The purpose of this study is to examine how the internationalization process in small firms impacts their resource base renewal. The relationships between organizational learning, dynamic capabilities, operational capabilities and resources are empirically examined to determine the impact of internationalization on changes to the firm’s resource base. The empirical analysis follows a multiple case study research methodology and is based on in depth case studies of four internationalized professional service firms in Ontario. Cases include born-global and born-again global firms, exemplifying both location-based and knowledge-based services. The study finds evidence supporting the relationships between internationalization, organizational learning and planned change via dynamic capabilities, as well as internationalization, organizational learning and ad hoc problem solving. Findings also suggest that the firms’ repetitive use of ad hoc problem solving when faced with similar situations leads to the creation of dynamic capabilities. This research adds to the existing body of literature on services, international entrepreneurship and strategy by responding to a call for empirical examination of organizational learning within the RBV and DC constructs. Furthermore, it also applies a novel theoretical framework with which to examine the impact of small firm internationalization and their strategic renewal. By doing so, this thesis extends the RBV and DC perspectives to small service firms. Findings demonstrate a need to further continue this research path to gain greater understanding of the change processes that occur during the evolution of the firm’s resource base, as pertains to small knowledge-intensive service firms.

Das Konzept der dynamischen Fähigkeiten, das der Forschung zur Privatwirtschaft entspringt, stellt die Frage wie Unternehmen um ihre Ressourcen optimal nutzen zu können, Fähigkeiten entwickeln, durch die sie in der Lage sind, sich stetig zu verbessern. Da sich auch im öffentlichen Sektor die Frage nach einer verbesserten Nutzung und Einsetzung der zur Verfügung stehenden Potentiale stellt, ist es Ziel dieser Arbeit das Konzept der dynamischen Fähigkeiten auf den öffentlichen Sektor und hierein den Untersuchungsgegenstand Museum anzuwenden. Somit werden mithilfe der Durchführung einer explorativen Fallstudie dynamische Fähigkeiten und deren Parameter untersucht und identifiziert. Hierzu wird zuerst das der Arbeit zugrundeliegende theoretische Verständnis des Konzepts dargelegt um darauf aufbauend anhand narrativer Interviews mit Mitarbeitern des Jüdischen Museums Berlin im empirischen Teil der Arbeit das Konstrukt auf den Untersuchungsgegenstand anzuwenden. Durch den somit erlangten detaillierten Einblick können dynamische Fähigkeiten und Faktoren, die sich auf diese auswirken, identifiziert werden. / The dynamic capabilities perspective based on private sector research poses the question how firms can develop capabilities to use and apply their resources in an optimal way to improve business steadily. In the public sector the question concerning the resource configuration of a firm is also enquired about the improvement in usage of internal potential. Therefore the aim of this paper is to transfer the concept of dynamic capabilities to the public sector, in that case with museums as the object of investigation. Hence dynamic capabilities and their parameters are analysed and identified by the use of an explorative case study. Due to that the theoretical background is defined in order to analyse interviews with stuff members of the Jewish Museum Berlin. This gains detailed insights and makes an identification of dynamic capabilities and their parameters possible.

This research explores the management problem of how individuals can influence the development of a strategic orientation within a firm. A market orientation strategy builds upon three dimensions: the organisation-wide acquisition, dissemination, and co-ordination of market intelligence (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993). Such management of market-based information requires a set of distinct dynamic capabilities or routines. Empirical research about the association between market orientation and performance shows that firms that develop these capabilities improve both their organisational and financial performance (Gray, Buchanan, & Mallon, 2003). This research attempts to understand the circumstances that prompt employees in all areas of an organisation to become accountable for the implementation of a market-oriented strategy. To date, studies have inadequately measured individual contribution to the market orientation of a firm and do not understand each employee's personal responsibility and willingness to act in a market-oriented way. In response, this thesis developed a dynamic, multi-dimensional scale of individual market-oriented behaviour. First-stage research used focus groups and extant literature to construct a measure of individual market orientation. Then, a cross-section of financial services employees completed a web-based survey measuring individual market-oriented behaviour and individual and interpersonal antecedents. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the presence of a single latent construct with three dimensions. Study results identified a strong and significant relationship between the performance of market-oriented behaviours and the perception of a high-quality fulfilled psychological contract with the employer. Employees who were agile learners and frequently in contact with customers were also more likely to practice market-oriented behaviours.

