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In the digital era, the competitiveness of an enterprise is highly dependent on the success of its digital transformation. The effectiveness of such transformation, in turn, relies heavily on the organization's strategic vision and resource fitness. Accordingly, the authors aim to explore the impact of strategic vision on digitalization (SVD) on the digital transformation of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), drawing on the perspective of resource orchestration theory.

Based on first-hand interview data from 347 Chinese SMEs, the research model was tested empirically by both Structural Equation Modeling and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA).

The study results supported that the positive effect of SVD on digital transformation, and the mediating effect of resource orchestration (resource structuring, resource bundling and resource leveraging) accounts for the relationship between SVD and digital transformation. Further, the fsQCA showed that neither SVD nor resource orchestration alone constitutes a necessary condition for high digital transformation in SMEs, and that SVD and resource orchestration elements constitute three configuration paths that drive SMEs to achieve high-level digital transformation.

To the authors knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to theorize and empirically examine how SVD affects SMEs digital transformation. In addition, the authors have highlighted the importance of resource orchestration in forging a link between SVD and digital transformation. The research contributes to the resource orchestration theory and digitalization literature and provides guidelines on how SMEs can realize digital transformation.

There is a need to understand value co-creation in service ecosystems that engage multiple actors with different goals. This study aims to extend the understanding of value co-creation by considering the orchestration of service ecosystems with reference to resource-integration processes.

An exploratory case study approach is used to analyze actors' roles in resource orchestration within a service ecosystem, gathering data from the macro, meso and micro levels of an Italian hospitality and tourism services ecosystem.

A framework is devised that highlights the intersection between orchestration and resource integration for value co-creation processes across the macro, meso and micro levels in service ecosystems. This extends the understanding of service ecosystem dynamics, especially how new value co-creation structures emerge, by emphasizing the circular causality between system levels. Findings show how orchestrating resource integration activities initiate and institutionalize non-linear value co-creation processes.

Resource integration orchestration within and between ecosystem levels is a possible response to societal challenges and for creating economic, cultural and social value across the community. The study offers policymakers insights into developing new competencies for developing actions according to a logic of socially and sustainable value.

This study advances the understanding of service orchestration by expanding the concept and the feasibility of service ecosystem orchestration. It offers insights into the importance of orchestrating resource integration to the emergence and vitality of service ecosystems themselves. The study responds to the need for empirical studies on value co-creation.

As inter-company cooperation and competition grow, orchestration capability plays an increasingly important role. This paper aims to present an overview of orchestration capability in the business and management field, identify the current state and explore future research trends.

This literature review is based on 132 papers collected from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection data (1997–March 2021). HistCite was used to analyze the year of publication, leading scholars, influential articles, key journals, top countries and institutions. Research streams were identified from analysis of co-citation, bibliographic coupling and keyword co-occurrence by HistCite and VOSviewer.

This paper finds that Hitt MA is the most prolific scholar, and the Strategic Management Journal is the most dominating publication among the orchestration capability publications. The USA and Texas A&M University are the most influential countries and institutions, respectively. Three major clusters are identified based on citation mapping, bibliographic coupling analysis of documents and keywords co-occurrence analysis: dynamic capability and resource-based view, resource orchestration and network orchestration. Based on the three clusters, the authors analyze how resource orchestration and network orchestration research develops over time and summarize the evolutionary path of orchestration capability literature.

This article builds on data from WoS Core Collection, and some new but important articles may not be analyzed, since bibliometrics consider high citation as an indicator to select influential articles.

With the rapid development of the digital economy, the frequent interactions between companies pose many challenges for businesses. Enterprises can take orchestration actions effectively and efficiently from various perspectives and continuously improve their orchestration capabilities in collaboration with partners to achieve and sustain competitive advantages.

This paper provides a systematic review of orchestration capability using bibliometric analysis, which has not been employed in previous studies. Besides, this article presents a broad understanding of how scholars have researched the subject over the years.

Disasters are growing in frequency and scale, unmasking the systemic vulnerabilities of modern supply chains and highlighting the need to understand how to respond to such events. In the context of an extreme event such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this research focuses on how networks of organizations leverage their combined resources and capabilities to develop, manufacture and deliver new products outside their traditional markets.

