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Based on a comparative case study of nine firms in the Canadian graphic arts industry in 1964–86, this paper suggests that managerial conduct plays a significant role in technological change. There were clear differences in managerial conduct between technological leaders and followers, and managerial conduct was influenced by firm performance, managerial capacities and attitudes and contextual conditions. These four elements, managerial conduct, firm performance, managerial capacities and attitudes, and contextual conditions, constituted feedback cycles of technological change. Firm performance induced managerial conduct that was influenced by managerial capacities and attitudes and by contextual conditions and led to technological change, depending on the intensity and extent of conduct, and technological change further affected firm performance. The paper focuses on managerial work processes as they cause differences in technological change in technological leaders and followers, but other elements of the feedback cycles are considered as well. Technological change has increased productivity growth and standard of living, but technological development also “destroys the economic viability of certain industries, firms, and jobs, as it creates new ones” (Nelson, 1981: 1054). This kind of impact has created a need to predict and control technological change, and thereby to understand the phenomenon better. Despite the fact that technological change takes place in firms (Moss, 1981: 51–53), most of the economics research explains technological development at the aggregate level (see Kamien & Schwartz, 1982 for a review), and the majority of the so called innovation studies concentrate on individual adoption behaviour (see Rogers, 1983 for a review). However, in order to understand the process of technological change, we must go inside the firms where the change takes place. A useful starting point seems to be a comparison between firms that are technological leaders and followers (Schumpeter, 1934; Porter, 1983). This would increase understanding of the factors facilitating and preventing technological change. Technology can be defined as the tangible production process of converting inputs to outputs (Shen, 1981), and it is often embodied in physical capital (Nelson, 1981). Changes in production processes via production equipment are the main concern here. The central question of this paper is: Why do some firms become technological leaders while others are followers? And more specifically: How does managerial conduct differ between technological leaders and followers? The answers were sought through a comparative case study of Canadian graphic arts firms. The results indicate that the crucial factor determining leadership and followership was managerial conduct, shaped by firm performance and by the context of the firm. The role of managerial conduct in technological leadership and followership is focused on in this report.

It has been underscored in the extant literature that open government data (OGD) has not percolated across the length and breadth of any country, let alone the awareness of the OGD among the stakeholders themselves. In this vein, this study aims to underline the reasons as to why OGD promotion merits consideration apart from underlining the manner in which OGD promotion may be done.

Based on literature review on the OGD conceptual models and government promotion initiatives, the study further sketches an OGD model across four quadrants: beginners, followers, fast-trackers, trend-setters on the basis of the progress made in their OGD initiatives besides underlining the four elements of OGD promotional strategy as media, arena, substance and stakeholders. Also, the study explores the drivers and barriers to OGD promotional initiatives.

The study shows that across the OGD quadrants, the promotional strategies vary in terms of the 4As (acceptability, affordability, accessibility and awareness), and the same get reflected across MASS. Further, the drivers for OGD promotional initiatives are building citizens’ trust and forging stakeholder participation and collaboration in administration, thereby furthering transparency in administration, meeting the needs of the stakeholders, providing the desired impetus to value creation and innovation by the stakeholders and the need for furthering economic growth. Likewise, the barriers toward OGD promotion are linked with the lack of political will, lack of organizational leadership, mission and vision, lack of involvement of government departments, lack of budget and lack of requisite infrastructure for promotion.

Hitherto, OGD research has underscored the need to make the users aware of the potential of OGD initiative; however, no study has been undertaken to understand the manner in which the awareness may be driven among the users – the present study is a first step in this direction.

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has now been paid notable attention by a large number of firms. The aim of this paper is to investigate a better way to implement CSR in a socially responsible supply chain with different channel leaderships.

Started from measuring CSR by purely taking consumer surplus into account, a stylized centralized channel and two different decentralized channels are first developed and examined for equilibria in the socially responsible chain. Furthermore, this paper extends to a socially irresponsible supply chain and a broader practice of CSR by simultaneously incorporating environmental externality and consumer surplus into CSR.

With the analytical studies, several interesting and important results and managerial insights are clearly revealed. For example, but not limited to, it is found that: (1) Compared with the leader, the follower can effectively implement CSR for a better performance in both pure and socially responsible profits in the decentralized channel; (2) undertaking socially responsible concerns does not always mean reducing the economic profit and conversely being socially irresponsible does not always induce an increase in economic profit for the socially responsible member(s); (3) CSR concern level plays a key role in both the pure and socially responsible profit. An increase in CSR concern level clearly increases the socially responsible profit and poses an ambiguous impact on pure profit depending on different channel leaderships: it decreases the centralized channel in pure profit but increases the pure profit with the decentralized channel under certain conditions; and (4) interestingly, the authors find that decentralization can outperform centralization regarding on both pure and socially responsible channel profits by properly implementing CSR concern levels.

The results derived in this paper provide novel managerial implications to the socially responsible members in terms of pricing decisions, order quantity and CSR practice. In addition, this paper assists the socially responsible supply chain in determining the optimal channel leadership to undertake CSR. That is, decentralization may achieve a better performance than integration under certain market conditions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to explore the interactive of the CSR practice and channel leadership in a socially responsible supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of environmental scanning (ES) in the new product development (NPD) process among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Thai food processing industry. This study also shows that more extensive use of ES improves new product (NP) performance, and that perception of higher technology turbulence increases usage of ES.

Data from a survey of 124 Thai SMEs through statistical package for the social sciences software shows that more extensive acquisition of ES information does improve NP performance.

