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The purpose of this paper is to examine how external factors moderate public housing companies’ (PHCs) market orientation (MO) and strategic performance (SP) relationship.

The quantitative method is applied to data from a survey sent to 289 PHCs in Sweden.

The results reveal moderating factors. The companies take several initiatives to inform themselves about customers’ needs and distribute the information within the company, but economic conditions, market and technological turbulence in the municipalities moderate the relationship between MO and SP. Economic conditions make it difficult for PHCs to strategically act based on market needs when making decisions and planning construction strategies (SP).

This study is limited by focusing on PHCs, a sector that differs radically from the open market. The study highlights the effects of moderating factors that are important for companies’ SP and long-term construction strategies. From this limited focus, researchers might use the results to compare both similar and different market situations.

The results of the study are useful for companies facing a similar market situation of external moderating constraints. The result might be used in future research related to the area in focus.

This research adds new knowledge to market research by including the impact of economic conditions, which provides insight into how to develop and use market knowledge in real estate and public housing markets.

This chapter opens the second part of the Volume, focusing on the small farms' role and dynamics within the evolving food system. Assessing small farmers' actual and potential contribution to the change towards a sustainable food and nutrition security requires a deep understanding of their strategic decision-making processes. These processes take place in a context highly conditioned by internal and external conditions, including the complex relations between farm and household, which are mapped and described. Building on an adaptation of Porter's model (Porter, 1990), the chapter investigates how farmers, given those conditions, define their strategies (in particular their innovation strategies) aimed at economic and financial sustainability through a multidisciplinary analysis of scientific literature. Internal conditions are identified in the light of the Agricultural Household Model (Singh & Subramanian, 1986) which emphasizes how family farming strategies aim at combining business-related objectives, and family welfare. Then, a comprehensive set of external conditions is identified and then grouped within eight categories: ‘Factors’, ‘Demand’, ‘Finance and Risk’, ‘Regulation and Policy’, ‘Technological’, ‘Ecological’, ‘Socio-institutional’ and ‘Socio-demographic’. Similarly, six types of strategies are identified: ‘Agro-industrial competitiveness’, ‘Blurring farm borders’, ‘Rural development’, ‘Risk management’, ‘Political support’ and ‘Coping with farming decline’.

To develop a framework for systematically defining the relevant market for intermediate goods that incorporates downstream market conditions.

We combine the well-established “Hicks-Marshall” conditions of derived demand for inputs with “critical loss/critical elasticity of demand” to yield insights into the definition of antitrust markets for intermediate goods and the competitive effects from a merger.

We show that examining “Hicks-Marshall” conditions can provide a more rigorous framework for analyzing relevant markets for intermediate goods. We also show that solely examining demand substitution possibilities for direct customers of an input can lead to an incorrect market definition.

Our framework may be difficult to apply in circumstances when several different downstream products use the input being examined and each of those downstream products has a different elasticity of demand.

We illustrate how reasonable ranges for key parameters relating to the ability of firms to substitute to other inputs and to adjust to downstream market conditions will often be sufficient to define antitrust markets for intermediate goods in practice.

Previous antitrust analysis has not systematically analyzed the impact of downstream market conditions in assessing market definition for intermediate goods. The framework we develop will be useful to future researchers attempting to define relevant markets for intermediate goods and evaluating the competitive effects of a merger.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine entry modes employed by foreign multinational manufacturing enterprises entering Russia. It is designed to discover how multinational firm decision makers perceive country conditions in Russia and to provide the basis for further study to uncover what factors influence their decision to locate manufacturing in such volatile markets rather than employing other, less riskier modes of entry.

This paper uses in‐depth interviews of decision‐makers operating foreign manufacturing firms in different industries in Russia. Under the author's guidance, the interviewees discuss open‐ended questions concerning country conditions in Russia, their evolution and effect on entry modes. The interviewers take notes which are shown to the interviewees at the end of each interview to make sure the notes represent the true and unbiased views of the interviewees.

Finally, favorable economic conditions and large multinational firms' internal factors seem to have become the single decisive factor affecting these firms decision to use the riskiest mode in Russia which described in some literature as one of the least stable emerging markets.

The paper is limited to a small number of cases and qualitative research.

This paper is an insight into country conditions in emerging economies.

Country conditions in emerging markets have not yet been considered from this perspective and effects of all have been studied. However, effects of globalization on large firms adaptability to country conditions have been overlooked by scholars.

Notes that much is known in the academic literature about factors that may be influential in firms’ market entry timing decisions. Specifically, in response to a competitors’ pioneering new product introduction, academic research finds many conditions that suggest a greater desirability of immediate market entry while many other conditions suggest a greater desirability of a delayed response. Reports the results of a survey and experiment where working managers and experienced MBA students were asked to evaluate the timing of market entry given a complex business scenario. The results show areas where there is a consensus among decision makers with the academic literature, as well as areas where views differ from that of the literature. Perverts and discusses insights gained into the decision making processes of managers for market entry timing decisions. The study can help managers in follower firms achieve greater success in formulating market entry timing strategies by reducing ambiguity in the timing implications of many internal and external conditions, as well as by drawing attention to potential action biases.

