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1 – 10 of over 9000Changbiao Zhong, Rui Huang, Yunlong Duan, Tianxin Sunguo and Alberto Dello Strologo
To adapt to the rapidly changing market environment, firms must constantly adjust and change their knowledge base to develop new technologies. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
To adapt to the rapidly changing market environment, firms must constantly adjust and change their knowledge base to develop new technologies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the improvement path of firms’ breakthrough innovation from the perspective of knowledge recombination in the context of dynamic change in the knowledge base. By analyzing the influencing mechanism of environmental dynamism on the relationship between the two, this paper provides a theoretical foundation for managers to make knowledge recombination decisions under a dynamic external environment while further enriching the firm’s innovation achievements.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from 220 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock from 2010 to 2018, an extensive panel data set was constructed to investigate the effect of knowledge recombination, which was divided into recombination creation and recombination reuse, on firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, the authors differentiated environmental dynamism as market dynamism and technological dynamism and then examined its moderating role in the above relationships.
Findings
The research results show that various recombination behaviors of knowledge elements have a differentiated effect on firms’ breakthrough innovation presented as follows: Knowledge recombination creation is significantly positively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation, while knowledge recombination reuse is significantly negatively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, environmental dynamism has a considerable moderating effect between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation further, emphasizing that the moderating effect on different types of knowledge recombination behaviors is significantly distinct.
Research limitations/implications
First, given that this study refers to several Chinese noted databases to collect second-hand data for empirical analysis, future research could use first-hand data by collecting questionnaire survey and interview to provide a more practical and detailed research conclusion. Second, the authors focused on the contextual variable to explore the moderating role of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and breakthrough innovation. Nevertheless, the indirect effects of other internal factors were not discussed. The authors advocate future studies to involve other moderators from employee social and phycological perspectives, such as trust in colleagues in the proposed theoretical models in this study.
Practical implications
This study is conducive for managers to attach great attention to knowledge management practices in the firm and to understand the critical role of knowledge recombination in affecting innovation performance under dynamic environmental changes. Moreover, this study provides practical guidance and serves as a reference for firms to strengthen their knowledge recombination ability as full utilization of existing knowledge elements and exploration of new knowledge values.
Originality/value
Primarily, from the perspective of dynamic changes in the knowledge base, this paper explores how the knowledge recombination behaviors affect firms’ breakthrough innovation, thereby enriching and extending the relationship theory between knowledge recombination capabilities and breakthrough innovation, while new and valuable ideas are provided in the study of issues related to the firms’ breakthrough innovation; Moreover, this study analyzes the moderating effects of diverse types of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation from a multi-dimensional perspective proposing that the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on different knowledge recombination behaviors are distinct.
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Rui Xue, Gongming Qian, Zhengming Qian and Lee Li
Much of the extant evidence in the marketing literature posits that firms use strategic alliances to share resources, costs and risks as paths to performance improvements. Drawing…
Abstract
Purpose
Much of the extant evidence in the marketing literature posits that firms use strategic alliances to share resources, costs and risks as paths to performance improvements. Drawing from the organizational ecology theory, this study aims to propose a different rationale, namely, that strategic alliances protect a firm’s core structure – its stated goals, authority structure, core technologies and marketing strategies – by mitigating the need for hazardous changes in hostile environments.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collected quantitative data using market survey and analyzed the data with the regression method.
Findings
Using Chinese firms in three technology industries as the research setting, this research finds a positive and significant relationship between environmental hostility and core structure dynamism. Although strategic alliances themselves have no direct bearing on core structure dynamism, they are found to moderate this relationship negatively, that is, strategic alliances attenuate the relationship between environmental hostility and structural changes.
Research limitations/implications
This paper argues that strategic alliances have significant moderating effects on firm performance, that is, firms use strategic alliances to outsource competence to partners and, thus, avoid internal turmoil. However, the moderating effect alone cannot explain the complexity of strategic alliances. There could exist other effects that remain unknown. In addition, individual-level factors could have significant impacts on strategic alliance management. Future studies should look into these issues to advance the authors’ knowledge on strategic alliances.
Practical implications
The findings of this study show that managers should outsource competence to partners when they experience turmoil in markets. Adapting to market turmoil internally could lead to market failure.
