Businesses today face intense international competition, a heightened pace of development and shortened product life cycles. As a result, many researchers recommend firms collaborate and partner with other firms to succeed. With over a decade of research examining alliances and inter-firm collaboration, we know a great deal about the benefits and outcomes firms realize through collaboration. An important gap exists, however, in our understanding of the effect of partnering firms on collaborative outputs. This study attempts to address this gap by examining the success of collaborative new product development outputs. The study was a quasi-experimental study using archival, time-series data. Hypotheses were tested at the project level, defined as the product output from the collaborative development effort. Predictors were developed at both the firm and dyadic levels. Several findings emerged from this research. The primary finding is that roles of alliance partners impact which capability and capital benefits accrue. Firms functioning as a publisher benefit from increases in relevant experience. Firms functioning as a developer benefit from working in areas in which they have experience, but largely to the extent that the developer also generalizes their capabilities. One implication emerging from the capability findings suggests a need for configurational capability research. From a social capital conception, developers with high network centrality have a negative impact on the perceived quality of the final software product. Developers also benefit from embeddedness, products developed by developers in constrained networks outperformed products developed by developers in brokered networks.

The resource-based view (RBV) of competitive strategy emphasises the importance of unique firm resources and associated capabilities to the formulation of competitive strategy. This cross-sectional study seeks to determine whether or not the pattern of usage of competitive methods related to marketing, information technology and flexibility in the Portuguese service sector aligns with the resource-based view. Fifteen service-related competitive methods are identified. Surveyed firms were asked to indicate the degree of relevance of these competitive methods to their competitive strategy. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling indicates that these methods represent four underlying strategy dimensions that reflect some of the dynamic capabilities suggested by the resource-based view. In addition, cluster analysis revealed that each of the responding firms could be classified into one of three capability orientations. Some implications of these findings for strategy development in the Portuguese service sector are discussed. Limitations of the study and areas for future research are also presented.

No description available.

No description available.

The data produced and collected by organizations represents both challenges and opportunities for the modern firm. Business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) comprises a wide variety of information management technologies and information seeking activities designed to exploit these information resources. As a result, BI&A has been heralded as a source of improved organizational outcomes in both the academic and practitioner literature, and these technologies are among the largest continuous IT expenditures made over the last decade.Despite the interest in BI&A, there is not enough theorizing about its role in improving firm performance. Scholarly investigations of the link between BI&A and organizational benefits are scarce and primarily exploratory in nature. Further, the majority of the extant research on BI&A is techno-centric, conceptualizing BI&A primarily an organizational technical asset. This study seeks to explicate the relationship between BI&A and improved organizational outcomes by viewing this phenomenon through the lens of dynamic capabilities, a promising theoretical perspective from the strategic management discipline. In so doing, this research reframes BI&A as an organizational capability, rather than simply a technical resource. Guided by a comprehensive review of the BI&A and dynamic capabilities literature, as well as a series of semi-structured focus groups with senior-level business practitioners with BI&A experience, this study develops and tests a model of BI&A enabled firm performance. Using a snowball sample, an online survey was administered to 137 business professionals in 24 industries. The data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings support the contention that BI&A serve as the sensing and seizing components of an organizational dynamic capability, while transformation is achieved through business process change capability. These factors influence firm financial performance through their impact on the functional performance of the firm’s business processes. Further, this study demonstrates that traditional BI&A success factors are positively associated with BI&A sensing capability. This study makes several important contributions to BI&A research. First, this study addresses a gap in the scholarly literature by establishing a theoretical framework for the role of BI&A in achieving firm performance which is grounded in an established strategic management theory. Second, by drawing on the sense-seize-transform view of dynamic capabilities, this dissertation proposes a new conceptualization of BI&A as sensing and seizing organizational capabilities. Third, this research links the use of BI&A to improved organizational outcomes through the transformation of business processes, consistent with the view that the value of IT is derived from its impact on the value generating processes of the firm. Fourth, by viewing BI&A and business process change as distinct but inter-related components of dynamic capabilities, this research clarifies the role of BI&A in the dynamization of organizational processes, providing insight into the relationship between BI&A and business agility. Finally, this dissertation shows how BI&A capabilities are related to BI&A success factors identified in prior research.

