This study examined effect of partnering, infrastructure gaps and currency weakness on the implementation cost of infrastructure-building nonmarket strategy. Limited knowledge on cost of nonmarket strategy existed, leading to absence of meaningful understanding of the business competitive and performance benefits of its implementation. The study was conducted in the mining sector of the South African emerging market, characterized by unavailable or underdeveloped business aiding infrastructure and ageing physical infrastructure. Nonmarket strategy has performance and competitiveness benefits from its implementation as reported in previous studies. Other studies examined its integration with market strategy, taxonomies, antecedents, and internationalization. No studies had examined the implementation cost of nonmarket strategy. To address the gap, hypotheses were developed to answer the research question: what are the effects of strategy option, institutional & economic factors on the cost of infrastructure-building nonmarket strategy implementation? A quantitative method embedded in a cross-sectional survey design using a snowball non-probability sampling technique was used to collect data from 239 participants. Analysis using factor analysis and structural equation modelling showed a positive relationship between a partnering strategy option and cost of implementing infrastructure-building nonmarket strategy likely driven by the absence of: contractual agreements; political ties and networks; project management; regulatory requirement understanding; and capacity building among partners. The relationship with institutional & economic factors was not significant likely driven by the fact that these factors are embedded in the business environment and participants perceived no impact. This study has made significant progress toward the understanding of the cost of implementing nonmarket strategy, as well as providing meaningful understanding of its perceived organizational performance and competitiveness benefits. The study illuminates a surprising observation, where the natural expectation is that partnerships would lower cost of implementing an infrastructure-building nonmarket strategy. Contrary to this expectation the study shows that a partnering relationship increases cost suggesting antecedents that drive the direction of the relationship. Future research can focus on a single set of factors among strategy options, institutional factors, economic factors, as well as examine the antecedents on the relationship with cost of implementing nonmarket strategy. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / PhD / Unrestricted

Firm behavior and performance has become increasingly susceptible to the influence of secondary stakeholders—namely community activists, advocacy groups, religious organizations, and other non-governmental organizations that often represent a broader social movement. Despite recent suggestions that secondary stakeholder demands trigger an important two-sided interactive process between secondary stakeholders and their targeted firms, little theoretical or empirical attention has been placed on firm-sided factors that influence the dynamics and outcomes of these interactions, especially the role and influence of the firm’s top managers during these interactions. In this three-essay dissertation, I theorize about and examine the influential role that the firm’s top managers expectedly occupy within the interactions that occur between secondary stakeholders and the firms that are the targets of their demands. My dissertation contributes to advancing strategic management and organization research by (1) examining influential managerial attributes that influence their firm’s responsiveness toward secondary stakeholder activism, and (2) examining certain important consequences of managerial responses for secondary stakeholder behavior and the targeted firm.

By pursuing private and collective political action in the nonmarket environment, businesses attempt to influence public policy that shapes their operating environment. This dissertation considers how a firm’s market-based experience and its accumulation of political resources affect how the firm combines private and collective political tactics. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) I investigate how a firm’s alliance experience, political resources and prior collective political experience influence the autonomy of its Corporate Political Activity (CPA). I use fixed effects GLS regression with clustered standard errors to test my model on a panel of 21,329 firm/year observations of 2,779 U.S. property casualty insurance companies over the ten-year period between 2005 and 2014. I find support for the influence of state-level political resources, equity alliances, and the interaction of prior collective CPA experience with regulatory complexity and learning capacity on autonomy. My findings contribute to the growing literature connecting market and non-market strategies by linking collaboration in the political arena to the related market activity of alliance experience. Findings also contribute to our understanding of how participation in a collective provides opportunities for learning, and reveals that taking advantage of this opportunity depends on a firm’s learning capacity and the complexity of its regulatory environment. These findings add insight to the literatures on CPA, inter-organizational learning, collective action and trade associations.

Although emerging economies have received increased attention by both firms and academia in recent decades, there is still more that can be done. Calls have been made by both academic authors and journals to conduct research within institutionally voided environments, a call that was answered by this study. Specifically, this study answers calls related to: examining institutional strategies; examining the relationship between nonmarket and market exchanges. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of how the nonmarket-market relationship affects firm strategies and behavior in Cambodia, an especially voided country due to their turbulent recent history. A second layer of the purpose was to compare firms and explore their similarities and differences to understand the isomorphic pressures of Cambodia. A qualitative case study approach to the study was undertaken to achieve the study’s purpose. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with various managers who have the ability to make strategic decisions in their respective firms. All the interviewees were from the private sector but were scattered throughout different industries and were asked about their experiences and perception of the Cambodian business environment, mainly focusing on the institutional context. The data collected were then structured based on three main themes and corresponding subthemes. This thematic division was the basis for the analysis of the study as well as the conclusion. Based on the analysis of the data, it can be concluded that the nonmarket is indeed superordinate to the market environment in Cambodia. From a macro perspective, the institutional voids affect all firms in Cambodia, and the firms utilize similar variations of four institutional strategies: internalization, substitution, buffering, and bridging. Because the nonmarket environment in Cambodia is so strong, this results in both voids in the market environment and firms becoming more isomorphic. These four strategies were not the only ones identified, other strategies, namely outsourcing and institutional borrowing, were noted as well because of the institutional voids. Theoretically, this study contributes to revising and improving Institutional Theory and reinforcing both Institutional Theory and the Resource-Based View. Social contributions relate to assisting policymakers in Cambodia to understanding their most problematic institutions and developing or improving those institutions. Practical contributions are aimed at practitioners seeking to or doing business in Cambodia, assisting them in understanding the institutional context of Cambodia and knowing how to navigate within its boundaries. This practical contribution can also be considered a social contribution, as more businesses enter Cambodia and as firms grow, the combination of firm entrance and growth creates more jobs and stimulates the economy.

