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In this study, the authors explore how sensing and seizing of market opportunities, asset reconfiguration and top management team (TMT) consensus on these elements jointly relate to a firm's international expansion. By doing this, the authors contribute to the existing literature by addressing dynamic managerial capabilities at the TMT level instead of considering them as individual executives' traits. The authors use the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) method to analyze our data from 261 TMT executives in 63 firms. The findings indicate that sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities are highly relevant for internationalization but in different configurations for specific stages and elements of international business. Presence of sensing as a part of configurations is observable, especially in connection to a firm having foreign customers and explicit internationalization strategies, while configurations where seizing and reconfiguration emerge are connected to firms showing continuity in the international markets. The authors’ results also indicate that a lack of TMT consensus in connection to dynamic managerial capabilities is a driving force that allows the firm not to stagnate with regards to internationalization. Yet, lack of TMT consensus combined with low reconfiguration capabilities seems to generate negative results, which suggests that different views are not helpful if the firm is incapable of changing its approaches.

This study uses data gathered with a questionnaire where the executives select either “yes” or “no” in response to statements describing the firm situation with regard different managerial aspects and progress of international growth. The authors analyze these data from 261 TMT executives from 63 firms using the QCA method.

The findings indicate that sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities are highly relevant for internationalization but to different extents for specific elements of international business; generally, while sensing is needed, in particular, for having foreign customers and internationalization strategies in the first place, seizing and reconfiguration became relevant for continuity in the international markets. Consensus or rather lack of it on these elements also plays a role. It seems that some disagreement is a driving force that allows the firm not to stagnate with regards to internationalization. However, TMT disagreement combined with low reconfiguration capabilities seems to generate negative results, which suggests that different views are not helpful if the firm is incapable of changing its approaches.

The findings contribute to existing knowledge by exploring how managerial capabilities influence firm-level dynamic capabilities from the point of view of the TMT. The authors also add to existing research that has often focused on the relationships between TMT executives' demographic traits and TMT consensus and, further, the (subsequent) firm performance by looking at different configuration rather than linear linkages. Together, these notions further mean that the authors change the point of view on diversity. The authors consider the consensus on existing managerial dynamic capabilities rather than evaluate the functional diversity or the TMT executives' agreement on strategic moves.

All capabilities are important. TMT does not need to agree on everything, as long as they acknowledge where their problem areas are, and they can capture at least some of the relevant trends and opportunities. In fact, having some lack of consensus seems to be a driving force that allows capabilities to be questioned and potentially keeps (false) under-appreciation of existing capabilities from becoming a barrier to international expansion.

Unlike previous studies that have focused on the relationship between the TMT executives' demographic characteristics and firm performance or the relationship of the demographics and TMT strategic consensus at a general level – or studies that have explained international performance with TMT consensus (or with dynamic managerial capabilities), this study brings forth how the dynamic managerial capabilities and the TMT executives' strategic consensus with regard to these capabilities influence the firm's international expansion. Here, the authors consider internationalization widely, looking at whether the firm has foreign customers or international expansion strategy in place, and whether there this activity is sustained and continuous (with repeated trading and long-term international contracts, in particular). To our knowledge, there is no research on TMT strategic consensus that explains how the unanimity among executives on dynamic managerial capabilities connects to the firm's international expansion.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The world stands on the threshold of a tantalizing opportunity: the possibility of a sustained economic boom over the first decades of the next millennium. This article outlines the confluence of forces – particularly the transition to a knowledge society, the emergence of a global economy and the pursuit of environmental sustainability – which could come together to propel huge improvements in wealth‐creating capacity and wellbeing world‐wide. The transition to a knowledge economy and society over the next few decades opens up the possibility of massive productivity gains. Equally significant, stimulus for a long boom could emerge from the creation of much more deeply integrated global markets for goods, services, capital and technology. Finally, the long boom could be sustained by a cooperative push to redirect the path of humanity’s relationship to the environment – a change entailing massive investments in new, less resource‐intensive patterns of consumption and methods of production. The unleashing of these dynamic forces hinges on two basic policy thrusts. First, economic dynamism in general and a long boom in particular will demand exceptional efforts – nationally and internationally – to encourage continuous innovation and high levels of investment. Second, with the prospects for a long boom contingent on the realization of a leap in the levels of international cooperation, decision makers will have to consider bold new approaches to negotiating and reconciling conflicting interests and divergent needs.

