Strategic Management Policy Commons^™

Role Of Technological Capability On Firm Performance Among Palm Oil Mills In Malaysia, Parvand Sima

Student Works (2020-2029)

In spite of its strong economic performance since the 1970s, oil palm mills in Malaysia has faced low technological upgrading. Although the import of capital goods has acted as an effective channel for technology transfer (TT), the lack of strong firm-level in-house upgrading and the presence of barriers has affected mill efficiency levels. Hence, this thesis seeks to examine how firm-level technological capability development (TC) has impacted on firm performance. A quantitative research design using simple random sampling procedure was deployed to gather responses from 54 palm oil mills in Malaysia. The multiple regression analyses revealed that innovation strategy, TT, …

A Strategic Audit Of Tesla, John J. Stobbe Jr.

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines in depth one of the most innovative companies in recent years: Tesla. Redefining what it means to be an electric car, Tesla has produced impressive cars year after year. However, they’ve run into tremendous production issues and have still yet to make any significant profits. This strategic audit analyzes Tesla’s current place in the market and considers many perspectives to come to a proposed recommendation. This recommendation is to secure its market share and resolve production issues. This could be accomplished through sticking to only a few Tesla car models, then iterating year after year, and then …

Fight, Flight, And Freeze: Human Responses In A Business Strategy Environment, Michael Nixon

Student Works

Fight, flight, and freeze responses are a natural part of how we operate as humans. These responses permeate our lives and affect our decisions in major ways. This thesis first employs a case study to help the reader understand natural reaction processes, then analyzes case studies where businesses applied strategies that closely resembled these reaction processes. I then propose a framework to mimic physiological reaction processes to help companies arrive at the optimal solution.

Public Governance, Corporate Governance, And Firm Innovation: An Examination Of State-Owned Enterprises, Nan Jia, Kenneth G. Huang, Cyndi Man Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how corporate and public governance shape an important type moral hazard in innovation which is that agents pursuing the quantity of innovation at the expense of the novelty. We theorize that both better corporate governance tools that regulate agents (including better alignment of agents’ private incentives and stronger monitoring), and higher-quality public governance that regulates the principals of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reduce this moral hazard. Furthermore, we argue that higher-quality political governance enhances the functioning of better corporate governance tools in further reducing this moral hazard in innovation, thus creating interdependence. We test our theory in the context …

Instead Of Predicting The Future, We Should Get On With Creating The Future, Shweta Midgil, Richard Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

It is important to note that there is a lot of hype about “Digital Disruption” these days. We see too many organizations trying to take on the topic of “Digital” without really focusing their efforts on something that is meaningful to the people in the organization. Leaders going around talking about digital disruption or digital transformation does not serve any purpose – only creates anxiety and uncertainty. In other words, leaders would be better served to break down the topic into meaningful topics that are linked to areas of the business.

Book Review: Zero To One, By Peter Thiel, Ammon Kou

Marriott Student Review

This is a book review of Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

The Role Of Space And Time In Balancing Conflicting Pressures Through Routine Dynamics, Kenneth T. Goh, Claus Rerup

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

To examine how spaces and the temporal context shape routine actions that balance conflicting pressures for efficiency and flexibility, we conducted an ethnography of the product development process, known as the scrum routine, in a video game development studio. We trace the temporal patterning of scrum meetings to reveal the mutual constitution of spaces and the temporal context. Examining how the co-constitution of space and time shapes actions and artifact use in the scrum routine reveals that balancing occurs through coalescing, reconstituting, standardizing, and reorganizing actions. From these findings, we develop a conceptual model of how pressures for efficiency and …

Innovation, Culture And The Path To Postmodernism: Finland Vs. Denmark, Jayme Harlander

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of postmodernism as it applies to the innovative process as carried out in the 21st century. In doing so, this study compares and contrasts two countries within a region of the world with differing innovative capacities and then link these differences to their different engagements with the forces that characterize what scholars have terms “postmodernism”. From this study we find that countries that are more closely engaged with these postmodernist forces thrive as 21st century innovators; those that are less engaged –i.e., have trouble transitioning from the old “modernist” ethos—falter …

