Strategic Management Policy Commons^™

Scalable Growth In High-Contact, On-Site Service Firms: Ambidextrous Competitive Logics And A Dual-Governance Mechanism Of Replication Quality, Wei Han

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation examines how high-contact, on-site service firms scale up. The central challenge is the stable reproduction of a recognizable service template across dispersed branches under customer heterogeneity, frontline discretion, relationship continuity, and local capacity pressure. Replication quality is defined as the branch-level stability of the service promise, execution rhythm, and exception-handling logic. It is measured directly through retention outcomes and service-failure outcomes, which capture continued acceptance of the service promise and visible breakdowns in service delivery.

The theoretical argument centers on two ambidextrous competitive logics. Local responsiveness requires branches to adapt service timing, provider matching, communication, and recovery work …

The Impact Of Successor Differences In Family Businesses On Firm Performance: An Empirical Analysis Based On China Listed Company Data, Xulong Zhao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Family businesses are an important pillar of global economic development. Currently, Chinese private enterprises are ushering in an unprecedented wave of intergenerational succession. At this critical historical juncture, "who" takes over and how the succession behavior affects firm performance have become core issues of common concern to academia and practice. Traditional principal-agent theory usually posits that introducing professional managers can break the limitations of family governance and improve corporate efficiency. However, Chinese family businesses are deeply rooted in specific institutional environments and cultural soils, where blood-based "relational trust" and socioemotional wealth (SEW) play irreplaceable roles in power transitions. Therefore, how …

Research On The Spatial Diffusion Process And Influencing Factors Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Brands: Evidence From Beijing Tong Ren Tang, Yuehua Shen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Against the backdrop of the dual drivers of the revitalization and development of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the rising demand for health-related consumption, the nationwide expansion of TCM chain brands has become a prominent issue of shared concern for both industry and policy circles. However, existing research largely treats cities as mutually independent units and overlooks the spatial externalities arising from geographic proximity. It also implicitly assumes that the driving factors remain stable over a brand's expansion life cycle. This makes it difficult to capture the dynamic evolution of the logic governing store expansion across different stages. Accordingly, this …

Technological Strategy Paths, Dynamic Capability And Innovation Performance In Complex Product Industries: A Mechanism Study Based On China’S New Energy Vehicle Industry, Fan Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry has developed rapidly, moving from electrification toward an intelligent phase characterized by software-defined vehicles. NEV firms pursue product and technological innovation through diverse strategic paths, including internal research and development, collaborative development, and platform-based development, yet their innovation performance varies. Most extant research focuses on the industry level, offering limited insight into how, at the firm level, different technological paths shape the innovation outcomes through firms’ dynamic capabilities. It still remains unclear whether and how these relationships among paths, capabilities, and innovation outcomes differ across technological domains.

This study adopts a …

From Catching Up To Surpassing—A Multi-Case Study Of Chinese Latecomer Technology Firms, Baohua Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, a number of Chinese latecomer technology firms have grown rapidly and, in some cases, have even moved into leading positions in global competition. As global competition is being reshaped, technologies are evolving more rapidly, and traditional catch-up paths are becoming less viable, how these Chinese latecomer technology firms catch up with leading incumbents has become an important issue in strategic management research. Drawing on the theoretical lens of asymmetrical competition, resource orchestration, and dynamic capabilities, this study adopts an Eisenhardt-style multiple-case design to conduct a longitudinal comparative analysis of six firms—Insta360, Dreame, DJI, Unitree, Transsion, and Royole—and …

Research On The Impact Of Digital Transformation On Esg Performance Of Real Estate Enterprises, Lung Tim Tong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the era characterized by the dual carbon goals driving the green transformation of industries and the exponential growth of the digital economy, the real estate sector is at a critical transformation juncture. From a policy-oriented perspective, building codes and energy consumption quota standards issued by the Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development and other regulatory bodies have rendered it imperative for real estate enterprises to reduce carbon emissions throughout the entire building life cycle. From the market demand side, consumers' preference for green and intelligent living environments has compelled real estate firms to break through traditional development models. The …