Originality/value
This study provides a new rationale for strategic alliances, that is, firms use strategic alliances to reduce market uncertainty. This rationale has not been reported in the existing literature.
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Aqueeb Sohail Shaik and Sanjay Dhir
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Seyed Mohammad Sadegh Khaksar, Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi, Bret Slade and Sobhan Asian
This study focuses on the adoption of wearable technologies in a context where care-providing organizations can offer, in collaboration with caregivers, better care. Drawing on…
Abstract
Purpose
This study focuses on the adoption of wearable technologies in a context where care-providing organizations can offer, in collaboration with caregivers, better care. Drawing on dual-factor theory and from the caregiver perspective, this study identifies and examines factors of technology adoption in four developing countries.
Design/methodology/approach
This study was undertaken using a quantitative approach. A survey was distributed among 1,013 caregivers in four developing countries in Asia including Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iraq and collected quantitative data for model validation and hypotheses analysis. Building on the technology adoption literature, we identified six constructs that impact the behavioral intention of caregivers to use wearable technologies in aged care-providing organizations.
Findings
Our dual-factor model was successfully validated, and all hypotheses were supported. However, different results were found in the selected countries within the cross-country analysis.
Originality/value
This study has significant implications for the study of emerging technologies in aged care service operations. It provides a theoretical framework that may be adapted for future research, enabling practitioners in aged care to better understand the crucial role of technology adoption in service operations. Less attention was paid to the adoption of wearable technologies in aged care, particularly in developing countries, where healthcare services in aged care impose heavy costs on care providers.
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Olya Kudina and Mark Coeckelbergh
This paper aims to show how the production of meaning is a matter of people interacting with technologies, throughout their appropriation and in co-performances. The researchers…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how the production of meaning is a matter of people interacting with technologies, throughout their appropriation and in co-performances. The researchers rely on the case of household-based voice assistants that endorse speaking as a primary mode of interaction with technologies. By analyzing the ethical significance of voice assistants as co-producers of moral meaning intervening in the material and socio-cultural space of the home, the paper invites their informed and critical use as a form of (re-)empowerment while acknowledging their productive role in human values.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents an empirically informed philosophical analysis. Using the conceptual frameworks of technological appropriation and human–technological performances, while drawing on the interviews with voice assistants’ users and literature studies, this paper unravels the meaning-making processes in relation to these technologies in the household use. It additionally draws on a Wittgensteinian perspective to attend to the productive role of language and link to wider cultural meanings.
Findings
By combining two approaches, appropriation and technoperformances, and analyzing the themes of privacy, power and knowledge, the paper shows how voice assistants help to shape a specific moral subject: embodied in space and made as it performatively responds to the device and makes sense of it together with others.
Originality/value
The researchers show how through making sense of technologies in appropriation and performatively responding to them, people can change and intervene in the power structures that technologies suggest.
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Franklin Nakpodia, Folajimi Ashiru, Jacqueline Jing You and Oluwasola Oni
Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a complex phenomenon designed to resolve numerous societal challenges while remaining economically viable. However, how social entrepreneurs in…
Abstract
Purpose
Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a complex phenomenon designed to resolve numerous societal challenges while remaining economically viable. However, how social entrepreneurs in developing countries have deployed digital technologies to address communal challenges during the Covid-19 crisis is largely undocumented. This research examines social entrepreneurs' adoption of digital technologies, the multi-level organisational conditions, and associated innovative outcomes of engaging digital technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the organisational resilience theoretical framework, this research employs a qualitative methodology, comprising 38 semi-structured interviews with Nigerian SE firms, to investigate social entrepreneurs' engagement with digital technologies.
Findings
The study’s findings reveal 19 pathways through which digital technologies enabled organisational resilience outcomes by Nigerian SE firms during the Covid-19 pandemic. This allows the authors to show, via a 3 × 3 matrix, how social entrepreneurs deploy digital technologies to build proximate, dynamic, and continuous resilience in a weak institutional context.
Originality/value
The study’s findings enables the authors to advance the SE – digital technologies – resilience scholarship in a developing economy.