The international environment today has been undergoing unprecedented change and many companies are seeking new ways to stand out from the competition by sustaining their competitive advantage. Internationalization and firms’ consolidation increase competition in the dynamic marketplace .Companies are no longer staying competitive simply through focusing on product quality and pricing as customers are becoming more high-demanding related to customer service offer. This issue directs the companies’ main focus today to address the customer needs in the ever-changing environment.In order to be the winners in the marketplace, timing and superior customer service are becoming the keys to attain competitive advantage for a company. Time-based competition is an important issue that many companies are facing currently as customers are becoming more time-sensitive and time-oriented in terms of better services, reliability and delivery. To keep up with the changes in demand from customers, it is important to satisfy customers’ objectives and needs in order to provide superior customer service, thus, establish good relationship with them. In the ever-changing and dynamic business environment company needs to adapt and exploit the changes in order to meet the new challenges in the marketplace. It is crucial for the company to respond to changing needs of existing customers and seeking to serve new customers externally. The ways to renew the customers’ services and how they are delivered are critical capabilities for many companies to acquire nowadays. This leads to increasing interaction between marketing and logistics where logistics is considered a platform for supporting new strategic moves on the market.This master thesis originates from a need to research the links between customer service improvement and Just-in-time distribution in order to sustain competitive advantage. We propose to extend the Just-In-Time concept to incorporate a customer perspective, which results in changes the warehousing, ordering and delivering routines. Subsequently, this creates timing ability as well as coordination of information and material flows through timely decisions, which are difficult for competitors to emulate. Based on our analysis and conclusion, companies are recommended to shift from the traditional production-oriented to market-oriented focuses through incorporation of customers' perspective into the value chain. To deploy this, companies should start from the customer end and understand customers' needs and establish mutual beneficial relationships with customers. Long-lasting business relationships ultimately determine the success of the company. Furthermore, we conclude that successful learning to change the routines requires time for the transformation of traditional delivery practice to perform direct deliveries activities. They are based on the common understanding of the tasks and rules as well as common codes of internal coordination processes.

Integrating research from the strategic management and the supply chain management (SCM) literatures promises a fertile area of research that can enrich both areas. In this work, an attempt was made to answer the recent calls for incorporating perspectives from each field into the other. These calls were further encouraged by the new competitive landscape characterized by hypercompetition and network versus network competition. Thus, the field of Strategy, with its emphasis on gaining and sustaining competitive advantage, and SCM, with its emphasis on managing processes spanning organizational boundaries, stand to benefit greatly by this integration. The introduction chapter briefly describes what this research tried to achieve. In the supply chain management literature review chapter, the importance of managing supply chains in this era of network versus network competition is shown and the strategic demand network management (SDNM) concept is presented as an evolution of supply chain management and as a more suitable name reflecting the processes involved. In the third chapter, a selected list of supply chain management practices is presented and explained. The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters will endeavor to carry on three developments. These developments seek to integrate strategy and SCM research in three ways. In the first development, the dynamic capability perspective from the strategy field and the SDNM capability are integrated in order to suggest how demand network management enables dynamic capabilities. On the other hand, dynamic capabilities perspective were used to guide the SDNM practices. In the second development, alliance management capability from the strategy field was integrated with SDNM capability and SDNM practices to show how concepts from both areas can enrich the other. And finally the third development builds on the first two developments to explore how SDNM capability can facilitate strategic entrepreneurship (SE) and SE based boundary decisions.

How can we understand the innovativeness of firms or organizations in general, and how should we assess it in terms of nontechnological innovation? My paper deals with these two questions. The “ability” of companies to adapt to new circumstances, to create new products, processes and new knowledge, has been conceptualized in many approaches. Some of them simply define a list of “(critical) success factors” or “(key) performance indica-tors”, as tools for ranking and evaluation, without any theoretical reference. Others, like the resource-based or capability-based approach(es), work with theoretical references, but are still very weak in operationalizing of what they call “capability”. My paper gives a critical description of this situation and offers a new proposal to classify and to measure the “inclination” of organizations to innovate in all dimensions. This proposal roots in pragmatistic thinking as represented in the theory of reflexive modernization and in the pragmatist version of organizational learning theory. Empirically, it has been applied merely in case studies yet. A survey project is in preparation.

Control and flexibility may appear an unlikely pair. However, I propose that effective management of dynamic environments, such as systems development under conditions of uncertainty, must still provide clear control mechanisms to manage the progress and quality of the resulting products. This dissertation presents research to understand the types of control used in the context of flexible software development processes. The dynamic capabilities extension to the resource-based view of the firm is used to understand dynamic environments. Within those environments, control theory is used to understand how activities are guided and controlled to achieve management objectives. Specifically, control theory acts as a lens to contrast the control mechanisms found in plan-driven and flexible processes. I extend current thinking to include emergent outcome controls for team coordination in a taxonomy of control mechanisms. These phenomena are studied through a qualitative field study. The results show that organizations will choose more flexible management approaches as uncertainty increases, and that more controlled-flexible approaches managed with emergent outcome controls will lead to better outcomes than uncontrolled, ad hoc approaches.