Following a theory elaboration process, the authors build on resource orchestration theory to develop data collection and analysis protocols to support a multi-case study research design. This research investigates four cases of newly formed networks that emerged in four different countries – Colombia, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom–in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These four networks in the investigation share common characteristics in terms of motivation and approach, creating patterns from which theoretical generalizations are developed into a series of propositions regarding the process of network-level resource orchestration under extreme uncertainty.

The research shows how networks and the organizations within them can streamline processes, swiftly build new relationships and develop a balanced risk management approach to extreme uncertainty.

This research contributes to theory by extending the resource orchestration model to a network level and showing how extreme uncertainty can lead to the emergence of networks and alter the motivations and goals of the member organizations, allowing them to be more responsive.

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of resource orchestration in inter-firm partnerships that appropriately configure and align strategic cross-firm supply chain resources and capabilities generating synergies to deliver superior performance.

Applying the resource orchestration logic, supported by the relational view of competitive advantage, the study draws from an empirical analysis of survey data from 152 top-level executives of US manufacturing firms to investigate the effect of leveraging and coherently combining cross-firm supply chain resources with capabilities on operational performance.

The study underscores the view that appropriately orchestrated combinations of key partnership resources and capabilities as mechanisms for marketing strategy implementation, enhance performance. Specifically, research results suggest that complementary inter-firm resources and lean align, and similarly idiosyncratic resources and agility align synergistically to deliver superior operational performance outcomes. The results also accent partnership responses to intense competition, enabling enhanced operational performance. The findings thus enrich the understanding of the resource orchestration logic and strategy, making important theoretical contributions.

As is typical in marketing and strategy research, the study research design has a cross-sectional framework, thus limiting insights on the resource orchestration dynamics that can otherwise be generated using a longitudinal design. Also, the resource orchestration stream is still nascent. Further research is needed to delineate the orchestration mechanisms that deliver on performance outcomes, especially in supply chains.

A key insight for supply chain and marketing managers is that close-knit inter-firm partnerships are critical for accessing idiosyncratic and complementary resources that can be configured and symbiotically aligned with market-facing agility and lean capabilities, respectively, to deliver market value. Proactive partnerships, especially in highly competitive and disruptive environments, enable mobilizing cross-firm resources and building appropriate matching combinations with capabilities to deliver on operational performance.

The study, guided by theory, advances the understanding of how key cross-firm resources and capabilities deliver performance gains. The key to competitive advantage and enhanced performance outcomes may lie in acquiring, leveraging and deploying appropriately matched resource-capability combinations. The present study investigates this proposition within the context of supply chain partnerships, focusing on cross-firm resources and capabilities.

This paper investigated the organizational adoption of big data analytics (BDA) in the context of supply chain planning (SCP) to conceptualize how resources are orchestrated for organizational BDA adoption and to elucidate how resources and capabilities intervene with the resource management process during BDA adoption.

This research elaborated on the resource orchestration theory and technology innovation adoption literature to shed light on BDA adoption with multiple case studies.

A framework for the resource orchestration process in BDA adoption is presented. The authors associated the development and deployment of relevant individual, technological and organizational resources and capabilities with the phases of organizational BDA adoption and implementation. The authors highlighted that organizational BDA adoption can be initiated before consolidating the full resource portfolio. Resource acquisition, capability development and internalization of competences can take place alongside BDA adoption through structured processes and governance mechanisms.

A relevant discussion identifying the capability gap and provides insight into potential paths of organizational BDA adoption is presented.

The authors call for attention from policymakers and academics to reflect on the changes in the expected capabilities of supply chain planners to facilitate industry-wide BDA transition.

This study opens the black box of organizational BDA adoption by emphasizing and scrutinizing the role of resource management actions.

Developing and implementing strategies to maximize profitability is a fundamental challenge facing manufacturers. The complexity of orchestrating resources in practice has been overlooked in the operations field and it is now necessary to go beyond the direct effects of individual resources and uncover different resource configurations that maximize profitability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing on a sample of US manufacturing firms, multiple regression analysis (MRA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) are performed to examine the effects of resource orchestration on firm profitability over time. By comparing the findings between analyses, the study represents a move away from examining the net effects of resource levers on performance alone.

