Arindam Tripathy

Does a differentiation strategy lead to more sustainable financial performance than a cost leadership strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategic positioning of firms and the sustainability of firm performance. The paper argues that pursuing a differentiation strategy leads to more sustainable financial performance compared to following a cost leadership strategy. However, a differentiation strategy may also be associated with greater risk. Design/methodology/approach – To investigate the research questions, the authors utilize publicly available archival data consisting of 12,849 firm-year observations for the period 1989-2003. In the first stage of the analysis, factor analysis is used to determine firms’ strategic positioning. The resulting factor scores are subsequently used in regression analysis to investigate the sustainability of performance based on the strategic positioning of firms. Findings – The results indicate that both cost leadership and differentiation strategies have a positive impact on contemporaneous performance. However, the differentiation strategy allows a firm to sustain its current performance in the future to a greater extent than a cost leadership strategy. The differentiation strategy, though, is also associated with greater systematic risk and more unstable performance. Originality/value – Sustainability of performance refers to how much a firms current profitability can be sustained in future periods. The main contribution of this study is the comparison of generic strategies based on the sustainability of firm performance. This aspect of the strategy-performance link has not been considered in prior work. Another contribution of the study is that it considers multiple dimensions of firm performance in order to evaluate the trade-offs involved with pursuing different strategies. In particular, the authors contribute to the literature by documenting that while differentiation leads to more sustainable earnings, it also leads to riskier and more unstable earnings.

Bankruptcy risk, productivity and firm strategy

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between productivity, firm strategy and bankruptcy risk. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper uses data envelopment analysis to compute productivity of firms and uses archival data to empirically examine the relationship between productivity, firm strategy and bankruptcy risk. Findings - – The results indicate that productivity has a positive effect on reducing bankruptcy risk, and the results also indicate that pursuing either of the generic strategies successfully has a positive effect on reducing bankruptcy risk. The study also brings to light the mediating effect of productivity in the relationship between strategy and bankruptcy risk. Research limitations/implications - – The effect of productivity and firm strategy on bankruptcy risk is of importance to external stakeholders such as lenders and investors to evaluate the bankruptcy risk of such a firm. Internal stakeholders (managers and management consultants) will find this study expedient by using productivity enhancements and effective strategy implementation to mitigate bankruptcy risk. Originality/value - – This is the first paper to highlight the link between productivity and bankruptcy risk, firm strategy and bankruptcy risk and the mediation effects of productivity on the link between a cost leadership strategy and bankruptcy risk.

An Empirical Study of Strategic Positioning and Production Efficiency

We examine the relationship between strategic positioning of firms and their production efficiency. Firms with competitive advantages based on either cost leadership or differentiation are able to outperform their competitors. Firms pursuing a cost leadership strategy seek to be the lowest cost producer, primarily by minimizing inputs for a given level of output, thus concentrating on increasing the efficiency of their production processes. On the other hand, firms that pursue a differentiation strategy rely on innovation, brand development, marketing, and so forth to achieve competitive advantages; therefore such firms do not place high emphasis on production efficiency. Thus the importance of production efficiency for the success of a firm depends on the strategic positioning of the firm. We apply DEA to an archival data for a large sample of publicly listed firms to investigate the importance of production efficiency for firms based on their strategic positioning. We provide empirical evidence that firms pursuing a cost leadership strategy attribute higher importance to production efficiency, while firms pursuing differentiation strategy attribute less importance to production efficiency.