The Capacity To Innovate: A Meta Analysis Of Absorptive Capacity, Tengjian Zou, Gokhan Ertug, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For nearly 30 years, ACAP has been the bedrock of theories of innovation. A meta-analysis is timely to glean insights from the rich empirical evidence to date and guide future work on the topic. Our meta-analysis of 241 studies reveals that ACAP is a strong predictor of innovation and knowledge transfer, and that its effects on financial performance are fully mediated by these two outcomes. As different from most theoretical discourse, we also find that the firm size-ACAP relationship is positive for small firms but negative for larger firms and that the firm age-ACAP relationship is negative for mature firms …

Team Of Rivals: Co-Opetition For Technology Start-Ups, Snehal Shah, Ashish Kumar Jha

Asian Management Insights

A business environment characterised by cloud computing, driverless cars and artificial intelligence has prompted a fundamental shift in the way we think of existing business models. Market sizes have transcended geographic boundaries and New Age firms typically target much larger populations than new firms did a decade ago. Today, meaningful value is derived when a company is an active participant in shaping the environment to one’s own strategic advantage.

Configuring Innovative Societies: The Crossvergent Role Of Cultural And Institutional Varieties, Di Fan, Yi Li, Liang Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The study aims to explore why some societies are more innovative than others in high-technology sectors. Following a crossvergence perspective, we generate nine causal conditions by accommodating both cultural and institutional varieties: uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism and power distance as culture indicators, and union density, skill development, market capitalization to credit, prevalence of cluster and state dominance as institutional indicators. Applying the configurational approach, we conducted fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. We confirm the equal importance of both cultural and institutional mechanisms as contributors to national innovativeness, and identify equifinal …

Review Of “Dreammakers: Innovating For The Greater Good” By Michele Hunt, Dreammakers (Dreammakers.Org), Sang M. Lee

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

This is an inspiring book about DreamMakers, those individuals and organizations that have the audacity to rethink, redesign, and co-create a new world view of doing well by doing good. These dream makers aspire to reset the workings of the world to alleviate major ills and problems that societies face today. To understand and appreciate this book fully, we need to know about the author.

Michele Hunt is an extraordinarily successful lady with colorful professional background. Upon graduation from college (BA in Sociology from Eastern Michigan University and MA in Sociology from University of Detroit), she worked for 9 years …

Analytics, Innovation, And Organizational Adaptation, Gerard George, Yimin Lin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the advent of big data, organizations are integrating powerful computing tools into their organizational processes to drive efficiencies and improve service delivery. Yet, at the heart of this conversation lies the role of analytics and big data in innovation within and across organizations. In this article, we provide a stylistic model of the role of analytics in innovation and call for further research on the underlying processes, contingencies, and outcomes.

Appropriability And The Retrieval Of Knowledge After Spillovers, Tufool Alnuaimi, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Firms create and capture value through innovation. In technology-driven firms, there has been an explicit emphasis on appropriability through imitation deterrence and cumulative inventions that build on prior firm innovation. We introduce systematic empirical evidence for a third mechanism of appropriability namely, knowledge retrieval, which is defined as the re-absorption of previously spilled knowledge. We extend previous studies which consider technological complexity and organizational coupling as predictors of appropriability by examining their impact on knowledge retrieval. We find that technological complexity has a curvilinear relationship with retrieval while organizational coupling has a negative relationship. We discuss the implications of these …

New Blood As An Elixir Of Youth: Effects Of Human Capital Tenure On The Explorative Capability Of Aging Firms, F. Ted Tschang, Gokhan Ertug

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The relationship between firm age and innovation has been an enduring topic of interest. We contribute to this research by studying how the effect of firm age on the quality of explorative and exploitative innovations is affected by the firm-specific and industry tenure of the talent resources (employees) that the firm utilizes. We start with the baseline predictions that firm age is related to the development of better exploitative innovations and worse explorative innovations. However, the tenure of employees intervenes in these relationships, by way of bringing in new knowledge, mental models, and beliefs. We predict that longer firm-specific and …

Board Diversity, Firm Risk, And Corporate Policies, Gennaro Bernile, Vineet Bhagwat, Scott Yonker

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the effects of diversity in the board of directors on corporate policies and risk. Using a multi-dimensional measure, we find that greater board diversity leads to lower volatility and better performance. The lower risk levels are largely due to diverse boards adopting more persistent and less risky financial policies. However, consistent with diversity fostering more efficient (real) risk-taking, firms with greater board diversity also invest persistently more in R&D and have more efficient innovation processes. Instrumental variable tests that exploit exogenous variation in firm access to the supply of diverse nonlocal directors indicate that these relations are causal.

