at the same time, manage new combinations of SC resources to meet future market needs. The paper also develops SCM framework associated with IT-enabled SC network capabilities.

Through a case study of a leading Taiwanese petrochemical corporation, qualitative data were gathered on the IT-related SC management practices, in terms of network resource mobilizing and adaptive co-management arrangements to enable SC network capability. This research is based primarily on the interviews of the case company, supplemented by archived documents, published books, and in-depth observations.

Based on the evidence from the case, this study inductively develops a model that includes the operating processes with IT-enabled activities to achieve ambidextrous SC network capability, and the relevant framework functions in network resources and co-management activities include information co-governance, information interoperability, community engagement strategy, cyber-physical dexterity, and control enactment, which lead the SC alliances improvements for dynamic environmental changes.

Practitioners may derive strategies and tactics from the current findings to help them implement innovative information technologies and setup SC framework, during SC network capability development, to achieve SC’s sustainable competence in a dynamic market.

Researchers and practitioners may obtain a more complete view of IT-enabled SC network capability development. The proposed model reveals that developing IT-enabled SC network capabilities is a dynamic process whereby an organization’s major SC managerial activities are divided into specific network resource mobilizing and adaptive co-management arrangements.

Prior studies have argued that small firms with dynamic capabilities can revise and reconfigure their internal resources to meet the uncertainties of their business environment. However, there is a lack of understanding of how they can develop such critical capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to propose that small firms can employ information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities as a facilitator for developing dynamic capabilities. Thus, the study builds on resource-based view (RBV) literature and information systems (IS) literature by examining the influence of ICT capabilities on the dynamic capabilities of small firms.

Several hypotheses were tested by analysing the survey data from 291 small high-technology firms in Sweden.

The results reveal that ICT capabilities influence dynamic capabilities of small firms. More specifically, the ICT use for internal efficiency positively influences adoptive capabilities, collaborative use of ICT positively influences networking capabilities, and ICT use for communications positively influences both adaptive and innovation capabilities. Consequently, the results suggest that the different components of ICT capabilities facilitate the development of the different organizational capabilities that together represent dynamic capabilities and thus, can contribute to a small firm’s competitive advantage.

This study has few implications for the managers and CEO’s of small high-technology firms. First, by prioritizing ICT capabilities, small firms can benefit from the development of dynamic capabilities that will support them to meet the challenges of turbulent business environment. Second, because small firms usually lack internal resources (i.e. financial resources and competence), the study provides more specific direction on how they can strategically invest and build different components of ICT that will positively influence their adaptive, absorptive, innovative, and network capabilities.

The study provides an alternative view of how ICT capabilities influence the performance of small firms, and outlines how such capabilities influence the development of dynamic capabilities. Therefore, the study in hand contributes to the RBV and IS literature by specifically linking the components of ICT capabilities to dynamic capabilities and its related sub-capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) foreign agent operations on their international performance. This study thus investigates a mechanism in which market information obtained through agents is interpreted, transformed and applied for decision making and presents outcomes. In particular, the study focuses on the mediating role of adaptive capability on the relationship between market information management and export performance.

Drawing upon the theories of knowledge-based view and contingency paradigm, a research model is developed for linking the key constructs of foreign agent operations, information management, adaptive capability and performance. Structural equation modeling is applied for testing the model using data collected from a sample of 152 Korean SME exporters.

The results indicate that a firm’s operation quality of foreign agents strongly affects the quality of market information management which consequently impacts export performance. In the relationship between market information management and export performance, in particular, adaptive capability is found to play a mediating role. This implies that export performance is, for the most part, achieved by the mediation of adaptive capability, although market information leads directly to export performance to some degree. The results also confirm the existence of reciprocal causation between a firm’s export performance and foreign agent operations. The finding suggests that the outcome of SME export performance continues to provide feedback to its operations of foreign agents and consistently influence each other.

This study makes an important contribution to the body of export literature by identifying the mediating effects of adaptive capability on the relationship between market information management and export performance. In addition, the results create a recursive model for SME export performance by verifying the reciprocal relationship between export performance and operating with agents. This study thus helps extend understanding of international operations through foreign agents in the SME context.

Dynamic capabilities are regarded as the bedrock of businesses that survive in a dynamic environment. Building upon the social capital theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the nexus between dynamic capabilities and social capital in family businesses.

The study adopted a quantitative approach. As there is no formal business database available in China, the study followed a snowball sampling procedure. In total, 628 useful responses were gathered.

The study echoes the call of Arregle et al. (2007) for understanding family business’s internal sources of competitiveness and the role of social capital. Results show that the three dimensions of social capital, namely, structural, cognitive, and relational capital, influence dynamic capabilities of family businesses.

The lack of an official business database in China made the conventional representative sample survey used in the West difficult to replicate. Furthermore, empirical data were collected from different regions of China; regional cultures and different levels of economic development across the regions might influence the social capital-dynamic capabilities connection, but these were not examined in the current study.

The study integrates two significant but disconnected research streams, i.e. social capital and dynamic capabilities. Furthermore, the study shows how different dimensions of social capital influence dynamic capabilities. Research findings derived may contribute to the entrepreneurial debate as to why some family businesses can survive in the dynamic environment while others cannot.

This study aims to explore the influences of contingent workers on organizations’ innovation performance and develop a framework examining how innovation performance benefits from the utilization of contingent workers. Built up on a strategic human resource (HR) flexibility model, the importance of coordination flexibility of contingent worker skills and behaviors is highlighted.

Structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed hypotheses by using data collected from 163 paired surveys in Taiwan. The results provide support on the hypotheses.

The findings in this study highlight the coordination flexibility of contingent worker skills and behaviors, adaptive capability and knowledge integration on innovation performance in highly competitive industries. This study provides evidence linking coordination flexibility of contingent worker skills and behaviors and organizational innovation performance, and can contribute to the strategic HR management literature.

Coordination flexibility of contingent worker skills and behaviors contributes positively to innovation performance. According to the findings, managers should pay more attention on the contingent workers’ coordination practices to enhance organizational innovation performance in the manufacturing firms. In addition to the managerial implications, research limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how firms can enhance their innovative capabilities and become more resilient. The current business environment requires a specific type of management for companies to remain competitive and innovation plays a key role in this respect. However, this means that a particular kind of corporate culture must promote innovation in the firm. This innovation culture is likely to be present in innovative companies that have survived in the long term (at least 50 years) and be the source of an adaptive advantage.

Using innovative Spanish firms, which were established at least 50 years ago, an exploratory factorial analysis was conducted to verify the existence of an innovation culture. Thereafter, a cluster analysis was undertaken to study differences in performance to be able to detect and identify their adaptive advantage.

The findings offer a detailed profile of old and innovative firms created in Spain. Results show that most of the studied firms (88 per cent) have an innovation culture. Furthermore, two separate groups were identified, in which one showed higher profitability and a lower adjustment to an innovation culture, while the other showed the reverse results. This suggests that innovation culture helps companies be more resilient but does not necessarily lead to higher returns.

Corporate culture is identified as a useful management tool in the search for more resilient enterprises. Specific cultural traits are recommended and a benchmarking tool is applied and made available upon request.

Although there are a number of studies which consider the concept of adaptive advantage and resilience on the one side, and on corporate innovation culture on the other, this paper seems to be the first to empirically explore the relationship of both these concepts.