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1 – 10 of 444Veneta Andonova, Alexandina Stoyanova, Carlos Valencia and Jorge Juliao‐Rossi
The purpose of this paper is to systematize the strategic capabilities of seven surviving industrial Catalan companies which were going through explosive growth in 1999.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to systematize the strategic capabilities of seven surviving industrial Catalan companies which were going through explosive growth in 1999.
Design/methodology
We use the comparative case studies method to draw on the common features among the seven in‐debt cases we built. We are well aware that the method of comparative case studies does not provide a sufficient base for bold generalizations. However, the qualitative approach adopted here allows for the first in‐depth look at the strategies that bring surviving entrepreneurs from explosive growth to a more balanced growth path.
Findings
We identify four organizational capabilities as key to the survival of these businesses ten years later: first, ability to prioritize product and market development, including internationalization, over operations; second, ability to reorganize internally and delegate in a timely manner; third, ability to manage innovation and support creativity linked to productivity; and finally, ability to manage economic and financial resources.
Social implications
Implications for the culturally proximate and less‐studied Latin‐American gazelles are presented.
Propósito
El propósito de este artículo es sistematizar las capacidades estratégicas de siete empresas catalanas sobrevivientes y consideradas gacelas en 1999.
Metodología
Se usa el método de estudio de casos comparativos para identificar las características de interés investigativo. Se es consciente de que el método de estudio de casos empleado, no proporciona una base suficiente para hacer generalizaciones de los hallazgos. No obstante, el enfoque cualitativo adoptado proporciona una primera mirada en profundidad de las estrategias que permitieron a los empresarios que sobrevivieron al crecimiento explosivo, seguir una senda de crecimiento más equilibrada.
Resultados
Se identificaron cuatro capacidades organizacionales consideradas clave para la supervivencia de la empresa diez años después del crecimiento explosivo: 1) capacidad para priorizar dentro de sus operaciones el desarrollo de productos y mercados, incluyendo la internacionalización, 2) capacidad de reorganizar internamente y delegar de manera oportuna, 3) capacidad de gestión de la innovación y apoyar la creatividad ligada a la productividad y 4) capacidad de gestionar los recursos económicos y financieros.
Consecuencias (Implicaciones) sociales
Se presentan implicaciones para las gacelas localizadas en países latinoamericanos, las cuales son culturalmente próximas y escasamente estudiadas.
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Vladislav Spitsin, Darko Vukovic, Alexander Mikhalchuk, Lubov Spitsina and Daria Novoseltseva
The purpose of this study is the detection and comparison of distinctive features of Gazelle firms (GFs) at three stages evolution outside the typical boundaries.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is the detection and comparison of distinctive features of Gazelle firms (GFs) at three stages evolution outside the typical boundaries.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses Analysis of Variance and logistic regression to tests the performance of 2427 gazelles for (GFs) a five-year period (2015–2020).
Findings
The study found that GFs prediction probability is low. In their second and third stages of evolution (initial growth and continuing growth), the gazelle growth effects appear. They are more effective in terms of profitability and turnover due to increasing sales and size.
Practical implications
This study shows that stakeholders should give preference to GFs that demonstrate long-term (steady) growth. Such firms are more efficient and financially stable than firms with high short-term growth.
Originality/value
The present study identifies patterns in the generation and development of GFs in high-tech industries outside the typical boundaries.
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Adrian Wilkinson, Olav Muurlink, Keith Townsend and David Peetz
The authors consider stage theories of human resource management (HRM) to explore how new companies experiencing high levels of growth face the dual pressures of youth and…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors consider stage theories of human resource management (HRM) to explore how new companies experiencing high levels of growth face the dual pressures of youth and expansion.
Design/methodology/approach
The firms in this study are a sub-group of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) called “gazelles”. While this is a qualitative study, participants were chosen through a modified random sampling approach that ensures that the sample is representative of a regional population of gazelle firms.
Findings
New companies experiencing high levels of growth face the challenge of expansion while structurally immature. While the selected companies were ill-equipped in formal knowledge of HR they reacted to rapidly changing conditions and were forced to organisational flexibility meaning that few absolute rules were adopted.
Originality/value
Gazelle literature tends to focus on impediments to growth, rather than HR staples such as recruiting and retaining staff. But the studied cases showed an acute appreciation by gazelle managers of the value of motivated, skilled staff able to turn their hand to the fluctuating requirements of the fast-growing firm and a desire to establish formal HR mechanisms as part of the response to the stress of growth.
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Martin Ruef, Colin Birkhead and Howard Aldrich
Studies of unicorns and gazelles can offer detailed information about the process of enterprise development but are unrepresentative as examples of entrepreneurial success. In…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies of unicorns and gazelles can offer detailed information about the process of enterprise development but are unrepresentative as examples of entrepreneurial success. In presenting a novel method for outlier analysis, this article combines insights from case studies of unusual organizations with explanatory frameworks that management scholars have applied to broader samples of firms, irrespective of their survival.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors illustrate the approach to outlier analysis using a prominent case from economic history: the House of Rothschild, founded during the 18th century, which became the most famous investment bank in Europe. Following the iterative refinement of mechanisms using comparison data on Jewish enclave firms, this analysis sheds light on the sources of dissimilarity in outcomes between Rothschild and the comparison group.