Background: IT has been reshaping competition and strategy for decades. However, the current wave of IT-driven competition is distinct from previous ones. As new digital technologies have a disruptive effect, organizations must adapt to remain competitive. Digital transformation particularly affects the automotive industry as digitalization has become the most important phenomenon since the creation of the industry. Managers in automotive companies need to thus become active in implementing strategic changes and utilize digital opportunities. For this, managers must apply their dynamic managerial capabilities to sense and seize digital opportunities and to transform the company. Research Problem: Despite the wide literature on dynamic capabilities, dynamic managerial capabilities, and digital transformation, research on these three concepts’ interlinkages is underdeveloped. There is furthermore little evidence on how the interaction of the underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities at an organizational level affect strategic change and performance in a changing environment. Research Purpose: The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of an automotive company’s development of dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate its digital transformation. It aims at showcasing how managerial cognition, social capital, and human capital are relevant to sense, seize, and transform for digital transformation. A framework is developed to visualize the respective interlinkages. Research Question: How can dynamic managerial capabilities facilitate an automotive company’s digital transformation? Research Method: This study uses a qualitative approach. An in-depth case study aiming for theory-elaboration was conducted at Volvo Group. Data was purposefully collected through interviews, observations, and internal documents, and then analyzed through a thematic analysis. Conclusion: This paper’s main contribution lies in the application of dynamic managerial capabilities in the context of digital transformation. Our findings suggest that all dynamic managerial capabilities are important for sensing, seizing, and transforming for digital transformation. We find managerial cognition to be vital throughout all the dynamic capabilities steps, whereas managerial social capital has strong influence on the sensing stage. Managerial human capital in terms of industry experience plays a major role for the seizing and transforming stages of digital transformation. Our results indicate that it is important to build teams with complementing dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate organizational digital transformation.

Background: From digitalization acceleration, digital disruptions such as edge-cutting technologies, have caused challenges and changes to business’ natures in terms of value, structures, and strategies. No industry nor organization is immune to these impacts, especially multinational enterprises in the information technology industry, whereas these businesses have started to overlook and disregard traditional ways of working to enhance these impacts. Agility has become a new vital dynamic capability in today’s environment, whereas organizational agility is argued to support businesses to cope with this turbulent era of increased competition, globalization, and digitalization. Although, to enhance this, traditional business processes and operations must be rethought and extended to a digital context.  Purpose: As digital disruptions have become a threat to businesses' values and operations, it has gained increased attention in both practice and research. Organizational agility is raised as a tool and response to cope with these new digital threats and changes to fundamental business values, however, this has also increased pressure on managers to create and maintain cohesion and motivation when change is imposed. Nonetheless, how this is managed and experienced within local subsidiaries of multinational enterprises lacks both exploration and understanding, and thus, suggesting that there is much left to uncover. This, especially on how to maintain local responsiveness while enhancing global fundamental values when introducing organization agility to cope with changes and digital disruptions.   Method: With a relativism ontology, interpretivism epistemology, and inductive research approach, this research studied how to be organizationally agile under digital disruptions, from a subsidiary perspective in an IT multinational enterprise. Through a qualitative explorative research and multiple-case study design, the empirical data was gathered from 12 semi-structured in-depth interviewees and observations, where the employee perspective set the foundation of how organizational agility and digital disruptions are managed and experienced within their local subsidiaries. The data were analyzed through a thematic analysis, including separate within-case analyzes, a cross-case analysis, and lastly, a comparison with existing literature.  Conclusion: The findings show how multinational enterprises in the information technology industry could manage organizational agility when digital disruptions occur and how this is experienced amongst employees. Subsidiary Management is vital for coping with digital disruptions whereas Strategic Decision-Making for responding to the same, fundamentally relying on the Organizational Culture with the six key factors of Ownership, Learning, Diversity, Inclusion, Trust, and Mindset. Moreover, organizational agility could cause a negative tradeoff of work-life balance and a negative tradeoff between increased workload and individual growth, whereas increased autonomy creates a tradeoff between local independence and global cohesiveness. This, however, was experienced as both positive and negative. Being organizationally agile is vital on both global and local levels to utilize efficiency, flexibility, and be locally responsive to regional market demands where the attention must be given to people rather than structures to be agile and digitally responsive.

