Search results

The author invokes the concept of strategic adaptation to first specify the evolutionary as well as the strategic character of the causal mechanism (“intra-industry exit”), and second to explain its effect on the evolution of firms' within-industry geographic scope. The author reconciles the two competing logics for firm behavior – strategic choice and environmental selection – that underpin alternate explanations for the relationship between intra-industry exit and the evolution of geographic scope. This paper contributes to both theory and empirics concerning the dynamics of firms' competitive scope, in general, and within-industry geographic scope, in particular.

The US long-distance telecom services industry during the period 1984–1996, which satisfies the empirical requirements of a geographically fragmented industry characterized by demand-side heterogeneity across the submarkets, provides the research setting and panel data to test the empirical hypotheses.

The author finds that while the firms' overall performance influences their intra-industry exit decisions, it is the firm-in-market performance that influences their decision to exit a specific submarket. The author also finds that intra-industry exit decision, when influenced by firm performance, does lead to reduction in geographic scope.

This context-specific theory, which conceptualizes the dynamics of firms' geographic scope as an evolutionary process, explains the temporal change in the geographic scope of firms during the latter part of the demand growth stage of a geographically fragmented industry.

This analysis of the demand-side dynamics of firms' within-industry geographic scope focuses on the hypothetical causal effect of intra-industry exit, a pervasive business phenomenon. First, the demand-side analysis of the evolution of geographic scope is grounded in a theoretical framework that melds firm dynamics with submarket dynamics and industry dynamics. Second, this analysis explicates the demand-side underpinnings of the strategic adaptive mechanism.

In this chapter, the authors describe and explain how executive management enacts strategizing routines to strengthen their entrepreneurial agility, as a precondition to make new strategic moves possible. The authors contribute to the routine dynamics research program, by showing how the dynamics of routines, in a strategy context, shape strategic outcomes: the authors describe four strategizing routines – distancing, evaluating, experimenting, and re-assembling – as a particular promising focus for routine and strategy research. The authors discuss executive management’s enactment of such routines as part of their strategy work. The authors show how routine enactment makes entrepreneurial agility and new strategic moves possible. By exploring the dynamics of strategizing routines and their impact on strategic outcomes, the authors at the same time benefit from and contribute to the strategy-as-practice research program. Empirically, the authors study how the executive management of Hoechst AG successfully made unthinkable new strategic moves possible, discussable, and realizable in the context of the corporation’s strategic transformation between 1994 and 1996.

It is often claimed that existing quality models can represent the development of total quality management (TQM) within organisations. However, the more recent emergence of critical perspective literature in this area has shown that these models lack both a strategic formulation influence and a dynamic influence for TQM in organisations. Seeks to combine these influences and to evaluate the role of the strategic dynamics of TQM within organisations. Thus, primarily aims to evaluate the strategic dynamics of TQM within case study organisations using an appropriate evaluative framework. A secondary aim is to perform a meta‐evaluation of this framework. The evaluative framework used for the study is Leonard’s grounded theory framework for TQM strategic dynamics. The model was applied to 57 case studies where a cross case analysis was used to guide the analysis. The findings show that the dynamics of TQM are much more complex and recursive than those shown by current models. Furthermore, the main influence of TQM in the cases was found to be at a tactical level and operational level. Those organisations, which applied TQM at a strategic level, were found to have robust TQM programmes with greater longevity, by using frequent regenerative approaches.

In order to achieve a desirable level of market efficiency, regulators need to identify the strategic groups within an industry and understand the way the constituent groups relate to one another. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In the current study, factors that may lead to strategic group formation were developed and used as clustering variables in a k-means cluster statistical analysis to categorize the firms into strategic groups. The factors used are entry costs, timing of entry, technology type and scope of operations. In addition, the number and type of competitive actions employed by the firms in the industry were identified by structured content analysis of a public source. The competitive actions were used to examine the dynamics of the resulting groups within the context of competitive behavior, resource and scope commitments and corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. In addition, χ2 analysis was employed to ascertain the likelihood that actions of a firm will be responded to by firms from the same group or from outside the group.