A Study On The Capital Market Valuation Effects Of Corporate Ai Adoption: An Empirical Analysis Of Manufacturing Firms In China's A-Share Market, Libin Ma

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation examines whether and how corporate adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) affects capital market valuation in manufacturing firms. As AI is increasingly embedded in R&D design, production organization, supply chain coordination, and operational management, its value implications depend not only on whether firms adopt AI, but also on how AI is deployed within business processes. Existing research has mainly focused on productivity, innovation, labor substitution, and digital transformation, while the enterprise value consequences of differentiated AI application strategies remain insufficiently examined.

Using Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2024 as the sample, this study identifies firm-level AI …

From Suppliers’ Esg Performance To Corporate Bargaining Power With Customers: A Supply Chain Advantage Transmission Perspective, Minghao Du

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the growing awareness of sustainable development, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices has increasingly become a critical source for firms to meet stakeholder demands and gain new competitive advantages. In particular, under the backdrop of rising supply chain risks, stakeholder concerns are no longer confined to the ESG performance of individual firms; rather, they have expanded to encompass the entire supply chain, attaching equal importance to the ESG performance of both focal firms and their supply chain partners. With the continuous tightening of ESG regulatory requirements, customers may move beyond managing the ESG practices of first-tier suppliers to paying …

The Impact Of R&D Team Diversity On Ambidextrous Innovation In Srdi Smes, Cheng Zhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

As a vital organizational form of R&D teams in specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative (SRDI) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), distributed teams have gradually emerged as a dynamic source of innovation for such enterprises. Against the backdrop of the (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) era, markets have imposed higher demands on enterprises' innovative and sustainable development capabilities, exerting substantial impacts on the growth of SRDI SMEs. Although the distributed R&D team model, developed through continuous exploration in=132=132enterprises' innovation practices, has drawn practical and scholarlyattention for its role in shaping ambidextrous innovation in SRDI SMEs, the internal mechanism underlying the relationship …

The Impact Of Brand Authenticity And Innovation On Stakeholder Behaviours, Jacky Xu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study employs a dual-perspective questionnaire survey, collecting data separately from corporate employees and brand consumers, and uses multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses. The findings reveal the following: (1) both brand authenticity and innovation have significant positive effects on employee brand citizenship behaviour and consumer purchase intention; (2) brand commitment plays a negatively moderating role in these relationships, such that when stakeholders’ commitment levels are relatively low, the positive effects of brand authenticity and brand innovation on behaviour are stronger, whereas under conditions of high commitment, these effects are weakened, reflecting a substitution effect between emotional attachment and …

Enhancing Market Acceptance Of Sports Rehabilitation Services: A Perspective Of Public Health Literacy And Information Acquisition, Na Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This article takes public health literacy as its point of departure, constructs a theoretical model of “Health Literacy–Health Information Acquisition–Market Acceptance”, and introduces rehabilitation experience and service accessibility as moderating variables, in order to systematically examine the formation pathways and underlying mechanisms of market acceptance in the sports rehabilitation service sector.

This study adopts a combination of questionnaire survey and empirical analysis, collecting data from public samples across multiple regions and conducting statistical tests. The findings indicate that, Firstly, public health literacy has a statistically significant positive influence on the market acceptance of sports rehabilitation services. As the level of …

The Impact Of De-Familization Of Governance Structures On Corporate Performance During The Intergenerational Succession Of Family Businesses, Jing Qiao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Intergenerational succession poses a vital challenge for family firms, with only 10% of global family businesses surviving to the third generation. Chinese family firms, growing alongside reform and opening-up, now face a critical succession period as founders average over 60 years old.

Based on 1932 A-share listed family firms from 2007 to 2024, this study theoretically and empirically examines how intergenerational succession affects corporate performance, investigates the mediating role of governance de-familization (management, ownership, control rights), and tests the moderating effect of intergenerational differences.