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to identify the critical competitive priorities and capabilities that enables competitive manufacturing in the high cost environment of Sweden and how these can be improved to increase manufacturing performance. Method – The purpose of this thesis was achieved through two main research methods. First a systematic literature review was conducted in order to condensate the existing literature on competitive priorities and capabilities. Secondly a case study was conducted in order to examine the identified competitive priorities and capabilities in the context of a high cost environment. Findings – Initially, a set of articles were identified and included in the literature review. Through an analysis of the included articles, a framework was created including competitive priorities and competitive capabilities. A comparison between the framework and the empirical data collected at the case company identified a number of priorities and capabilities considered critical for competitive manufacturing in a high cost environment. The literature review revealed a set of improvement actions and methods that could be used to improve the identified critical competitive priorities and capabilities in order to increase manufacturing performance. Implications – The thesis makes a theoretical contribution by condensing the existing literature on competitive priorities and capabilities in a high cost environment, and creates a starting point for future research. Further it makes a practical contribution by providing awareness for practitioners regarding priorities and capabilities, what may be important in the future, and how these could be improved. Limitations – This study identifies how critical priorities and capabilities can be improved, however, it does not specify how they can or should be applied and used. Additionally, the inclusion criteria in the systematic literature review did not include improvement actions and thus other suggestions for improvements may not be included. The case study was limited to one company, making the result difficult to generalize.

Cloud computing is becoming a viable option for Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) and business stakeholders to consider in today’s information technology (IT) environment, characterized by shrinking budgets and dynamic changes in the technology landscape. The objective of this study is to help Federal Government decision makers appropriately decide on the suitability of applications for migration to cloud computing. I draw from four theoretical perspectives: transaction cost theory, resource-based theory, agency theory and dynamic capabilities theory and use a conjoint analysis approach to understand stakeholder attitudes, opinions and behaviors in their decision to migrate applications to cloud computing. Based on a survey of 81 government cloud computing stakeholders, this research examined the relative importance of thirteen factors that organizations consider when migrating applications to cloud computing. Our results suggest that trust in the cloud computing vendor is the most significant factor, followed by the relative cost advantage, sensing capabilities and application complexity. A total of twelve follow-up interviews were conducted to provide explanation of our results. The contributions of the dissertation are twofold: 1) it provides novel insights into the relative importance of factors that influence government organizations’ decision to migrate applications to cloud computing, and 2) it assists senior government decision makers to appropriately weigh and prioritize the factors that are critical in application migration to cloud computing.

Researchers studying the alignment of business resources usually focus on business cases that inherently have a going-concern interaction built on long-term relationships at the firm level (e.g., Barney, 1991) dyadic level (e.g., Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000) or the broader network level (e.g., Dyer, 1996). Resource alignment is usually flexible in terms of the timeline for identifying and aligning resources and resource engagement. While contractual limitations can be applied to resource alignment, resource engagement holds a notion of persistent value adding relationship. However, there are multitudes of contexts where relationships are bounded by the limited life of a project and by the way where resources must be rapidly aligned and managed. Examples exist in sectors as diverse as construction, filmmaking, and oil exploration. The study examined theories and empirical studies of resource alignment ranging from resource-based views (e.g., Wernerfelt, 1984) to more complex network views of social organizational interactions (e.g., Gulati et al., 2000). The majority of these literatures treat the development of business relationships and the acquisition of resources as a phenomenon that occurs over an extended period. Time-bound transactions challenge these theoretical perspectives built around the longevity of inter-organizational relations. Thus, the key strategic management problem this research addresses is how resources and capabilities can be rapidly aligned and managed in a time-bound network to achieve sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) at the network level. The fieldwork was conducted on more than 20 construction projects in the United Arab Emirates. Using secondary source data, I mapped the projects??? networks and interviewed 45 industry experts about the resources and capabilities their firms bring to the network, and how quickly they can be aligned to achieve the objectives of the project. The interviews were conducted over 11 months between 2011 and 2012 and amounted to more than 20 hours of audio and hundreds of notes including network sketches. I also investigated the transfer of resources and capabilities that may help network members to increase their competitive advantage when bidding on future projects. The benefits of long-term relationships are evident in any business; however, firms in the project-based construction industry often cannot reap those benefits. This study built upon theories of network-based resource alignment in the extreme situation of time-bound projects. The two-phase qualitative research approach relied on intensive interviews with key decision makers. Template analysis was used as the primary method of data analysis. This research???s primary finding is that there is no evidence of the concept of sustainable competitive advantage at the network level, while it is evident at the firm level. Other findings confirm that the events of full replication and non-replication of networks after project completion do not exist nor do decision makers favour them. While these findings imply the lack of attention to the benefits of contributing to a network, the more apparent scenario is replication of parts of a network, which is a result of two factors: 1) capabilities developed at firm level, which in return develop resources, and other capabilities, 2) movement of resources across network entities. The results shed light on decision-making techniques for efficient management of resources in time-bound business transactions such as construction and other projects. However, they may also generalize to dynamic business situations such as the entry of a firm into a new market or the entrepreneurial start-up of a new company in which resources must also be quickly aligned.