License fees was found to be the most significant clustering variable. The study also showed that groups with significantly higher license fees carried out considerably more competitive actions, had higher resource and scope commitments and executed more CSR actions. In addition, the study revealed significantly more competition within strategic groups than between groups.

The absence of financial records for firms in the sample necessitated the use of CSR activity as a measure of firm performance. Some empirical studies have shown strong links between CSR and firm performance.

The study revealed high mobility barriers which prevent ease of movement of firms in the industry from one strategic group to the other. Therefore regulators who wish to promote competition must do so by identifying the strategic groups with significant market power and permitting entry not by lowering entry barriers but by allowing the entry of firms with proven resources similar to the firms in those groups and to stipulate similar commitments in entry conditions. The results also offer management practitioners an insight into competitive behavior in the industry.

The study utilized a unique data set (competitive actions of firms in the Nigerian Telecommunications industry as reported in the media) in contributing to empirical studies on competitive dynamics and strategic group literature.

This paper aims to focus on the development of a “dynamic Balanced Scorecard” and to demonstrate that matching the traditional Balanced Scorecard (BSC) architecture with system dynamics principles offers better support for strategic management decisions.

The paper is based on a case study related to a service‐based business. The maps, the mathematical model and the BSC developed according to system dynamics modelling principles are discussed.

A system dynamics‐based BSC, particularly if embedded into a management flight simulator, would allow exploration and understanding of features of complexity and dynamics, consideration of feedback loops rather than unidirectional causality, the use of mapping tools for a more comprehensive design of the strategy maps, the facilitation of a process of organisational learning; and support for policy design and strategic analysis performed by managers.

The value of this paper is two‐fold: first, it shows that by using system dynamics modelling principles it is possible to overcome positively some limitations of the original BSC framework; second, the paper provides information and suggestions that are helpful for companies that are interested in developing strategic management systems based on both BSC architecture and on system dynamics principles and simulation tools (e.g. the management flight simulator).

This paper aims to explain how the dynamic demand environment influences strategic firm behavior along an industry’s evolutionary path. A conceptual gap concerning the influence of demand-side environmental factors (vis-à-vis changes in technology and policy) on firms’ strategic choices motivates the theory developed herein. The paper’s contribution to the literature on “evolutionary perspective in strategy” also addresses an important gap in the emerging literature on “strategy dynamics”.

The conceptual framework in this paper features a dynamic demand environment that provides the structural context for firms’ strategic choices. It conceptualizes demand-side competence as a mediating firm-specific construct to explain the endogenous relationship between the characteristics of the demand environment and firms’ path dependent demand-side investments.

A review of the literature on evolutionary perspective in strategy reveals an important conceptual gap concerning the structural determinants of dynamic firm behavior. There is no explanation of the endogenous relationship between dynamic demand structure, firms’ dynamic demand-side competence, and temporally heterogeneous strategic choices.

The demand-side explanation of how idiosyncratic firm behavior is endogenously determined, with both structural characteristics (demand structure) and firm competences (demand-side competence), addresses an important conceptual gap. The novelty of the theory developed herein lies in its explication of the effect of dynamic demand environment on the evolution of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – entry, investment and exit – along the evolutionary path of an industry. The theory developed herein not only explains the effect of both determinants of idiosyncratic strategic firm behavior – the external industry environment (dynamic market structure) and internal firm environment (dynamic firm competences) – but also explains how the determinants evolve along the industry’s lifecycle.