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Shaker A. Zahra and Bruce A. Kirchhoff
New ventures contribute to the competitiveness of the United States in global markets, creating jobs and wealth. Understandably, public policy makers and researchers alike have…
Abstract
New ventures contribute to the competitiveness of the United States in global markets, creating jobs and wealth. Understandably, public policy makers and researchers alike have shown an interest in understanding the factors that spur these ventures’ growth, which is also an important research issue in the field of entrepreneurship. Researchers have highlighted the role of owners’ needs and aspirations and industry conditions as determinants of new ventures’ growth. This study proposes that new ventures’ resource endowments influence their growth in domestic and international markets. Using the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, the study examines the effect of select technological resources on the domestic and international sales growth of 419 new ventures. Start-ups (5 years or younger) benefit from using a different set of technological resources in achieving growth than those of adolescent firms (6–8 years old). These differences persist in low vs. high technology industries, reflecting the maturation of these ventures.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs’) R & D capability and learning capability on their technology…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs’) R & D capability and learning capability on their technology commercialization by focussing on the moderating effect of environmental dynamism.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a review of the literature on organizational capability, technology commercialization, and environmental dynamism, various hypotheses were developed and tested using a sample of 179 SMEs in Korea. Non-response bias using t-test and common method bias was assessed.
Findings
The results indicate that their R & D capability and learning capability were significant drivers of their technology commercialization, which in turn influenced their business performance. Environmental dynamism was found to moderate the relationship between technology commercialization and business outcomes. These results suggest that SME managers should place greater emphasis on strengthening their organizational capability and dealing with turbulent business environments.
Originality/value
Few studies have explored the drivers of technology commercialization and their effects on business performance. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study examines the effects of firms’ R & D capability and learning capability on technology commercialization in the context of SMEs, focussing specifically on the moderating effect of environmental dynamism. The study contributes to the literature by extending the research horizon to firms’ technology commercialization capability, providing a better understanding of the pivotal role of technology commercialization and its key drivers and environmental factors in boosting performance.
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María José Ruiz‐Ortega, Gloria Parra‐Requena, Job Rodrigo‐Alarcón and Pedro M. García‐Villaverde
The purpose of this paper is to study the antecedents of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Specifically, the authors aim to analyze how firms' capabilities influence the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the antecedents of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Specifically, the authors aim to analyze how firms' capabilities influence the relationship between firm environmental dynamism and entrepreneurial orientation. The study seeks to provide a better understanding of antecedents of EO, helping to fill in the gap that exists in the EO literature and explain how certain internal and external factors, independently and jointly, influence EO.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical study is conducted on a sample of 253 firms from the information and communication technology (ICT) industry. In order to test the proposed model, a hierarchical regression analysis was developed.
Findings
A positive effect of environmental dynamism, technological capabilities and marketing capabilities on EO was detected and it was possible to observe how technology capabilities improve the positive effect of environment dynamism on EO.
Originality/value
The most important contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that the direction of the moderating effect of capabilities on environment dynamism changes depending on the capabilities that are analyzed. While the technology capabilities improve the positive effect of environment dynamism, the marketing capabilities worsen the effect of environment dynamism on EO.
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Paolo Neirotti, Elisabetta Raguseo and Emilio Paolucci
The adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has some peculiarities that may depend on the combined effect of size and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has some peculiarities that may depend on the combined effect of size and the competitive environment. The purpose of this paper is to use a contingency approach to explore how SMEs develop organizational capabilities through ICT investments in response to environmental conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey on 284 SMEs in Italy was conducted and data were analyzed with regression models for testing seven hypotheses on the environmental influence on the development of ICT-based capabilities and the role played by firm size.
Findings
The results show that the environment influences the development of such capabilities in a different way, depending on size. Within munificent environments, ICT-based capabilities are more diffused among larger SMEs, whereas under environmental complexity, this pattern is inverted, with larger SMEs exhibiting a more limited deployment of ICT in support of both their internally and externally oriented processes. Under environmental dynamism medium-sized firms tend to develop more internally oriented ICT capabilities, but fail in reporting superior capabilities for managing external relationships.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to understand the relationship between the environment and ICT investments in SMEs. Since the combined effect of size and the competitive environment may influence considerably the ICT investments in SMEs, this study investigates the organizational responses with respect to how SMEs use ICT to address their external environment. This focus provides a contribution to understand the challenges that SMEs are facing in the current technological and market environment, where changes in the ICT paradigm raise the level of complexity and dynamism and bring changes in competition levels that leave few resources for growth to SMEs.
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