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Matching Porter's (1980) three generic strategies appropriately in each of the four arenas of hypercompetition is proposed to offer temporary competitive advantages. The longer‐term sustainability of these competitive advantages is argued to depend on matching the firm's resources/capabilities with the provision of customer value and needs, as well as the presence of isolating mechanisms in the industry/market environment. Stringing together a series of such ephemeral advantages can enhance the firm's competitiveness in the long‐run.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what it means to be resilient in the context of environmental turbulence, complexity, and uncertainty, and to suggest how organizations might develop strategic resilience.

Sampling from the theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of resilience within the management and organizational literatures, this conceptual paper presents a model of strategic resilience and theoretical propositions are developed that suggest directions for future research.

It is proposed that strategic resilience is an emergent and dynamic characteristic of organizations whereby organizational legacy is a defining antecedent, top management team future orientation is a fundamental belief system, and problem formulation is a key deliberate process.

Although the conceptual inquiry of strategic resilience offers clarity on a complex phenomenon, empirical evidence is needed to provide a test of the concepts and their relations.

By asserting that the environment is turbulent, complex, and uncertain, this paper opens up new possibilities for the understanding and study of strategic resilience, whereby metamorphosis and innovation are requisites, and entrepreneurship is part and parcel of strategy. As such it highlights the importance of managerial beliefs and behaviors that facilitate proactively and deliberately challenging of the status quo.

The proposed conceptualization of strategic resilience in this paper connotes action rather than just reaction, and in so doing highlights the importance of the synergy between strategic management and entrepreneurship. As such, it proposes factors that may help organizations persist and create value within a context and future that they themselves also shape.

The intense competitive and dynamic environment in mobile social-media market forces service providers to introduce incremental technological changes to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what and how the user attitude to change influences members' behavioral support for incremental technological change in mobile social media service.

Using the tripartite model of attitude, this study examines the influence of the cognitive aspect (empowerment with change), affective aspect (arousal with change) and behavioral aspect (habit to change) of attitude toward change on members' behavioral support for incremental technological change. Drawing on the commitment to change theory, we assessed the underlying mechanism by which attitudes toward change influences behavioral support for incremental technological change through the two components of commitment to change (i.e. affective and normative commitment to change). We tested the model using structural equation modeling on the data collected from the popular mobile social media services in China.

Our results indicate that the effect of empowerment with change, arousal with change and habit to change varies with different dimensions of commitment to change and significant influence of commitment to change on members' behavioral support for incremental technological change.

The findings of this study contribute to better insights for services providers for implementing incremental technological change strategies.

This study contributes to the theory of incremental technological changes by empirical examination of the impacts of users' attitudes toward change on members' behavioral support for incremental technological change in mobile social media. The paper extends the commitment to change theory with the discussion of the mediating effect of commitment to change in the continuing members' behavioral support for incremental technological change in mobile social media.

This paper conceptualised the distinctive capabilities system and tested its relationship between small and medium enterprise (SME) non-financial and financial performance, encompassing leadership and learning orientation as mediators, moderators and moderators’ mediators.

The research design is exploratory, quantitative and cross-sectional. The study employed partial least squares path modelling for testing the direct, mediation and moderation effects, and, for testing moderated mediation, the author adopted PROCESS analysis. Before testing the hypotheses, a confirmatory factor analysis procedure was applied to the measurement model validity test.

Our empirical findings confirm that (1) learning orientation has a positive and significant implication as a moderator between the distinctive capabilities system and SME performance; (2) the distinctive capabilities system has a significant relationship with leadership and learning orientation, and leadership has a significant relationship with learning orientation and (3) the distinctive capabilities system has no direct impact on performance. These findings suggest that, by nature, the distinctive capabilities system has an indirect impact on SME performance, which must be understood as a consequence of living “far-from-equilibrium” and being forced to learn and adapt to come up with better market configurations.

This study intends to contribute to the existing literature in three ways: (1) it proposes the distinctive capabilities system definition; (2) it highlights the system’s features and benefits that make it a core construct for SMEs surviving and thriving and (3) it shows the causal relationship between the leadership capability and learning orientation and the distinctive capabilities system and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of intellectual capital and its components on bank diversification choice.

Both asset and income diversification are computed and an unbalanced panel data set of 32 banks covering the period 2000–2015 have been used. The panel corrected standard error regression has been used to account for serial correlation and heteroscedasticity.

The study found that intellectual capital determines the choice of diversifying. Precisely, intellectual capital motivates asset diversity but it dissuades income diversification. Human capital and structural capital are major components that determine asset diversity decisions. Income diversification decision, in this case to choose a focus strategy, is determined by human capital. This gives credence for the human capital theory in Ghana. Competition encourages a focus strategy. Bank size and leverage enhances income diversification while stock exchange listing and government ownership fosters the focus strategy.

Diversification strategy, knowledge base of staff, corporate governance and internal control have been considered as factors leading to the collapse of some Ghanaian banks in 2017–2018. The study provides relevant insights for regulators, decision support units and corporate boards. Intellectual capital and value added metrics should be used for modelling and decision making as they have value relevance.

