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We examine collaborative complexity arising from strategic alliances among competitors. In high technology industries, rapidly evolving and modular technologies increase the likelihood that collaborative alliances will develop between partners who also compete with one another. Partnering under these conditions involves choosing collaborative structures that foster the transfer and integration of some resources, while simultaneously protecting other resources from unintended transfer. Using resource-based, transaction cost, and industrial organization economic theories we develop a model to depict the risks and rewards of collaboration under different modes of competitive interdependence. Two dimensions underlie our conceptual model: resource interdependence and competitive interdependence. Resource interdependence is the degree of integration needed for the resources contributed by alliance partners as reflected in the nature of the resources and their co-specialization. Competitive interdependence gauges the similarity between partners in their overall strategic capabilities and customer markets. We conclude with a discussion of the contingent use of inter-organizational structures to enable partners to balance resource contributions and resource protection in collaborative-competitive relationships.

The chapter presents a theoretical framework that deals with the basic question of how networks and industries coevolve. We draw upon the structural and relational perspectives of networks to theorize about changes occurring in interfirm networks over time and the coevolutionary linkage of these changes to the industry life cycle. We further extend the widely accepted industry life cycle model by claiming that industry-specific evolutionary patterns impact the structure of the network’s relations, which in turn lead to diversification in the sources of innovation and to variation in the patterns of industrial evolution.

The aim of the chapter is to identify the internationalization models of SME industrial district firms within a very integrated and dynamic Regional Innovation System (RIS) of Italy. By doing so, we investigate which are the strategies of firms embedded in a RIS to access global suppliers and markets. Accordingly, this chapter explores the role of SMEs firms' dynamic capabilities, its linkage with the industry investments in ICT (information and communication technologies) and the impact of the utilization of regional knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in shaping the degree of internationalization of local firms.

The analysis is based on a survey addressed during 2004 to entrepreneurs or managers of a sample of 125 SMEs firms operating in 7 industrial districts (biomedical, ceramics, shipbuilding, footwear, textile, plastics and packaging) of the Emilia Romagna.

The results coming from a structural equation model revealed factors that impact on firms' degree of internationalization in the input (relocalization of foreign purchases through global value chains) and in the output dimension (export sales). Some interesting insights on what lies beneath the internationalization of firms in a very dynamic regional innovation system like that one of Emilia Romagna are provided.

This chapter is about the relationship between Networked Organizations and Appreciative Inquiry. To set a context, Theory about networks is related to the expressed needs of Appreciative Inquiry. Stories follow, from both appreciative and network perspectives. Ideas are put to work through practice as expressed by method – consisting of principles, practices, and processes. Further, method is embedded in technology to support functioning networks. In research, we look at learning about human systems and suggest that online digital places form natural laboratories to collect, analyze, and synthesize data. Concluding with Search, we revisit the question of consciousness in human systems.

Benchmarking has proven itself as a tool of management, not belonging to the typical management fads. Well-known both in research and business practice, employing benchmarking as a means of increasing the competitiveness goes along with considerable problems and challenges. By analyzing the very nature of benchmarking, it turns out that the respective problems can be explained in a comprehensive way by referring to the competence-based view. The paper points out the numerous threats connected with benchmarking. The isolating mechanisms, well-known from competence-based research, help to explain why it can be so difficult for firms to make use of benchmarking effectively. Among others, the concept of the absorptive capacity plays a major role when the real character of benchmarking is to be described. Understanding benchmarking as way to get access to firm-addressable resources, the recognition, the assimilation, and the exploitation of the benchmarked “best practices” represent the crucial steps of an effective benchmarking process. Pointing out the implications of benchmarking by a competence-based analysis and to draw some managerial and theoretical conclusions represent the main objectives of this paper.

In a dynamic environment where underlying competition is “for the market,” this chapter examines what happens when entrants and incumbents can instead negotiate for the market. For instance, this might arise when an entrant innovator can choose to license to or be acquired by an incumbent firm (i.e., engage in cooperative commercialization). It is demonstrated that, depending upon the level of firms’ potential dynamic capabilities, there may or may not be gains to trade between incumbents and entrants in a cumulative innovation environment; that is, entrants may not be adequately compensated for losses in future innovative potential. This stands in contrast to static analyses that overwhelmingly identify positive gains to trade from such cooperation.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

We consider conditions under which firms hire an intermediary advisor in acquisition deals. Although acquirers pay large advisory fees to investment banks for their assistance in acquisitions, we know little about the conditions under which acquirers form a relationship with an investment bank for an acquisition deal. Specifically, we examine the role of overall acquisition experience, acquisition experience specific to the target’s industry, prior relationship-specific experience, and deal size in relationship formation and continuation. We test their hypotheses using a dataset of US-based acquirers and targets between 1991 and 2015. Our findings provide nuanced insights into the role of acquisition experience for acquirer–investment bank pairing up on acquisition deals.

Using an Internet-based business simulation, we examine emergent strategy processes and their consequences in a competitive environment. We find that the emergent decision processes of management teams vary in the extent to which they entail forward looking, anticipatory thinking and experimentation, and the attention the teams pay to their organizations’ capabilities. In dynamic and uncertain environments, information search activities and decision processes are key determinants of organizational performance. Our results suggest that effective emergent decision processes necessarily include elements of deliberate strategy.

A majority of products for manufacturing or consumers have multiple characteristics that must meet the requirements of the customer. For example, a steel beam any have dimensional tolerances on its length, width, or height and functional tolerances on its strength. The characteristics are influenced by different processes that create the product. For an individual characteristic, process capability measures exist that convey the degree to which the characteristic meets the specification requirements. Such measures may indicate the proportion of nonconforming product related to the particular characteristic, under some distributional assumptions of the characteristic. For products with multiple characteristics, the unit costs of rectification may be different, making the satisfaction of some characteristics meeting customer requirements more important than others. In this paper, an aggregate process capability performance measure is developed that considers the relative importance of the characteristic based on unit costs of nonconformance. Based on the aggregate measure, appropriate process capability measures for the individual measures are also derived. Bounds on the aggregate capability measures are also established.