Managers who perceive more technological turbulence do use ES more extensively. The technology strategy of the company does not have much impact on the use of ES. The results indicate that even SMEs can benefit from ES, a practice more commonly carried out by larger companies. Some SMEs seem to recognize that more turbulent environments require more extensive scanning.

These results may not hold exactly this way in other industries where technology plays a much greater role. Also, the impact of technology strategy on ES usage would be much more apparent in more technology intensive industries. It is clear that industry context variables should be included in future research to more fully understand the role of ES and NPD outcomes, as well as the factors that encourage companies to use ES more extensively. In addition, the ES impact on NPD outcomes should be examined in conjunction with some of the other determinants of quality NPD process.

The major contributions of the study consist of how comprehensive use of ES makes a significant contribution to NP performance, the findings on the impact of technology strategy, technology turbulence upon ES and the impact of ES upon NPD.

To study successful strategies in platform industries, which are IT products that enable (a network of) users to communicate with each other, and that, consequently, exhibit network effects.

The authors studied 15 platform industries, including their first‐mover, early entrants and current leaders. Also studied were historical documents, for example to find the time of market entry.

Unlike traditional products (e.g. consumer products), platforms evolve over time by technically integrating separate platforms (“embrace and extend”). Two key patterns were found among platform leaders: follower advantage and staircase strategies. While follower advantage is also prevalent in traditional industries, staircase strategies are not. Complementary resources (i.e. resources the firm possesses outside of the product in question, for example R&D skills or customer relations) did not explain why the current leaders won.

First‐mover advantage was largely illusionary and follower advantage prevalent. Some leaders of platform industries entered the industry early and some entered late, but it is not clear why a particular entry timing was successful in one platform industry but not in another. The authors cannot (yet) predict how a platform industry evolves, particularly in the presence of network effects.

To become the leader in a platform industry, do not become the first mover, but enter some time afterwards, and manage the “embrace and extend” platform evolution using staircase strategies.

This study analyzed a sample of 15 platform industries, i.e. more than a few case studies.

The purpose of the current research is (1) to test affective mechanisms by which a leader's work engagement predicts team performance via a follower's work engagement in a trickle-down fashion and (2) to examine the moderating role of relational identification with the leader on the trickle-down effect.

Multisource and three-wave data was collected from 404 followers working in 76 teams from a construction company in South Korea. By aggregating all study variables, a 2-2-2 level approach by using the PROCESS macro with bootstrapping (10,000 samples) in SPSS was used to test the proposed model.

The current research uses a team-level analysis to examine (1) the effect of a leader's work engagement on team performance via a follower's work engagement and (2) moderating role of relational identification via the lens of the affective processing theory (APT) and the conservation of resource (COR) theory.

Based the lens of APT and COR theory, the current research found that the contagious effect of a leader's work engagement on followers is conditional. Specifically a leader's work engagement has a positive effect on followers' work engagement only when followers have a high sense of relational identification with their leader. However, a leader's work engagement has an adverse effect on followers when followers have a low sense of relational identification.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is increasingly being presented as a technology with the potential to improve supply chain performance, but empirical evidence from early adopters is sparse. This paper aims to rectify this scarcity and contribute to a more informed discussion in and between academic and practitioner communities.

The paper is based on a conceptual model of factors influencing the success of adoption efforts. It then reports the results of a survey of 612 European supply chain managers, focusing on the 128 respondents who have begun RFID trials.

A significant influence on operational deployment is the presence of mandates from key customers requiring the technology's use. Customer mandates also impact the anticipated benefits of a faster sales cycle and of enhanced systems integration, though the relationships are complex. By contrast, greater cost reduction benefits are anticipated in two industries where mandates are less common – industrial goods and logistics. Perceived organizational innovativeness positively impacts anticipated ROI from RFID. Companies adopting a “slap and ship” approach are less likely to anticipate pricing benefits than those integrating RFID into enterprise systems.

The limitations of the paper include the limited sample size of early adopters. In addition, qualitative research is needed into RFID supply chain applications and into different approaches to IS integration of RFID, to inform future survey work.

This paper informs supply chain managers and senior decision makers who are examining the potential of RFID technology. It offers guidance on what issues to look for when adopting this technology, approaches to take and the benefits that might be accrued.

This paper offers a contribution to understanding the current status of the adoption of RFID in European supply chains. This understanding is put in the context of the wider literatures on supply chain management and the adoption of information systems and technology.

The post-pandemic emerging market is competitive and green, which has contributed to the growing pressure on firms to adopt into their business models green strategies with competitive outcomes. Therefore, this paper aims to draw from the natural resource-based view (NRBV) theory to examine how green intellectual capital (IC) can influence green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana, by elucidating the mediating role of eco-innovation speed and quality in the relationship.

Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from 212 manufacturing firms in Ghana, using purposive sampling techniques. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to determine the factor structure of the measurement models. Structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse the hypothesized relationships.

The study found that green IC has a positively significant effect on green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms. However, while eco-innovation speed positively mediates the relationship, eco-innovation quality plays a negative mediating role in the effect of green IC on green competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

The framework of this study provides to managers of manufacturing firms, a superior green strategy that is unique, valuable and non-substitutable with the capable to provide green competitive edge to firms in a turbulent sustainability-driven market.

Through the lens of the NRBV theory, this study provided a firstly knowledge on the crucial role of eco-innovation speed and quality in driving firms’ green competitive advantage within a post-covid emerging market.