First, succession significantly harms financial and market performance: ROE falls by 1.330% and Tobin’s Q drops …

Compliance Supervision And Firm Performance: An Empirical Study On Digital Transformation Of The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry, Jun Ma

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The biopharmaceutical industry, characterized by stringent global regulatory oversight, faces a pivotal theoretical tension regarding the nexus between regulatory compliance and corporate performance. The traditional perspectives often frame compliance as an “operational burden”, while the emerging viewpoints posit it as a “strategic asset”. Grounded in an integrated framework of the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capability (DC), this study investigates the moderating role of digital transformation in the relationship between Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliance and corporate performance.

Employing a mixed-method design, this paper conducted two complementary studies. Study 1 adopted a grounded theory based on interviews with nine industry …

The Impact Of Employee Equity Incentives On Enterprise Innovation Efficiency: From The Perspective Of Granting Restricted Stocks To Employees, Zongjie Ji

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Against the dual backdrop of the in-depth implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy and the continuous deepening of SOE reforms, restricted equity has emerged a mainstream instrument for medium- and long-term employee incentives in Chinese SOEs. However, the underlying mechanisms, effect characteristics, and boundary conditions through which employee restricted equity incentives influence innovation efficiency in SOEs remain to be systematically examined. Drawing on panel data of 4,880 firm-year observation from Chinese A-share SOMEs over the period of 2015-2024, this study develops a direct effect model of “Equity Incentives-Innovation Efficiency” from the perspective of employee restricted equity grants. It further introduces …

Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Digital Transformation On The International Competitiveness Of The Srdi Smes In China, Bo Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the continuous advancement of digital technologies, the digital economy is increasingly becoming the dominant force in the global economic landscape. Against this backdrop, the digital transformation of China's specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative (SRDI) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has transcended beyond mere technological upgrades and evolved into a crucial strategy for these enterprises to build core competitiveness. Despite SRDI SMEs' strong willingness to pursue digital transformation, research is still lacking on how digital transformation efforts translate into international competitiveness Additionally, existing studies on the degree of digitalization have focused on large enterprises or general SMEs, leaving an academic …

Organizational Characteristics And Business Transformation: An Investigation On Corporate Transformation In The Construction Industry, Wei Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Draw on a structural decline in demand triggered by selective real estate industrial policies, this study explores how construction companies drive business transformation through organizational characteristics in environmental uncertainties. Extant research has largely focused on the independent impact of single organizational factors or capabilities on transformation, lacking a systematic exploration of the interactions between organizational characteristics and the external environment. Take a typical construction group as an example, this study adopts a mixed-methods approach, through interviews and questionnaires, to systematically examine the impact of organizational characteristics on business transformation. The key findings are: in environmental uncertainties, an organic organizational structure …

Research On Characteristics Of The Subsidiary, Business Environment, And Group Control, Xiaoning Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

As a crucial pillar in the development of China’s national economy, corporate groups play an irreplaceable role in driving economic growth and promoting industrial upgrading. However, in the management practice of subsidiaries, they have long faced the control dilemma of "tight control leads to stagnation, while excessive decentralization leads to chaos." This study focuses on the fit between subsidiary characteristics, the business environment, and the degree of group control as its core research issue. It aims to uncover the underlying logic of group control in different contexts, providing scientific theoretical support and practical guidance for corporate groups in the new …

How Product Innovation And Process Innovation Impact Product Performance, Wei Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In an increasingly competitive global market characterized by accelerating technological iteration and rapidly evolving consumer demands, innovation has become a critical means for firms to adapt to dynamic changes and achieve competitive advantage. Grounded in dynamic capabilities theory and the resource-based view, this study empirically investigates the mechanisms through which product innovation and process innovation affect product performance, drawing on survey data from 215 products. It further examines the mediating role of product flexibility and the moderating effect of product positioning. The results indicate that both product innovation and process innovation have a significant positive impact on product performance. Product …

The Impact Of Innovation Belief On Strategic Product R&D, Yan Zhou

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In highly uncertain innovation scenarios characterized by long R&D cycles and high risks, how to continuously drive enterprises to develop market-competitive blockbuster products has become a critical issue of shared concern in both practice and academia. Existing research has mostly explained differences in blockbuster product R&D from perspectives such as resource allocation, organizational structure, or institutional incentives, while paying insufficient attention to cognitive and belief factors at the individual level. Based on this, this paper introduces the psychological and cognitive variable of "innovative belief" to systematically examine its impact mechanism on blockbuster product R&D capability.

