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This paper aims to explain how the dynamic demand environment influences strategic firm behavior along an industry’s evolutionary path. A conceptual gap concerning the influence of demand-side environmental factors (vis-à-vis changes in technology and policy) on firms’ strategic choices motivates the theory developed herein. The paper’s contribution to the literature on “evolutionary perspective in strategy” also addresses an important gap in the emerging literature on “strategy dynamics”.

The conceptual framework in this paper features a dynamic demand environment that provides the structural context for firms’ strategic choices. It conceptualizes demand-side competence as a mediating firm-specific construct to explain the endogenous relationship between the characteristics of the demand environment and firms’ path dependent demand-side investments.

A review of the literature on evolutionary perspective in strategy reveals an important conceptual gap concerning the structural determinants of dynamic firm behavior. There is no explanation of the endogenous relationship between dynamic demand structure, firms’ dynamic demand-side competence, and temporally heterogeneous strategic choices.

The demand-side explanation of how idiosyncratic firm behavior is endogenously determined, with both structural characteristics (demand structure) and firm competences (demand-side competence), addresses an important conceptual gap. The novelty of the theory developed herein lies in its explication of the effect of dynamic demand environment on the evolution of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – entry, investment and exit – along the evolutionary path of an industry. The theory developed herein not only explains the effect of both determinants of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – the external industry environment (dynamic market structure) and internal firm environment (dynamic firm competences) – but also explains how the determinants evolve along the industry’s lifecycle.

The supply chain agility (SCA) is becoming a source of competitive differentiation but debate on its antecedents which can result in optimal firm performance is still non-pervasive in the literature. Taking this gap into consideration, the current research aimed at investigating various enablers of supply chain agility of Pakistani pharmaceutical industry.

The data were collected from 204 top executives working in different supply chain functions including planning, supplying, operations and purchasing in national and multinational pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan.

Through serial-mediation model, results revealed the strength of various SCA enablers, along with the mediating roles of delivery dependability.

This study adds in the literature on how various supply chain enablers and competencies help the organizations to achieve supply chain agility and performance, especially in a developing country.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context

Strategic behaviour is shaped considerably by demand-side internal and external factors. Through appropriate investment to acquire and enhance customer-related capabilities, firms can become better positioned than rivals to make effective decisions during along an industry life cycle.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

In recent years, the rise of big data has led to an obvious shift in the competence profile expected from the controller and management accountant (MA). Among others, business analytics competences and information technology skills are considered a “must have” capability for the controlling and MA profession. As it still remains unclear if these requirements can be fulfilled by today’s employees, the purpose of this study is to examine the supply of business analytics competences in the current competence profiles of controlling professionals in an attempt to answer the question whether or not a skills gap exists.

Based on a set of 2,331 member profiles of German controlling professionals extracted from the business social network XING, a text analytics approach is conducted to discover patterns out of the semi-structured data. In doing so, the second purpose of this study is to encourage researchers and practitioners to integrate and advance big data analytics as a method of inquiry into their research process.

Apart from the mediating role of gender, company size and other variables, the results indicate that the current competence profiles of the controller do not comply with the recent requirements towards business analytics competences. However, the answer to the question whether a skills gap exist must be made cautiously by taking into account the specific organizational context such as level of IT adoption or the degree of job specialization.

Guided by the resource-based view of the firm, organizational theory and social cognitive theory, an explanatory model is developed that helps to explain the apparent skills gap, and thus, to enhance the understanding towards the rationales behind the observed findings. One major limitation to be mentioned is that the data sample integrated into this study is restricted to member profiles of German controlling professionals from foremost large companies.

The insights provided in this study extend the ongoing debate in accounting literature and business media on the skills changes of the controlling and MA profession in the big data era. The originality of this study lies in its explicit attempt to integrate recent advances in data analytics to explore the self-reported competence supplies of controlling professionals based on a comprehensive set of semi-structured data. A theoretically founded explanatory model is proposed that integrates empirically validated findings from extant research across various disciplines.

The thought and rationale of sustainable competitive advantage in strategy are significantly influenced by the Schumpeterian models of dynamic competition in IO and evolutionary economics. Yet, most analytical accounts of sustainable competitive advantage fail to explain how firms' investment choices influence, and are simultaneously influenced by, the co‐evolution of “external” industry competition and “internal” firm competences. This paper aims to contribute to the development of a theory of endogenous market structure in strategy.

Two alternative assumptions are developed – concerning temporally heterogeneous firm investment strategy – that lie central to a proposed behavioral theory of endogenous market structure. Additionally, a theoretical description is provided of the endogeneity of the demand‐side determinants of firm investment strategy and industrial market structure. Finally, guidelines are provided for empirical application of [incorporating] the alternative assumptions and theoretical arguments.

It is expected that the theoretical arguments in the paper will influence strategy scholars to develop dynamic models of firm performance that render themselves amenable to sound empirical analyses.

The paper contributes towards developing a theory of endogenous market structure in strategy.

The author invokes the concept of strategic adaptation to first specify the evolutionary as well as the strategic character of the causal mechanism (“intra-industry exit”), and second to explain its effect on the evolution of firms' within-industry geographic scope. The author reconciles the two competing logics for firm behavior – strategic choice and environmental selection – that underpin alternate explanations for the relationship between intra-industry exit and the evolution of geographic scope. This paper contributes to both theory and empirics concerning the dynamics of firms' competitive scope, in general, and within-industry geographic scope, in particular.

The US long-distance telecom services industry during the period 1984–1996, which satisfies the empirical requirements of a geographically fragmented industry characterized by demand-side heterogeneity across the submarkets, provides the research setting and panel data to test the empirical hypotheses.