Beyond Beautiful*- Why Citizens Are Comparatively Happier, More Prosperous, More Peaceful, More Democratically Engaged And Less Selfish Living In Smaller States, Anthony Paul Buckley

Other

Half of all sovereign states in the world have a population of less than 6.2m (World Bank, 2014). The mainstream literature in most academic disciplines has chosen, by accident or design, to neglect the unique determinants of small state growth and development (Armstrong & Read, 2003; Read, 2014). These are extraordinary omissions when the collective evidence on the performance of smaller states on a wide range of economic, political, cultural and social indices is considered. Apart from the disproportionate representation that small states enjoy in the World Banks Upper-Middle and High Income categories, many small states also feature in the …

Business Framing For Analytics, Beverly Wright

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Both the academic and business practitioner communities are faced with the challenges of discovery, innovation, and constant learning of their field, particularly within the marketing discipline, where content, processes, and even structure are dynamic in nature, with constantly evolving interests and focus. A solid research agenda with excellent analytics to address pertinent business questions is crucial for successfully expanding our understanding of the marketing function.

7 Tips To Grow Your Rural Business With Purpose And Meaning, Connie I. Reimers-Hild, Alyssa Dye

Community Vitality Initiative

No one can predict the future; however, rural entrepreneurs and business owners can use a future-focused leadership approach, which includes examining megatrends, to shape the future of their businesses. Megatrends are global shifts that influence society, the economy and the environment. The purpose of this article is to help rural entrepreneurs discover ways to grow their businesses with Living with Purpose and Meaning Megatrend.

Become A Future-Focused Leader: Use Three Megatrends To Grow Your Rural Business, Connie Reimers-Hild, Alyssa Dye

Community Vitality Initiative

No one can predict the future; however, rural entrepreneurs and business owners can use a future-focused leadership approach, which includes examining megatrends, to shape the future of their businesses. Megatrends are global shifts that influence society, the economy and the environment. This article discusses three megatrends shaping the future of rural businesses:

1) The Rise of the #GigEconomy

2) Living with Purpose and Meaning

3) The Decentralized Marketplace

The article also provides coaching tips for rural entrepreneurs on how to use megatrends to grow their businesses.

While many companies are struggling to keep up with the rapid rate of change, …

University Of The Future Colombia-Purdue Workshop Report, Suresh V. Garimella, David B. Janes, Liliana Gómez Díaz

PPRI Digital Library

The University of the Future Workshop, a joint Colombia-Purdue event, was held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, October 28-29, 2014. Participants included rectors and board members from six top universities in Colombia, along with executive directors of NGOs, government representatives from the U.S. and Colombia, and Purdue faculty and administrators. The workshop was focused on a dialog among participants on key programs and focuses that will allow universities to be responsive to the 21st century needs of the Americas.

This report is a summary of the workshop and is based on the contributions of all the participants. Key …

Innovation And Leadership: When Does Cmo Leadership Improve Performance From Innovation?, Adam J. Bock, Andreas B. Eisengenrich, Dmitry Sharapov, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Ensuring that organizational innovation generates value increasingly requires effective marketing management. Prior studies, however, report conflicting effects of chief marketing officer (CMO) leadership on how well the firm exploits innovation. These inconsistencies may be associated with firm-level innovation effort, customer focus, and industry type. We analyze archival data from 587 interviews with global CEOs to explain the effect of CMO leadership on outcomes of organizational innovation. CMO leadership of the firm's primary innovation mode is positively associated with product-market innovation effort but not marginal revenue from innovation. CMO leadership also moderates the relationship between customer focus and innovation revenue. Predictive …

Quality Management And Innovation: New Insights On A Structural Contingency Framework, Dara Schniederjans, Marc Schniederjans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

With increasing market competition, organizations are striving for greater innovation in products and services. Quality management has the potential to invigorate an organization’s product, process and administrative innovation when strategically aligned with internal contingencies. This paper seeks to address the relationship between social and technical quality management with innovation. Moreover, this paper empirically assesses contingency factors including organization size, task and managerial ethics which play roles in moderating the relationship between quality management and innovation. Based on an empirical study we find social quality management practices, not technical quality management practices, are positively associated with innovation. We also find a …