Public value has proven itself as an insightful concept through which to better understand, assess, and guide the contributions of public organizations to the common good. Corresponding to the increasing awareness that private organizations, too, bear considerable responsibility for society, the concept of public value has recently also been applied in the private sector. Following two additional current directions of public value research, i.e., shifting from a static assessment of public value to more process-oriented research, and providing incremental empirical support for previous conceptual research, this dissertation examines public value creation as a nonmarket strategy for the private sector. Therein, a framework text contextualizes three empirical papers within the nonmarket strategy framework of Mellahi et al. (2016) and its adaptation by Frynas and Yamahaki (2016). Drawing from Meynhardt's (2009, 2015) public value conceptualization, initial empirical evidence is provided to shine a light on why and how private organizations may strategically create public value. Addressing Moore's (1995) guiding questions for public value creation strategies and highlighting both the limitations of this work and the avenues for future research that arise from them, the present dissertation offers an orientation for future research on public value creation in the private sector.

Submitted by Solange Gualberto da Mata Machado (solange@amcham.com.br) on 2011-12-01T14:58:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Pirataria e Estrategia final.pdf: 4390913 bytes, checksum: ab554846db1bf424095d0d63fb460706 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Gisele Isaura Hannickel (gisele.hannickel@fgv.br) on 2011-12-01T18:10:51Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Pirataria e Estrategia final.pdf: 4390913 bytes, checksum: ab554846db1bf424095d0d63fb460706 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-12-02T13:14:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Pirataria e Estrategia final.pdf: 4390913 bytes, checksum: ab554846db1bf424095d0d63fb460706 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-11-04 / Multinational companies that make investments in emerging countries where the institutions responsible (Government and Society) cannot suppress piracy suffer a loss of market and find themselves compelled to develop new strategies to create value and to improve performance in this adverse market. To study this phenomenon were studied three pharmaceutical companies, drug makers of erectile dysfunction who suffer the impact of piracy. Baron (1995) mentions that in order to succeed companies need to work in an integrated manner, combining market strategies with non-market strategies. In all three cases studied, the evidences showed that there is integration between the two types of strategies, but the integration is only consolidated at the international level. Locally companies are responsible for implementing global strategies. According to Hillman and Hitt (1999), on the formulation of the non-market strategies, companies can configure their competencies developing them internally or hiring them externally. In the case of piracy, the investigation efforts are outsourced to specialized companies, and there is therefore, no in-house skills developed. Hillman and Hitt (1999) define the institutional approach of the non-market strategies as transactional and relational. And, also propose that firms with greater financial resources and / or intangible assets such as knowledge of political influence are more likely to use individual actions regardless of the approach chosen. In Brazil, the evidences of the cases studied showed that the companies use collective actions to coordinate discussions with the government regardless of the available resources. And they use either the transactional approach of providing information to the government institutions, whenever there is an apprehension, or the relational approach to maintain an active political relationship, confirming Hillman and Hitt (1999). / As empresas multinacionais que fazem investimentos em países emergentes onde as instituições responsáveis (Governo e Sociedade) não conseguem reprimir a pirataria sofrem com a perda de mercado e se vêem compelidas a desenvolver novas estratégias para gerar valor e aumentar a sua performance neste mercado adverso. Para estudar o impacto da pirataria na gestão estratégica das empresas multinacionais, foram pesquisadas três empresas do setor farmacêutico, fabricantes de medicamentos de disfunção erétil que sofrem com a ilegalidade. Baron (1995) menciona que para se obter sucesso, as empresas precisam trabalhar de forma integrada, unindo as estratégias de mercado com as estratégias de não-mercado. Nos três casos estudados, as evidências mostraram que existe a integração entre os dois tipos de estratégias – mercado e não-mercado – porém, ela só se consolida no âmbito internacional. Localmente as empresas são responsáveis pela implementação das estratégias globais de nãomercado. Na formulação das estratégias de não-mercado, segundo Hillman e Hitt (1999), as empresas podem configurar as suas competências desenvolvendo-as internamente ou contratando-as externamente. No caso da pirataria, as evidências mostraram que as ações de investigação são terceirizadas para as empresas especializadas, não havendo, portanto, competências desenvolvidas internamente. Hillman e Hitt (1999) denominam o relacionamento institucional das estratégias de não-mercado em transacional e relacional. Os autores também constatam que as firmas com maiores recursos financeiros e/ou recursos intangíveis, tais como conhecimento de influência política, têm maior probabilidade de usar a participação individual independente da abordagem escolhida. No Brasil, as evidências mostraram que as empresas pesquisadas usam as ações coletivas coordenadas para dialogar com o Governo independente dos recursos disponíveis. E, utilizam a estratégia de prover informação para as Instituições Governamentais. Através da abordagem transacional, no caso de apreensão, ou a abordagem relacional para manter um relacionamento político ativo, confirmando Hillman e Hitt (1999).