The author finds that while the firms' overall performance influences their intra-industry exit decisions, it is the firm-in-market performance that influences their decision to exit a specific submarket. The author also finds that intra-industry exit decision, when influenced by firm performance, does lead to reduction in geographic scope.

This context-specific theory, which conceptualizes the dynamics of firms' geographic scope as an evolutionary process, explains the temporal change in the geographic scope of firms during the latter part of the demand growth stage of a geographically fragmented industry.

This analysis of the demand-side dynamics of firms' within-industry geographic scope focuses on the hypothetical causal effect of intra-industry exit, a pervasive business phenomenon. First, the demand-side analysis of the evolution of geographic scope is grounded in a theoretical framework that melds firm dynamics with submarket dynamics and industry dynamics. Second, this analysis explicates the demand-side underpinnings of the strategic adaptive mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a customer-centric logic to explain the strategic behavior of multi-product corporations whose portfolio of complementary product offerings belong to diverse industries.

The paper develops a theoretical framework to explain the heterogeneity in multi-product corporations ' motivation and ability to leverage the demand-side strategic assets developed in their home-markets to enter new markets and thereby improve their long-run corporate performance.

The paper includes implications for strategic behavior of multi-product corporations in various industrial sectors such as telecommunications, financial services, consumer discretionary and staples, real estate, and so on.

The profitable applicability of demand-side strategic assets to new contexts should be explained both by the motivation of multi-product consumers (to purchase a portfolio of complementary products from a diversified seller) as well as the motivation of multi-product corporations (to leverage their demand-side strategic assets to enter new markets).

This paper aims to investigate the influence of supply and demand competence on supply chain (SC) resilience and its impact on a firm’s operational and relational performance. While the former competence refers to production and supply management-related activities, the latter refers to distribution and demand management-related activities. Within this framework, process compliance, i.e. how well SC management processes are internally executed by the firm’s employees, is observed as an enabler (moderator) on the relationship between SC competence and SC resilience. Further the model also explores the moderating influence of environmental uncertainty (EU) on the linkage between SC resilience and firm performance.

Data were collected through a Web-based cross-sectional survey from SC professionals working in different industries at various designations. Further, the collected data were analyzed using partial least squares for hypotheses’ testing.

The findings suggest a positive influence of demand- and supply-side competences on SC resilience. Supply chain resilience was also found to have a positive influence on operational and relational performance. Further, process compliance was found to positively moderate the relationship between the competences and resilience. Lastly, the relationship between resilience and performance was found to gain momentum in the presence of EU.

Data were collected from a single respondent per firm. Hence, future research should attempt to collect data from multiple respondents for increased generalization.

The study holds significance for academicians and practitioners, as it investigates the importance of supply- and demand-side competences on the development of SC resilience and its impact on performance. This investigation showed that building resilience in a SC is dependent on the degree to which firms are process-compliant. Further, it was empirically proved that resilience’s positive influence on performance increases more with the presence of uncertainties.

Today’s marketplace has witnessed intense competitive pressures and high levels of uncertainty and disruption. Therefore, supply chains require agility to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage and cope with uncertainties as well as disruptions. Although a wide range of studies exists on supply chain agility (SCA) from the perspective of antecedents or consequences, there is little research on the investigation of enablers of SCA and their relations among them. Furthermore, the literature has investigated proactive and reactive enablers for enhancing SCA, but most studies have not sufficiently framed their analysis of both aspects synchronically. This paper aims to find out the interrelationships among the proactive and reactive enablers for enhancing SCA.

An extensive literature review has been conducted to identify SCA enablers and a Delphi study has been performed to elucidate SCA enablers in the manufacturing industry in Turkey. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) has been used to identify the contextual relationship among the SCA enablers, and the model has been validated based on Matriced Impact Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classement (MICMAC) analysis.

On theoretical and practical levels, the proposed ISM model in this study can help organizations analyze and interpret interrelationships among enablers of SCA. For managers, it can provide better insights and understanding of the facilitators of SCA to enhance the effectiveness of the supply chain and cope with uncertainties and turbulence. According to results, enhancing “supply and demand side competency”, “delivery speed” and “strategic sourcing” are the most significant enablers of SCA.

The study extends the existing literature related to the enablers of SCA by modeling the proactive and reactive enablers of SCA based on the Al Humdan et al. (2020) classification. Arranging the enablers of SCA in a hierarchy and classifying the enablers into different levels with the help of the ISM-MICMAC approach is an exclusive effort to achieve successful management of the supply chain.

The extant “supply‐side” frameworks of industry evolution fail to predict the evolutionary patterns in industries based on systemic technologies. This paper aims to describe the complex demand environment in industries based on systemic technologies and to explain how the continuously evolving demand structure influences the choice and level of firm investments in the above context.

The paper identifies a conceptual gap in the “technology‐centric” literature on industry evolution by conducting a detailed interpretive survey of the literature that focuses on the demand‐side determinants of firm‐ and industry‐level technological processes underlying industry evolution, and co‐evolution of the technological system underlying an industry and the consumer applications based on the same.

The paper provides a set of empirically verifiable mechanisms to explain competing firms' choice and level of investment under conditions of technological and demand uncertainty in industries based on systemic technologies. On one hand, firms' investments influence the evolution of both the technological system(s) and their constituent components that underlie such industries and, on the other, firms' investments influence the consumption of the array of consumer applications that are generated in these industries.

The theoretical explanation provided herein not only enhances the understanding of the role of demand‐side factors as determinants of rate and direction of technological advances but also lies central to the understanding of the evolution of industries based on systemic technologies. More specifically, the paper explains how the interaction between continuously evolving demand structure in the downstream market(s) for consumer applications and the technological components comprising the technological system influences competing firms' choice and level of investments.