Among ongoing concerns for firms is the need to remain relevant and competitive. To address these concerns, firms often turn to technology to meet rapidly changing consumer demands, to provide differentiated offerings and to increase firm efficiency and productivity. Thus, the decision-making process that leads to the adoption of new technology is of great importance to marketers. Grounded in the resource-based view of the firm, this dissertation examines absorptive capacity and technological opportunism as firm dynamic capabilities and their role in delivering successful, firm-level technology adoption decisions. This research also examines the moderating role of internal micro-politics on the technology adoption process. With a qualitative and quantitative approach, this dissertation develops and tests an empirical model of the firm-level adoption decision process and its outcomes. Theoretical and empirical evidence provided by this research offers insights into the firm-level technology adoption process that should be of value to both researchers and practitioners. Analyses show that firm absorptive capacity and technological opportunism are instrumental in shaping the firm’s perceptions of a transformational technology, which in turn positively influences overall satisfaction with the adopted technology. In contrast to theoretical support, results also show that the positive relationship between a firm’s dynamic capabilities and its perceptions of a technology’s characteristics is negatively influenced by the presence of micro-political strategies used to garner internal buy-in and support for the technology adoption decision. These findings indicate marketers of technology should utilize this knowledge to guide client firms through the technology adoption process based on evaluations of the client firm’s level of dynamic capabilities and micro-political environment. Further, managers seeking to enhance product or service offerings through technology adoption should seek to develop their dynamic capabilities that inform adoption decisions. Additionally, managers should carefully manage stakeholder relationships to minimize any negative influence micro-political strategies may have on the decision-making process. Study limitations and areas of future research are also discussed.

Many organizations are looking to implement data-driven technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning in their operations due to their rapid development and increased usefulness in recent years. With technology changing fast, it is difficult for managers to determine which sources of data are relevant in the context of these technologies. This paper aims to explore opportunities to implement data-driven technologies in the Stockholm metro. The technologies are assessed based on their usefulness and feasibility. The assessment is also done in regards to the current state of the organization in charge of the Stockholm metro, Trafikförvaltningen, and its internal capabilities. The study has been conducted through interviews aimed at understanding Trafikförvaltningen as an organization, as well as literary reviews of state-of-the-art technologies aimed at understanding what is technically possible. By aligning the state of the organization with current technologies, it was concluded that big data for preventive maintenance and smart grids for minimizing energy consumption were the most relevant data-driven technologies to implement. / Många organisationer vill implementera datadrivna teknologier som stordataanalys, artificiell intelligens och maskininlärning i sina verksamheter på grund av de senaste årens dess snabba utvecklingstakt och ökade användbarhet. I och med den snabba teknologiska utvecklingstakten är det svårt för beslutsfattare att avgöra vilka datakällor som är relevanta för dessa teknologier. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka möjligheterna att implementera datadrivna teknologier i Stockholms tunnelbanesystem. Dessa teknologier är bedömda efter användbarhet och möjlighet för lyckad implementation. Bedömningen tar även hänsyn till det nuvarande tillståndet av organisationen som är ansvarig för Stockholm tunnelbana, Trafikförvaltningen, och dess interna färdigheter. Studien har genomförts via intervjuer som syftat till att förstå Trafikförvaltningen som organisation, tillsammans med en litteraturstudie av den senaste tekniken som syftat till att förstå vad som är tekniskt möjligt. Genom en analys av organisationens nuvarande tillstånd och nuvarande teknologier drogs slutsatsen att stordataanalys för preventivt underhåll och smarta elnät för minskad energikonsumtion är de mest relevanta datadrivna teknologierna att implementera.

During the pilot search, we discovered a gap in the literature in regard to the combination of Dynamic Capabilities and Emerging Technologies and the combined effect that both have on creating Supply Chain Resilience. Numerous studies discussed the subject’s individual, or two of the combined, but not all three together. This was the base for the purpose of the study of how emerging technologies will affect the dynamic capabilities of sensing, and from those effects, create supply chain resilience. A systematic content analysis was utilized using the existing literature of the three subjects. Based on the first scan of the literature, a conceptual framework was created, which was the foundation moving forward.  The findings indicate that the implementation of Emerging Technologies into the sensing process will permit an enhanced set of tools for gathering and sharing data and information both internally and externally, while offering increased visibility, traceability and transparency throughout the supply chain, improving sensing capabilities. Due to potentially higher degree of accountability and openness, this could result in a more collaborative nature built on trust and interlinked cooperation. With higher degrees of trust and interconnection between supply chain partners, a decentralized, collective problem-solving system/approach could be applied, where the interests of all involved parties are considered.