While marketing analytics can be used to improve organizational decision-making and performance significantly, little research exists to examine how the configurations of multiple conditions affect marketing analytics use. This study draws on configuration theory to investigate marketing analytics use in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This research employs a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis using data collected from a survey of 187 managers in UK SMEs.

The key findings show that (1) configurations of multiple conditions provide alternative pathways to marketing analytics use, and (2) the configurations for small firms are different from those for medium-sized firms.

The research results are based on several key configurational factors and a single key-informant method to collect subjective data from UK SME managers.

The study helps SMEs to understand that marketing analytics use is influenced by the interaction of multiple conditions, that there are alternative pathways to marketing analytics use, and that SMEs should choose the configuration that fits best with their organizational contexts.

The study contributes to the literature by addressing an important yet underresearched area, i.e. marketing analytics use in SMEs, applying a configurational approach to the research phenomenon. It highlights different pathways to marketing analytics use in SMEs. The findings provide empirical evidence on the possibility and implication of marketing analytics use being asymmetrical and different between small and medium-sized firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how early-stage entrepreneurs' opportunity motivation impacts their choice of market growth strategies as well as the contingent roles of institutional environments and product market conditions in Africa.

The study employs hierarchical linear modeling to test multilevel models with nested data empirically.

The findings show that African early-stage entrepreneurs who are opportunity-driven and from countries with strong institutional environments have a higher tendency to adopt market exploration strategies. African early-stage entrepreneurs from countries with strong product market conditions have a higher tendency to adopt market penetration strategies. Further interaction tests show that both contingency conditions, namely institutional environments and product market conditions, moderate the effects of opportunity motivation on market growth strategies of African early-stage entrepreneurs.

The study shows that policymakers in Africa need to develop flexible, supportive market-related policies based on entrepreneurs' growth paths, institutional environments and product market conditions.

The study is the first to explore multilevel influences on early-stage entrepreneurs' market growth strategies in Africa. It sheds new insights on the entrepreneurial marketing process of early-stage entrepreneurs in Africa.

This paper aims to investigate the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises under the market-organization-technology (MOT) perspective through configuration analysis.

Based on the analytical framework of technology, organization and market, this paper conducts configuration analysis on the cases of 55 elderly-friendly enterprises in China combined with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

First, this study identifies the three first-level preconditions affecting innovation performance: organization's architectural innovation, technology adapting to aging and market environment attention on the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises. These three first-level conditions include six sub-conditions. Second, this study investigates three innovation pathways by analyzing the configuration effects of preconditions: Configuration 1, technology-balanced type; Configuration 2, organization-market linkage type and Configuration, 3 balanced type. Third, there are differences in the distribution of different configuration types in subdivided industries. The technology-balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in design-driven innovative enterprises, the organization-market linkage configuration is mainly concentrated in medical auxiliary equipment enterprises and the balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in smart elderly care service platform enterprises empowered by digital technology. Fourth, there are differences in the innovation impact paths of the same configuration type. However, the essence lies in the high-level innovation performance formed by the coordinated evolution of technology, organization and market factors, reflecting the characteristics of the same goal through different routes.

The authors' study generates new insights for innovation managers of gerontechnological enterprises about the innovation pathway.

This research enriches innovation management by integrating the linkage adaptation relationship among market, organization and technology factors; further research studies on the different configuration types suitable for different types of enterprises, as well as differentiated innovation pathways under the same configuration type, could contribute to the study on the innovation pathway under a premise of MOT.

Managing resources is crucial for firms to gain competitive advantages and succeed, particularly for startups with limited resources. It is important to understand how digital startups in general and digital academic spin-offs (ASOs) in particular may orchestrate their resources to optimize value. This paper integrates the resource-based perspective with digital entrepreneurship to analyze the resource configurations leading to success of digital ASOs.

The paper adopts an inductive approach and applies qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) on a longitudinal dataset of digital ASOs to identify the resource configurations for a successful outcome.

The authors' paper identifies two main paths to success among digital ASOs, consisting of five distinct resource configurations. The first path is termed “market exploiters” that operate in favorable market conditions where specific technological resources and research collaboration resources are lacking. The second path involves “technology explorers” that combines both technological and commercial resources to achieve success.

By outlining distinct pathways to the success of digital ASOs, this paper contributes to the digital academic entrepreneurship literature and the resource-based view of entrepreneurial firms. The paper also suggests implications for policymakers and managers in managing resources for the success of digital ventures.

By exploring the resource configurations leading to the success of ASOs commercializing digital technologies, the paper shows that favorable market conditions and complementary resource configurations can be alternative pathways to success.