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The aim of this study is to investigate the differential effects of pure and creative imitation on customer equity and the moderating roles of market contingency (i.e. competition intensity) and institutional contingency (i.e. enforcement inefficiency).

A lab experiment with 181 subjects and a survey of both senior and middle managers from 149 pharmaceutical firms in China were conducted.

Pure imitation decreases customer equity, but creative imitation increases it. Competition intensity attenuates the negative effect of pure imitation and the positive effect of creative imitation, whereas enforcement inefficiency only attenuates the negative effect of pure imitation.

The findings have significant implications for managers seeking to implement product imitation strategies in emerging economies. They can help managers understand the effects of two kinds of imitation strategies on customer equity. Furthermore, this shows that product imitation strategies should be aligned with various market and institutional contingencies to achieve better performance.

The authors distinguished between pure and creative imitation. Whereas previous studies have investigated the effects of pure and creative imitation on financial and market performance, the focus was on their differential effects on customer equity and the moderating roles of environmental contingencies at the market and institutional levels.

The purpose of this study is to simultaneously investigate a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which strategic orientations, namely, imitation and innovation orientations, and knowledge management affect firm performance.

Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of the resource-based view and dynamic capability theory, this scholarly inquiry has proposed a comprehensive framework that delineates the relationships amongst imitation, innovation, absorptive capacity (ACAP), innovation performance and financial performance. To scrutinize the proposed research model, bootstrap routines were used through Smart partial least squares to estimate the procedures. To collect the necessary data, a questionnaire and financial statements were acquired from a sample of 100 Iranian firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The findings of the study have important implications for both scholars and practitioners seeking to enhance firm performance through the effective utilization of imitation, innovation and ACAP.

The results indicate that imitation activities have directly led to the improvement in innovation performance, even in the presence of innovation and ACAP. However, the relationship has not been confirmed by financial performance.

Imitation and innovation orientations have been identified as pivotal strategic orientations that can significantly affect firm performance. As far as the authors know, this investigation represents the first comprehensive examination of both imitation and innovation activities as a critical transition in emerging markets (EMs) characterized by complex economies, such as Iran. The findings may aid firms in enhancing their performance by providing insight into the strategic importance of imitation and innovation orientations in EMs.

Suggests that strategic alliances have become a popular competitive weapon, yet knowledge of when effectively to use this interorganizational relationship remains scarce. Examines the use of strategic alliances in the information technology industry. Develops several propositions for the effective use of this competitive weapon, based primarily on the matching of the benefits of strategic alliances to existing and forecast situational characteristics of the information technology industry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the representations, figures and processes of shopping/commerce in books published in France that are aimed at three to seven-year-olds.

A semiotic analysis of nearly 50 books published over the past 60 years.

These books reveal a broad diversity in the images of shops given to children (ranging from the traditional shop, a source of pleasure and creator of social ties, to the hypermarket/megastore, a symbol of stress and overconsumption) and the wealth of information that is given to children to help them assimilate the process of a shopping transaction.

The originality and richness of this research lies in its methodological approach. Indeed, it is perfectly aligned with a recent academic trend that calls on researchers to mobilise and compare new data collection tools to apprehend current and future consumer behaviour. Consequently this research is based on an immersion in children’s books that depict the world of commerce in one way or another.

Recently, some biologists have argued that the time has come to replace separation between Lamarckism and Darwinism with their connection. The aim of this paper is to understand whether this paradigm shift in the interpretation of biological evolution offers useful insights for dealing with the unresolved issue of how industries and their organizational populations evolve.

Lamarckism and Darwinism are two approaches that have contrasted or interwoven with each other in the study of biological evolution, just as they have in the study of organizational evolution. This paper provides a critical analysis of the long history of the debate through to the recent, revolutionary discoveries in evolutionary microbiology obtained in the wake of the genomic revolution.

From this new research frontier emerge three important findings: adaptive variations are no longer an anomaly that is peculiar to human organizations, but rather correspond to a widely observed phenomenon in the biological world; the same can be said for the process of horizontal replication; Lamarckism and Darwinism are not two mutually exclusive interpretations of evolution but two dimensions of evolution that coexist in various ways. Lamarckian dimension of evolution and the Darwinian one, handled in the light of these results, may help to understand the evolutionary logic that underpins specific stages of the history of industries.

