Cette thèse porte sur l'étude de la méthode Design thinking dans le contexte particulier des stratégies d'entreprises pro-pauvres, et plus particulièrement dans le contexte de développement de business models inclusifs à la base de la pyramide des marchés émergents. Dans ce contexte, et comme pour tout nouveau marché, les entreprises multinationales sont de plus en plus conscientes qu'elles devront apprendre de nouvelles façons radicales de travailler pour réussir. Dans le cadre du business inclusif, les entreprises doivent développer une nouvelle philosophie, de nouveaux processus, de nouvelles capacités, de nouveaux partenariats et une collaboration approfondie avec différentes parties prenantes. Nous proposons que la méthode Design thinking appliquée au contexte de la base de la pyramide peut en effet favoriser le développement des capacités de création de nouveaux business models innovants et inclusifs et la création de valeur partagée. Une tentative de validation de cette méthode dans le contexte de la base de la pyramide, est faite à travers deux cas d'entreprises multinationales : GE-Healthcare et Schneider Electric, qui fournissent des solutions uniques aux défis auxquelles sont confrontées les populations de la base de la pyramide dans différents secteurs comme la santé ou l'énergie. En mettant l'accent sur certains des principes fondamentaux du Design thinking comme la centralité sur l'humain, la co-création et l'expérimentation ou encore la collaboration, l'étude essaye de valider un ensemble de processus et de capacités sur lesquelles se base la création de nouveaux business models inclusifs et le développement de solutions innovantes entièrement contextualisées face à des problèmes réels. / This thesis deals with the study of Design thinking in the particular context of pro-poor business strategies, and more particularly in the context of the development of inclusive business models at the base of the pyramid of emerging markets. In this context, and as in any new market, multinational companies are increasingly aware that they will have to learn new, radical ways to work for success. Within the framework of inclusive business, companies must develop a new philosophy, new processes, new capabilities, new partnerships and in-depth collaboration with different stakeholders. We propose that the Design thinking method applied to the context of the base of the pyramid can indeed encourage the development of the capabilities of creation of new innovative and inclusive business models and the creation of shared value. An attempt to validate this method in the context of the pyramid was made in two cases of multinational companies: GE-Healthcare and Schneider Electric, which provide unique solutions to the challenges faced by The pyramid in different sectors such as healthcare or energy. By focusing on some of the fundamental principles of design thinking such as human centeredness, co-creation and experimentation, and collaboration, the study tries to validate a set of processes and capabilities that enables the creation of new inclusive business models and the development of fully contextualized innovative solutions to real problems.

Digital technologies are disrupting firms of all sizes in all industries. This prompts firms to stipulate responses to the ongoing changes and challenges digitalization spawns. Especially family businesses, with their unique structural and behavioral characteristics and economic importance, in traditional industries must reinvent themselves and transform their business digitally to ensure longevity. Despite the recent increasing contributions of academia for the digital transformation phenomenon, attention for specific organizational forms, in particular family businesses is still scarce. A better understanding of how these organizations undergo a digital transformation is vital for family business adaptation and future survival. Therefore, this study emphasizes on the specific attribute of long-term orientation. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate family businesses’ long-term orientations impact their digital transformation process. For the intention to contribute to academia through theory building, we have chosen a qualitative, exploratory research design using a multiple case study of six selected family businesses. 14 semi-structured interviews with seven family managers and seven non-family managers were conducted to collect data. The results show that family businesses prepare a basis for their digital transformation through the influence of their long-term orientation. Building on our findings we developed a model of a digital foundation for family businesses endeavors in their digital transformation process to manage the three phases of digital transformation. This digital foundation as a capability affected by a family business long-term orientation impacts their digital transformation process in distinct ways.

While conventional approaches of managing organizations have been considered to be outdated, Organizational Agility has been acclaimed for its prowess to cope with today's increasingly volatile and dynamic environment. Yet the predominant focus has been directed towards how agility is achieved, while its retention as organizations grow has to a great extent been unexplored. Through a qualitative case study of a renowned organization for its unorthodox approach, this study aims to contribute with an extension to the current scope of organizational agility by stretching beyond the focus on mere transformations in an attempt to understand in what ways organizational agility is retained as they grow. The findings of this study challenge the common conceptions found within literature suggesting that changes in the external environment are what drives organization’s to be agile in order to sustain its competitiveness. Organizational agility has thus primarily been considered to be constituted by dynamic adaptations in accordance to forces of the external environment. In contrast, this study finds that the retention of organizational agility during growth is an evolutionary process that is internally driven by placing indispensable value on the employees and by focusing on the organization itself, its desire and community. Retaining organizational agility is thus something that grows “from the inside and out”.

Background As of today the textile and fashion industry mainly relies on a linear production model, also referred to as the take-make-waste system. This economy depends solely on the single use of raw materials leaving space for an open-ended production and no intention of salvaging or recovering resources. Such a system cannot be supported by the environment in the future; therefore, several stakeholders are starting to embrace circular production systems and a closed-loop economy. One example of these efforts is take-back schemes (TBS) which strive to make the fashion industry more regenerative and restorative by narrowing, slowing, and closing the resource loops. Nonetheless, practitioners and academia have found adversities during the implementation stage which instead require competent knowledge, skills, and unique capabilities to achieve a successful performance. Purpose To achieve a successful implementation of a TBS, companies require unique capabilities that allow them to adapt and adopt a sustainable innovation. Therefore, this study investigates the dynamic capabilities (DCs) needed to implement a TBS in order to provide practitioners and academia with a guide that eases the application, overcomes the known adversities as well as explores the relationship between these and the relevant DCs. Methodology The research was based on a multiple case study method embracing abductive reasoning by extending the theory of DCs for circular business model implementation to TBS within the fashion industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three companies applying different types of take-back schemes; the primary data was strengthened by document research and a validation round of interviews. The data was analyzed through qualitative thematic content analysis. Further, the characteristics of the study lend themselves well to be represented through a qualitative causal loop diagram appropriate for developing novel solution strategies such as the DCs. Findings The results show, through the use of two maps, that several DCs have to be developed when implementing a TBS in order to reach a substantial competitive advantage in the form of a cost leadership, differentiation or focus strategy. Further, the causal loop maps also shed light on the different relationships between DCs and how these can be exploited to overcome the difficulties or utilizing the possibilities in implementing a TBS. Practical implications and research limitations - The thesis creates new insights on TBS implementation through the use of DCs by presenting two causal loop maps. Thus, aiding practitioners and allowing them to quickly recognize their current situation against the maps as well as what changes need to be made following the suggested capabilities. The study is limited by the choice of interviewed companies, which represent only retailers with TBS in Sweden.

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.

The pervasive nature of technological advancements has increased the complexity, and thus the environmental volatility that span well across the borders of industries and na-tions. It could be argued that the need for firms to demonstrate dynamic capabilities are greater than ever before. In this conceptual study we take an exploratory approach to understand how dynamic capabilities are dynamically interconnected with digital trans-formation and the consequences this has on the business model(s) and further, the over-arching business strategy. This is realized through the introduction of a conceptual framework for “data-driven dynamic capabilities” which constitutes that there is a dynam-ic interconnectivity at play between the dynamic capabilities and digital transformation themes. Our findings suggest that the dynamic conflation between the two help fuel one another and that the firm’s business model(s) ought to be congruent with its data-driven dynamic capabilities. Further our findings suggest that there is a feedback loop between the firm’s overarching business strategy and its data-driven dynamic capabilities. Thus, the implications of this conceptual paper will be to create new value, adding knowledge and new theoretical trajectories into the field with the help of the integrative conceptual framework introduced in our study.

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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.