Taking the R&D team of …

Market Culture And Innovation Acceptance In Fire Safety Products: The Moderating Role Of Perceived Market Regulation, Xu Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Against the backdrop of continuously rising global fire safety standards and ongoing technological iteration in fire protection products, whether innovative fire protection products can be effectively accepted by the market has become a critical issue influencing the returns on firms’ innovation investments and the high-quality development of the industry. Existing studies have predominantly explored innovation diffusion mechanisms from the perspectives of technological attributes or organizational factors, while paying relatively limited attention to market culture as a contextual factor, as well as to the differentiated role that government regulation may play in this process. Based on this, this study takes institutional …

Sports And Corporate Innovation, Bing Qin

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Driven by the digital economy and intensifying global competition, corporate innovation has become a core driver of sustainable growth. Topmanagement members are key strategic decision-makers, and their individual characteristics critically influence the formulation and implementation of innovation strategies. While existing studies have examined the impact of topmanagement’s cognitive and psychological traits on innovation performance, significant gaps remain in understanding how their routine behavioral preferences—particularly running, a globally prevalent exercise—affect innovation performance through psychological mechanisms. The systematic relationship between running preferences, top management’s psychological traits, and organizational innovation outcomes remains underexplored.

Against this backdrop, the study investigates the mechanismthroughwhich top management’s …

The Impact Of Executives’ Social Networks And Digital Capabilities On Firm Performance In Dynamic Environments, Lijun Men

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the acceleration of digital transformation, improving firm performance in complex and dynamic market environments has become a central challenge for companies. This study examines the effects of executives’ social networks and firms’ digital capabilities on firm performance. Further, it investigates the moderating roles of digital capabilities and environmental dynamism in these relationships. Using panel data for Chinese listed firms from 2005 to 2024, we conduct empirical analyses with fixed-effects models. The results indicate that executives’ political, business, and academic networks all contribute positively to firm performance, underscoring the importance of executives’ social networks in resource acquisition, information flows, and …

A Study On The Influence Of Entity Internet Hospital Platforms And Health Literacy Facilitation On Postoperative Patients’ Platform Usage, Hong Ye

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Entity Internet Hospital (EIH) is emerging online medical service platforms in China. Currently, while EIHs in China are developing rapidly, their usage rates remain low. However, postoperative patients have substantial follow-up consultation needs. Consequently, incentivizing postoperative patients to use EIH from the demand side is a highly challenging proposition in the current era. Grounded in Technology Acceptance Model and Health Belief Model, this study examined the impacts of platform and health literacy facilitation on platform usage (including intention and frequency) among 631 postoperative patients with cardiovascular disease from four medical institutions in Wuhan, and explored the moderating role of literacy …

Research On The Impact Mechanism Of The Development Level Of Smart Agriculture On Farmers' Income, Baoping Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Agriculture is a fundamental and strategic industry essential to national food security and farmers’ well-being. Faced with global population growth, climate change, and resource constraints, the traditional high-input agricultural model is unsustainable. Smart agriculture, empowered by IoT, big data, and AI, has become critical for agricultural transformation and sustainable development. However, existing research overemphasizes technical efficiency and neglects how smart agriculture systematically affects farmers’ income, especially its transmission mechanism and regional heterogeneity.