The paper presents a new way of looking at industries and their firms from an evolutionary perspective.

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, the pursuit of new perspectives and different growth models is imperative. One of the most significant trends of our time is the rise of Asia in the world economy. After centuries of Western economic dominance, China, India, and the rest of the East, alongside emerging economies more broadly, are beginning to challenge the West for positions of global industry leadership and underlying managerial philosophies and perspectives. In this paper, I review some key philosophical insights from Asia that have underpinned the success of many Asian businesses for generations, hoping that it will encourage more efforts – conceptually, theoretically, and empirically – leading the discourse on fresh new perspectives on business in emerging economies in general, and on Asian management in particular.

The focus of this paper is on altruism and coordination among agents with different income levels. A special form of altruism (fairness based or ethical altruism) is investigated by means of experiments. The definition of altruism used here follows from A. Sen’s concept of obligation, i.e. behaviour that produces advantage for someone whose welfare is not important at all for the agent’s well-being. In this sense, the paper investigates altruism without reciprocity. A second hypothesis investigated is that the extent of ethical altruism is influenced by gender and by income differences within the population.

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.

The equipment manufacturing industry, as a strategic industry of China, is experiencing a transition from imitative innovation to independent innovation. The achievements of independent innovation have not been as good as could have been expected. Based on evolutionary economics, the purpose of this paper is to explore the evolutionary path of the two innovation modes, respectively, and analyze the internal and external factors that hinder the mutation from imitative innovation routine to independent innovation routine. According to the results of the evolutionary game model, several policy suggestions are proposed to promote the transition from imitative innovation to independent innovation.

This paper is based on the concepts of evolutionary economics. Routine, mutation, path dependence and selection are included in the analysis of the evolutionary path of the two innovation modes. Especially, the evolutionary game model of innovation modes selection is established to explain how internal and external conditions work in the transition.

The paper explores the evolutionary path of the transition from imitative innovation to independent innovation in the equipment manufacturing industry of China, and analyses the obstacles and factors (internal path dependence, and the lack of benefit incentive and external mutation conditions such as fiscal support and intellectual property protection) that hinder the mutation from imitative innovation routine to independent innovation routine. The results of the evolutionary game model show that the pursuit of the benefit (innovation return or the profit), as an internal mutation condition, is the most fundamental motivation for independent innovation, while policy incentives, as the external mutation conditions, have a significant impact on the evolutionary transition. According to the results, several policy suggestions are proposed to promote the transition from imitative innovation to independent innovation.

Taking the equipment manufacturing industry as a particular object, this paper tries to explain the evolutionary path and the obstacle factors of the transition from imitative innovation to independent innovation from the perspective of evolutionary economics, involving routine, mutation, path dependence, selection, and so on. The evolutionary game model of innovation modes selection is established to investigate the influence of these factors.

This study aims to examine the diffusion pattern of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into the countries and identifies the channels of diffusion.

Data includes 98 countries that made a public commitment to IFRS adoption from 2000 to 2016. Adoptee countries are categorized based on Rogers’ adopter categorizations to understand country characteristics. Innovation diffusion models such as internal influence, external influence and bass diffusion that explain diffusion patterns are applied to the cumulative adoption of IFRS. Coefficients of internal and external diffusion are obtained using the models to explain the mode of diffusion pattern of IFRS. Further tests are done to identify the best model that explains IFRS diffusion.

Findings show that IFRS diffusion is a result of external influence through vertical communication from a centralized body (IASB) and internal influence due to imitation and interpersonal communication between countries. Imitation effect among the countries has a stronger effect on the IFRS adoption compared to the communication obtained from IASB.

Findings obtained can help standards-setting bodies, organizations and countries to understand the potential future of adopters and non-adopters. It facilitates the standard-setting bodies to manage IFRS diffusion by implementing measures to spread the word on the benefits of IFRS.

The study generates value by modeling a successive increase in the number of IFRS adoptee countries using empirical methods and identifies the reasons for the diffusion life cycle of IFRS.