This is a premier study that has examined the nexus between diversification strategy and intellectual capital in banks.

There are notable indigenous business models in the African context that have either been unexplored or are yet to be highlighted and given due attention at the international level. This chapter provides a cross-case analysis of the indigenous business practices of three ethnic groups across West Africa: Nigeria (Igbos), Ghana (Ewes) and the Benin Republic (Guns), thus viewing business models, from anglophone and francophone perspectives. Specifically, the chapter discusses the apprenticeship models igba-boi, of the Igbo society, dorsorsror, among the Ewes, and eyi alo within the Guns society and succession models in the three societies ‘Inochi anya, domenyinyi and eyi kanta’ respectively, with the aim of highlighting insights for practice, policy and academia. Historically, there have been relevant structures to ensure the transfer of knowledge and wealth to the next generation; this is driven by both cultural and traditional systems of the ethnic groups. The findings show that the family unit plays a significant role in building a sustainable channel, though informal, through which the heritage of business models is attained. To this end, the authors recommend leveraging the unique models of apprenticeship and business succession practised in these ethnic groups to support current policies, such as those relating to Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

This paper aims to understand the changing landscape of media and entertainment industry, to understand the difference between display advertising and native advertising, to know the standing of BuzzFeed in the industry and to know the strategic actions of BuzzFeed under the current competitive business environment.

Founded in 2006 as a viral lab, by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson, with the aim of tracking viral content, it caused disruption in the market with its entry and grew very rapidly. It was valued at $1.5bn in 2015, having raised money from numerous investors. The revenue of BuzzFeed was driven by the concept of native advertising. Catchy headlined articles conveyed the sense that BuzzFeed might be charging advertisers on basis of clicks, but this was not entirely true. Instead, BuzzFeed charged a fee from its clients for creating custom content targeting the customer base of the client. However, the year 2015 went tough for BuzzFeed when, as per the reports by Financial Times, it fell short of achieving its targeted revenue of US$250m by US$80m. It forced the company to revise and lower its target revenues for the year 2016 as well. The combined worldwide traffic to BuzzFeed saw a decline of up to 14 per cent. As Claire marketing head looked out of the window and pondered over the slashed revenue projections and the content related issues, the question on her mind was would native advertising sustain BuzzFeed in the longer run? BuzzFeed was known for its viral content and native advertising would involve finding a balance between what is good for the advertisers' brand and what will become viral. Buzzfeed ran a risk of losing brands to other modes of advertisement if they felt that native advertisement, which disguises the product within the content, was not meeting their expectations.

The case is targeted at students of post-graduation and under-graduation programs in Business Administration.

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The goal of this study was to explore the development of the first-of-its-kind mainstream adaptive apparel line for children through the collaboration of an adaptive apparel advocate and an apparel brand.

To achieve this goal, the study used the resource advantage (RA) and first-mover advantage theory to conduct a case study investigating the lived experiences of Mindy Scheier as she created the adaptive apparel movement and collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger® to launch the first-of-its-kind mainstream adaptive apparel line for children.

The result of the case study revealed two dominant themes: (1) “I am going to educate the entire industry” and (2) “You mean no mainstream brands have done this before?” Using RA theory and first-mover advantage theory, the themes illustrated the advocate's position as a key competitive resource, how she leveraged the key competitive resources with an apparel brand, and subsequently, how the brand, using the advocate as a key competitive resource, established a first-mover advantage in the adaptive apparel market to develop the first-of-its-kind mainstream adaptive apparel line for children in the marketplace.

This study demonstrated how RA theory could be applied to the partnership between an advocate and an apparel firm and how the key resources acquired and utilized by the advocate support a competitive advantage within the adaptive apparel marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of diversification on profitability, profit efficiency and financial stability of Ghanaian banks.

The authors employed a panel regression technique on a data set of 32 banks from 2000 to 2015. The data envelopment analysis is used to compute profit efficiency scores with credit risk accounted for.

The results suggest that income diversification decreases profit, profit efficiency and financial stability. The impact on profit and stability is U-shaped. The impact of asset diversification was found to be insignificant. High competition reduces both profitability and profit efficiency which is inconsistent with the quiet-life hypothesis of Hicks (1935), but financial stability increases with competition. High investment in tangible assets is associated with poor performance. Non-banking financial institutions that later became universal banks are not financially stable. Competition, size, age, government ownership and leverage which are controlled for and a sensitivity analysis conducted also provided relevant insights.

The results are relevant in understanding the events in the Ghanaian banking industry in 2017–2018. Income diversification strategy is essential in determining the performance of banks. Management has to figure out the extent and scope of their diversification to benefit from the strategy.

The authors examined diversification from the view-point of both the income statement and statement of financial position while most prior studies focused on only one aspect. The study is one of the few studies that employed the risk-adjusted profit efficiency measure in Sub-Saharan Africa.