Against China’s rural revitalization and digital village strategy, this study investigates how smart agriculture development influences farmers’ income, using a hybrid framework of macro empirics and micro analysis. …

Corporate Strategic Changes In Response To Negative Performance Gaps: The Role Of Listing Board In China, Lei Yu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates how Chinese listed companies respond strategically to negative performance gaps under different institutional environments defined by the Main Board and ChiNext Board of China’s capital market. Drawing on Performance Feedback Theory and New Institutional Theory, it explores whether and how listing board heterogeneity moderates the relation between performance shortfalls and corporate strategic transformation, and further examines the boundary effects of internal governance factors including ownership type, CEO power, and resource slack.

Using panel data of A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019 obtained from the CSMAR database, this study employs multiple regression analysis and interaction modeling to …

Research On Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage Of Mutual Fund Management Companies In The Era Of Pan-Asset Management, Li Ren

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the context of China’s “big asset management” era, public mutual fund management companies face intensifying competition and an urgent need to build sustainable core competitiveness. Existing research has not clearly identified their key resources or explained how these resources interact with strategic management capabilities to generate competitive advantage. Drawing on the resource-based view and strategic management theory, this study develops a conceptual framework of core competitiveness for public mutual fund management companies. It proposes a three-dimensional resource classification system—valuable, rare, and inimitable resources—tailored to the mutual fund industry and incorporates strategic management capability as a mediating mechanism through which …

Research On The Impact Of Strategic Orientation, Employees’ Environmental Identity, And Use Of Artificial Intelligence On Corporate Green Innovation, Hao Yang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Based on social cognitive theory and integrating the perspective of technology enablement, this study constructs a moderated mediation model to systematically explore how environmental policy orientation and environmental market orientation influence corporate green innovation through environmental identity, and to examine the boundary role of AI application intensity. Through empirical analysis of 313 teams and 939 valid questionnaires, the following conclusions are drawn: First, both environmental policy orientation and environmental market orientation independently and significantly promote green innovation. Second, environmental identity plays a partial mediating role between the two orientations and green innovation, indicating that strategies need to be internalized as …

Design-Led Leadership: A Mixed Methods Study On Understanding How Design Thinking Capabilities Impact Leadership Effectiveness, Tareq Waleed Muhmood

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

“Widespread design thinking among organisation leaders is desirable for the creation of a humanly and sustainable future” (R. J. Boland et al., 2008a)

This study investigates the impact of design thinking capabilities on leadership effectiveness through a mixed-methods research design.

While design thinking is widely used in product and service innovation, its application as a leadership development framework remains underexplored.   To address this gap, the study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods, including pre- and post-intervention survey of leaders, their supervisors, and subordinates within an education business in Vietnam (EBV), as well as semi-structured interviews with senior leaders at a …

Acquisition Strategy For Innovation Under Competence-Destroying Change: Empirical Study—Pharmaceutical Company's Biotechnology Company Acquisition, Joo Tae Sung

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In response to declining R&D productivity and successive patent cliffs, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly acquiring biotechnology firms to sustain innovation. These acquisitions often occur under conditions of competence-destroying change, where the acquirer's chemistry-based knowledge base does not overlap with the biotechnology expertise of the target, challenging traditional theories that emphasize absorptive capacity and knowledge similarity.
This study introduces therapeutic knowledge, defined as the acquirer’s expertise in specific disease areas, as a distinct and critical dimension that interacts with both chemistry-based and biotechnology-based knowledge. Using a dataset of 212 observations across therapeutic areas from 80 acquisitions, the analysis uncovers an inverted …

Optimizing Fulfillment Operations For Online Retailing, Yujie Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis investigates order fulfillment operations for online retailing. Order fulfillment encompasses the entire process of receiving, processing, and delivering customer orders. The rapid growth of e-commerce has heightened the demand for efficient fulfillment operations. This thesis explores strategies for optimizing order fulfillment in three scenarios. The first scenario studies cellular bucket brigade, a method for coordinating workers in an assembly line or order-picking environment to improve workflow efficiency. The second scenario investigates zone picking, serial bucket brigades and cellular bucket brigades with hand-off times. The third scenario focuses on autonomous robotic systems within package sortation centers.

Chapter 2 investigates …