The findings characterize the resource conditions for manufacturers’ high performance, and also for absence of high performance. Pension and retirement expense is a core resource condition with R&D and SG&A as consistent peripheral conditions for profitability. Moreover, although workforce size was found to have a significant negative effect under MRA, this plays a role in manufacturers’ performance as a peripheral resource condition under fsQCA.

Accounting for different resource deployment configurations, this study deepens knowledge of resource orchestration and presents findings that enable manufacturers to maximize profitability. An empirical contribution is offered by the introduction of a new method for examining manufacturing strategy configurations: fsQCA.

To co-create value through dynamic collaborations, enterprises and their suppliers need to orchestrate the integration of complementary resources when providing business services. As such enterprises' strategic decision to apply a plural sourcing strategy to establish dynamic collaborations with their suppliers implies that both in-house and outsourced business services should be bundled into a business services portfolio. However, the antecedents that affect a business services portfolio have rarely conceptually been identified.

Drawing on resource orchestration theory, the authors theoretically developed and empirically validated a business services portfolio conceptual model. The model aims at explaining the critical antecedents to a business services portfolio based on a unique data set, comprising 121 international enterprises with variation in the degree of outsourcing, size, geographies and maturity. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to examine the relationships among the antecedents and a business services portfolio.

The findings show that the antecedent, i.e. plural sourcing strategy, modularised business processes and customer orientation have a direct and significant effect on the enterprises' business services portfolio orchestration. The results of the mediation test indicate that modularised business processes fully mediate the relationships between three independent variables with the orchestration of business services portfolio.

This study is the first to analyse the impact of plural sourcing strategy, modularised business processes and customer orientation on the business services portfolio orchestration from a plural sourcing context. Additionally, it examines the mediating role of modularised business processes in the relationship between the antecedents and business services portfolio orchestration.

In today’s ever-increasing context of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous market conditions, the shifts of countries’ protectionist policies toward inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and an increased gap between headquarters’ (HQ) and subsidiaries’ perspectives on what makes business sense, it has become apparent that challenges toward foreign expansion are becoming more severe and require a multidimensional dynamic approach. The authors draw from orchestration theory, dynamic capabilities literature and previous literature on dimensions of internationalization [specifically, density, geographic distance and degree of diversity of the multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary network] to argue that firms must enhance their orchestration capability. In doing so, this study aims to highlight the nuances of orchestrating a three-dimensional (3D) conceptualization of MNCs’ international configurations.

The authors analyzed the patterns of configurations that are adopted by MNCs. This sample was made up of the international configuration of 78 Fortune 500 MNCs consisting of 3,318 foreign subsidiaries. Furthermore, the authors examined the impact of different configurations of the 3Ds on firm performance using ordinary least squares regression analysis.

While the research did indicate that the sample MNCs adopted the sample configurations of the three internationalization dimensions more frequently than others, the authors found that orchestrating MNCs with an international configuration characterized by high density, low geographic distance and low internetwork scope diversity had a positive impact on firm performance.

While international expansion is often motivated by financial performance or market/resource gains, it is also impacted by the firm’s dynamic capability profile. Thus, as MNCs seek to continue to expand globally, they must assess and, if needed, develop their management team’s orchestration capability, which includes effectively determining how the addition or removal of a subsidiary will impact the density, geographic distance and diversity dynamics of the MNC’s international configuration. Finally, the management team needs to be able to devise plans to respond to the potential challenges associated with each of these dimensions.

The contribution of this study includes bringing a dynamic capabilities lens to the extant international business literature examining the multinationality and performance relationship by highlighting the importance of an MNC’s process orchestrating capability that is needed for firms to effectively manage increasingly complex subsidiary networks. It also conceptually explains and empirically supports that some configurations are likely to yield higher returns than others, which can act as a guide for firms as they are seeking to expand in more geographically distant as well as diverse sectors. Furthermore, this study highlights the need for a multidimensional simultaneous approach to the examination of internationalization to performance relationship. Finally, it highlights the tradeoffs that MNCs must address across the orchestration of the three internationalization dimensions using a dynamic capabilities theoretical lens that acknowledges the differences in perspective that exist between HQs and subsidiaries.

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.

Resource orchestration is an overlooked aspect of manufacturing strategy. Yet resource combinations and effective alignment are fundamental for management if an organization is going to become, or remain, profitable and competitive.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists 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.