The research first and uniquely explores the antecedent relationship among three highly studied environmental forces – competitive intensity (CI), market turbulence (MT) and technological turbulence (TT) – in a service context. Next, given the importance of services to the USA and global gross domestic product (GDP) and the unique characteristics of services versus product firms, the research examines the impact of environmental forces on innovation speed capability, a less studied but critical enabler of service innovation. Finally, this study aims to suggest the importance of the sequential relationship between two dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – to realize advantage.

This study surveyed 264 US service firms in a business to business context and tested this research model using structural equation modeling.

The results yielded three major conclusions: in a service context when examining the relationship among the three environmental forces, CI appears to have the driving influence on MT and TT, MT, however, was the only environmental force that this study found to bare positive and significant direct influence on innovation speed. Looking at the zero-order effect of MT and TT on innovation speed this study found each to be positive and significant suggesting a negative suppression effect and innovation speed’s influence on performance relative to competitors is fully mediated by operational flexibility.

The paper contributes to context, as service firms represent the majority of the USA and global GDP. This study extends the literature on the highly studied environmental forces (MT, TT and CI) by examining how they influence each other in an antecedent role and in service context. This study extends service literature by going beyond the influence of environmental forces on innovation to examine the dynamic capability of innovation speed, suggested as uniquely important to service context and distinct from the more highly studied innovation construct. The study also extends prior research in the manufacturing (product) context that suggests the importance of sequential congruence between two critical dynamic capabilities – innovation speed and operational flexibility – necessary to deliver competitive advantage.

This study has been undertaken to find as to how the Pakistan defense services being resource-intensive organizations can help to secure the natural environment and achieve sustained national development by adopting modern management concepts like the balanced scorecard (BSC) while not compromising on their core aim of achieving strategic national defense objectives. With this main purpose in mind, this study focused on locating the core functionalities of Pakistan armed services to be adopted as the key perspectives for building their BSCs.

This study is quantitative in nature, and after the formulation of hypotheses by carrying out a thorough literature review, the distributed questionnaire collected quantitative data to test the hypotheses using computer-based SPSS software. Personnel of all the three arms of Pakistan defense service, namely army, navy and the air force, formed the population of this study.

This quantitative study has found that pursuit of national purpose, availability of resources, internal processes and building for future are the main core functionalities of Pakistan defense services and can be safely adopted as the main perspectives for the development of their BSCs to ensure sustained national development by exercising economy of resources without overburdening the natural resources and the environment.

The findings of this study are based on cross-sectional data rather than longitudinal; therefore, these are not a representative of a dynamic situation. As the data collection for this study is limited to Pakistan, its findings cannot be generalized globally.

This study is unique in a way as it endeavors to bring out empirically that how a public entity like defense force can contribute to the safe keeping of environment while achieving sustained development. Most importantly, it highlights that how BSC as a management tool can help the defense force leadership to achieve desired state of sustained national development through intelligent application of precious resources placed on their disposal.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a benchmarking framework to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the hotel industry, in a multi‐period context, with consideration of perishable traits and carry‐over activities. The sustained high performers in the case study are identified and their business strategies are discussed.

The dynamic DEA (data envelopment analysis) approach is used to identify the multi‐period sustained high performers. The super‐efficiency DEA approach is employed to conduct a thorough ranking under an input‐output‐consumption structure. The supplementary analysis is further implemented to help elucidate the benchmarking results.