In this paper, the authors study artistic improvising from a routine dynamics perspective, with a specific interest in how the performance of improvising is strategically enacted. While this dynamic is difficult to empirically study in the case of live improvisation on stage, as we know it from jazz, the specific situation of the recording studio allows the authors to investigate the research puzzle in great detail. First, the authors show how the performance of one specific routine, which the authors identify as the looping routine, makes systematic improvising possible. The authors describe how looping enables improvising through mobilizing the digital equipment in the recording studio. The authors further discuss how the performance of the looping routine allows for individual musical performances in improvising, as well as their emergence into and assembling of a coherent song and record. During the looping routine, the authors find not only artistic improvising but also strategic enactment. Therefore, the authors show how performing the looping routine in the studio enables the strategic enactment of the emerging musical patterns by the musicians and the producer. Thereby, the artistic ideas and performances of the musicians and producers involved are competitively valued and strategically positioned in view of industry-specific contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of accumulation processes of strategic capabilities in manufacturing, i.e. cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility. By applying a dynamic view, concepts from the literature are tested and shortcomings are identified.

The analysis was conducted with the help of an exploratory system dynamics model that represented a hierarchy of these accumulative capabilities. The exploratory model was parameterized with empirical data from a large international survey of manufacturing plants.

The major finding of this paper is that results from a static analysis can be transferred into a dynamic model, which can be used to test allocation strategies of resources to strategic capabilities.

The practical implications concern the distribution of managerial attention on the four capabilities and the consequences of different distributions.

The value of this paper lies in the insights gained by the transformation of a verbal model into a quantified simulation model, and the learning resulting from simulation experiments.

One of the main difficulties for wine managers is understanding and interpreting how some strategies and company behaviours could affect firms’ performance. This study aims to contribute to improve these concerns by examining the evolution of the competitive wine industry structure over time using the strategic group membership dynamics approach.

This study empirically analyses a data set spanning the period 2004–2014 to identify the strategic groups in the Spanish wine industry and to model their evolution over time. A time inhomogeneous hidden Markov model (HMM) is used for this purpose.

Three strategic groups are identified: Young Makers, Quality Lovers and Major Players. Young Makers are small wineries that produce low-quality wines. They are not part of a collective brand – Protected Designation of Origin – and do not invest in marketing campaigns. Quality Lovers produce the highest quality wines but offer a narrow assortment. They invest modestly in advertising, and most of them belong to a Protected Designation of Origin. Major Players produce medium-quality wines, offer a wide assortment and invest heavily in advertising. The groups seem stable over time.

The results show that strategic group analysis can be used to identify and compare patterns of strategic activity within the wine industry, providing a better understanding of the competitive environment.

No previous studies have analysed the competitive structure of the Spanish wine industry. This study delineates the structure of this industry using strategic groups, which is supported by a valid econometric model. Therefore, from a theory base perspective, this study adds new evidence to the stream of research on strategic groups by investigating their evolution over time in the wine industry and the effect of strategic group membership on performance.

The purpose of this study is to model the strategic thinking process, considering the different psychological traits of TMTs (top management teams) and how the technological dynamism affects the strategies framed together impacting the performance of the firm.

Modeling and simulation are done in this study using the system dynamics (SD) tool. The data are extracted using social media analytics, and the same is given as an input for the SDmodel, which is used for modeling and simulation of the interdependencies between the psychological factors, technological dynamism and firm performance. The analysis decodes how a change in the thinking process of a TMT has an impact on the performance of the company in an automobile market.

The study has explained how different psychological traits affect the thinking process of a TMT and how the strategies framed with this thinking behavior have an impact on firm performance.

The study is limited only to the automobile industry in India, and only partial psychological constructs were considered to examine their impact on firm performance. This study can be further extended by analyzing the same to various other industries along with many other psychological constructs.

The findings identify the change in behavior of the performance due to the thinking process and technological dynamism. This helps the top management to take into consideration different factors that affect the strategies framed for the company and what are the threshold points in the system that are to be focused on during the framing of a strategy.

The study fills the unattended gaps in the literature regarding how the psychological traits are interdependent and how their relationship is affecting the thinking process, which is going to have an impact on the behavior of the firm performance. It also adds to the literature of systems thinking.