The Transient Collaboration Model: Theory Building, Structural Formation, And Operationalization, Adrian C. Tan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis seeks to describe the Transient Collaboration Model as a business model, its underlying theoretical principles, its empirical evidence, and its types of possible collaboration structures. The research seeks to determine how companies may build sustained competitive advantages through the structural design of their collaboration associations as a strategic option. Companies' ability to retain long-term competitive advantages is limited in more unpredictable environments. Companies could not afford to internally build and hold all the possible varieties and quantities of resources and capabilities to build future competitive advantages. Collaboration can provide companies with access to multiple partners with diverse resources …

Cui Bono? The Selective Revealing Of Knowledge And Its Implications For Innovative Activity, Oliver Alexy, Gerard George, Ammon J. Salter

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Current theories of how organizations harness knowledge for innovative activity cannot convincingly explain emergent practices whereby firms selectively reveal knowledge to their advantage. We conceive of selective revealing as a strategic mechanism to reshape the collaborative behavior of other actors in a firm's innovation ecosystem. We propose that selective revealing may provide an effective alternative to known collaboration mechanisms, particularly under conditions of high partner uncertainty, high coordination costs, and unwilling potential collaborators. We specify conditions when firms are more likely to reveal knowledge and highlight some boundary conditions for competitor reciprocity. We elaborate on strategies that allow firms to …

Communicating Creativity: A Workshop And Communication Tools For Teaching And Consulting In Creativity, Stephen J. Hammond

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project developed tools to support a consulting practice integrating the author’s interests in creative process, design and organizational strategy. The focus is on educating students and clients about creativity, creative thinking, design and innovation. Design thinking concepts of user feedback and rapid prototyping were used during the project. The resulting products are materials for a multi-day graduate level workshop for design students, a creativity website including blogging capability and a four minute educational video aimed at helping establish an Aerospace Technology Center in Northern Illinois.

Team Innovation Processes: An Examination Of Activity Cycles In Creative Project Teams, Kenneth T. Goh, Paul S. Goodman, Laurie R. Weingart

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates cycles of planning, enacting, and reviewing activities over time in teams engaged in creative projects. Drawing on longitudinal case studies of two interactive media development teams, two distinct cycles of planning, enacting, and reviewing activities are identified: experimentation cycles and validation cycles. Experimentation cycles are discovery-oriented processes where teams gather insights into project requirements, constraints, and design specifications through trial-and-error. Validation cycles are correction-oriented processes where teams align their output with project requirements through incremental modifications. These findings are then built on to develop testable propositions about the relationship between the duration of planning, enacting, and reviewing …

Financial Services Innovation: Opportunities For Transformation Through Facial Recognition And Digital Wallet Patents, Debora S. Bartoo

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Bringing innovation to the marketplace for new products and services involves creativity, a culture in which change flourishes, and leadership that thrives on transformation and complexity. This study explored the potential for market disruption or change based on innovations involving patents granted to nonfinancial services organizations that could affect financial services, specifically consumer or retail bank products. It involved analyzing documents related to recently granted patents and completing a mixed methods survey integrating the Delphi research technique. This method required multiple iterations of a survey presented to expert panelists or industry thought leaders to attempt to gain consensus ("Consensus", 2011) …

Innovating In The Periphery: The Impact Of Local And Foreign Inventor Mobility On The Value Of Indian Patents, Tufool Alnuaimi, Tore Opsahl, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the impact of local and foreign labor mobility in India by modeling one regional and one global network, each of which captures the inter-organizational mobility of inventors. Our analysis of the regional network shows that, within India, the productivity of inventors does not improve when they move from foreign to Indian organizations. In the global network, we find that Indian organizations remain located in the periphery as a result of employing a small number of inventors from foreign organizations. However, in the instances when inventors are hired from foreign organizations, they are able to produce patents with a …

Ownership Structure, Absorptive Capacity, And Innovation: Planting Vs Harvesting Innovation, Seung Hoon Jang

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation investigates the main research question: Which classification of innovation explains the heterogeneous timing of revenue realization? Given the significance of financial gain, researchers are recommended to pay attention to whether innovation outcomes result in commercial gains in the short term. Following this notion, a new category of innovation, planting and harvesting, is presented. While harvesting innovation seeks new resources in the expectation of commercial performance in the short term, planting innovation pursues potential resources creating value over a long time period. The interest in the determinants and financial contribution of these types of innovation leads to the second …