In total, nine out of 80 international tourist hotels in Taiwan during 2006‐2010 are identified as the sustained high performers. These hotels have diverged business strategies in terms of employees (intensive versus economical labor forces), products (room versus F&B (food and beverage) services), prices (extremely expensive versus very inexpensive room rates), guests (business versus tourism guests), and others (e.g. location advantages).

This study contributes to benchmarking literature and to hotel industry in several aspects. Compared with conventional single‐period benchmarking in efficiency aspect only, the proposed multi‐period benchmarking framework under input‐production‐consumption structure can take into account the carry‐over activities, account for perishable traits, provide more robust results, and add more useful information to facilitate the hotel managers to ameliorate the efficiency and effectiveness. The proposed framework should be readily applied to other service industries (e.g. transport).

The purpose of this study is to analyze the systematic relationships among dynamic capabilities in startups’ survival.

This study is based on a systematic literature review on dynamic capabilities related to startups’ survival, following the content analysis approach.

This study presents four different perspectives of analysis about dynamic capabilities from resources exchange and business factors that meet needs of startups' survival. It also points out new area for future research in this field. In doing so, this study differentiates itself by its approach not limiting dynamic capabilities research and enriching entrepreneurs' capability theory.

By indicating an evolution of dynamic capabilities theory among tangible and intangible resources exchange in a more favorable adaptation to startups growth, this study boosters and contributes to the society, economy in general and to the science of business management in various perspectives such as overcoming cognitive barriers, entrepreneur’s commitment, innovation capabilities and knowledge capacity of startups.

This study amplifies dynamic capabilities vision in startups’ survival as one of the main sources for growth in this type of organizations. It also develops a deeper understanding about new avenues for dynamic capabilities theory among tangible and intangible resources exchange.

Understanding the phenomena of corporate longevity and self-renewing organizations has become an important topic in recent management literature. However, the majority of the research contributions focus on internal determinants of longevity and self-renewal. Using a coevolutionary framework, the purpose of this chapter is to address the dynamic interaction between organizations and environments in the realm of sustained strategic renewal, i.e. corporate longevity. To this end, we will focus on the competence of long-lived firms to coevolve due to the joint effect of managerial intentionality and environmental selection pressures. Building on coevolutionary framework, we develop a conceptual framework that highlights an organization's coevolutionary competence. Two longitudinal case studies are presented illustrating the arguments.

As Ovid said, “There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent.” It is this very premise that frames the discoveries in this chapter and the compelling paradox it has raised. What began as a question of how performance is sustained, unveiled a collection of core organizational paradoxes. The findings ultimately suggest that sustained high performance is not a permanent state an organization achieves, but rather it is through perpetual movement and dynamic balance that sustainability occurs.

The idea of sustainability as movement is predicated on the ability of organizational members to move beyond the experience of paradox as an impediment to progress. Through holding three critical “movements” – agile/consistency, collective/individualism, and informative/inquiry – not as paradoxical, but as active polarities, the organizations in the study were able to transcend paradox, and take active steps to continuous achievement in outperforming their peers. The study, focused on a collection of hospitals across the Unites States, reveals powerful stories of care and service, of the profound grace of human capacity, and of clear actions taken to create significant results. All of this was achieved in an environment of great volatility, in essence an unbalanced system. It was the discovery of movement and ultimately of dynamic balancing that allowed the organizations to in this study to move beyond stasis to the continuous “state” of sustaining high performance.

Organizational flexible integration capability equips organizations to deal with the whole range of problems presented by dynamic environments. Adopting the language of dynamic capability research we advance four components that constitute flexible integration capability. These are a dominant logic of opportunity, a wide variety of problem solving projects, the deployment of portable integration expertise, and organizational practices support the development of portable integration expertise. Of these four portable integration expertise is a purely individual level capability. Organization level flexible integration capability is founded on the development of portable integration expertise by individuals. Organizations can facilitate portable integration expertise by structuring careers, valuing long term goals and objectives, adopting knowledge management practices and being receptive to external sources of knowledge.