Findings
The study results suggest that the House of Rothschild's longevity can be explained via the mechanisms of risk sequencing, intergenerational transfers and spatial brokerage. The authors show that these mechanisms are not idiosyncratic to one enterprise but instead generalize to other family firms.
Originality/value
Outlier analysis encourages a rapprochement between case study and large-N research. The high failure rate of new organizations means that those yielding a large amount of information to researchers tend to be exceptional. By obtaining data on a comparison group of startups founded by similar entrepreneurs, analysts can probe the mechanisms of success identified for unicorns or gazelles.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the actual usage of online methods for collaboration with customers and firms’ innovation performance. Drawing on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the actual usage of online methods for collaboration with customers and firms’ innovation performance. Drawing on theories of knowledge flows and knowledge creation, this study analyses the results of customer collaboration in the online mode in comparison to the offline mode.
Design/methodology/approach
The data for the econometric analysis comes from managers of 102 so-called “gazelles”, knowledge-intensive service firms that were characterized by exceptionally stable growth rates in Sweden during 2010 and 2011.
Findings
This study confirms the significance of information and communication technology (ICT)-supported collaboration with customers for a firm’s innovation performance. Interacting with customers using online methods has a positive effect on companies’ innovation output. Besides, knowledge-intensive service companies demonstrate more extensive though less intensive use of online channels for collaborating with customers compared to offline methods.
Research limitations/implications
The data for this study has typical limitations resulting from the collection method of web-surveying. Future research should refine the findings of this study using various measures of firms’ innovation performance.
Practical implications
Firms should be more receptive towards online methods of collaboration with customers because using such strategy can increase their probability to introduce service innovations. The insights from this study are especially valuable for companies in knowledge-intensive service industries because the sample consist of companies that can be regarded as successful cases.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first that addresses the issue of the impact of collaborative technologies on innovation performance. The sample of steady-growing gazelle companies adds value to the results.
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Peter Dahlin, Mikko Moilanen, Stein Eirik Østbye and Ossi Pesämaa
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and co-creation on innovation performance (INN).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and co-creation on innovation performance (INN).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use survey data from Swedish and Norwegian companies (n=1,102) and establish a cross-national equivalence between Sweden and Norway.
Findings
The subsequent structural model revealed interesting differences. For Sweden, co-creation fully mediates the effect of ACAP on INN, whereas for Norway, ACAP has a direct effect on INN with no mediation. Subsequent regressions including control variables showed that the structural model is reasonably robust. The authors conclude that, despite the many common national features conducive to innovation between these two countries, sufficient differences remain to create substantial variation in the innovation processes.
Originality/value
The study presents a second-order model of ACAP that permits a unique test of cross-country differences.
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Michael Wendelboe Hansen, Esther K. Ishengoma and Radha Upadhyaya
To understand African small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance and its antecedents is essential, both from a strategic management and an industrial development…
Abstract
Purpose
To understand African small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance and its antecedents is essential, both from a strategic management and an industrial development perspective. While a substantial literature on African SMEs has emerged in recent years, studies of their performance specifically are few and inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to address this lacuna in the literature by examining variations in performance of 210 East African SMEs.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs OLS and logistic regression and Classify k-means test to analyze performance variations in a unique data set of 210 food processing enterprises in Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia.
Findings
Three generic types of African SMEs are identified based on performance: laggards, followers and gazelles. The gazelles are typically medium-sized, skill-intensive companies selling relatively differentiated products in niche markets. The laggards are typically small, capital-intensive companies involved in grain milling that adopt a cost differentiation strategy. A key driver of variation in performance is found to be the quality of the external business environment (in particular the quality of intermediary markets), and also capability factors such as the strength of management. Strategy factors such as differentiation and political strategies explain performance variations.
Practical implications
Among the policy implications are that African industrial policy should focus on improving the functioning of intermediary markets, e.g. by reducing the transaction costs of inter-firm collaboration. Moreover, rather than focusing industrial policy on SMEs per se, policymakers should focus on those types of enterprises that are capable of generating high performance, e.g. skill-intensive enterprises with strong managerial capabilities, engaged in differentiation strategies.
Originality/value
The paper integrates the extant literature on African SME performance, develops an analytical framework for studying it and presents novel empirical insights based on one of the most detailed surveys of SME performance in the continent to date. The findings have important and tangible implications for literature, as well as for industrial policy.
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Judith Jeffcoate, Caroline Chappell and Sylvie Feindt
Describes how small businesses involved in e‐commerce may benchmark their performance against a number of critical success factors (CSFs). The proposed approach is based on a…
Abstract
Describes how small businesses involved in e‐commerce may benchmark their performance against a number of critical success factors (CSFs). The proposed approach is based on a series of interviews carried out amongst small‐to‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) whose activities were judged to represent best practice in e‐commerce. Encourages an SME to analyse its own strengths and weaknesses on a continuing basis and to compare them with those of its competitors. The first step in this process is to identify the company’s attitude to growth. Next, the SME should establish a suitable generic strategy and decide on a set of objectives that support it. Finally, it should identify a set of relevant CSFs. Analysis of the KITE interviews identified 11 CSFs relevant to the competitive performance of SMEs entering the e‐commerce market. Further research currently being undertaken as part of a follow‐up study will be used to validate this approach.
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