Devi R. Gnyawali

Environments for Entrepreneurship Development: Key Dimensions and Research Implications

An integrated framework is not available for studying the environmental conditions conducive for entrepreneurship despite their importance for the emergence and growth of enterprises in a country. This paper develops such a framework consisting of five dimensions of entrepreneurial environments and links these dimensions to the core elements of the new venture creation process. Specific emphasis is given to the role of environmental conditions in developing opportunities and in enhancing entrepreneurs’ propensity and ability to enterprise. The paper outlines some propositions and research implications of the integrated model and offers initial guidelines for formulating public policies to develop entrepreneurial environments.

Co-opetition and Technological Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Multilevel Conceptual Model

Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises (SMEs) face tremendous challenges in their attempt to pursue technological innovations. This paper argues that co‐opetition strategy—simultaneous pursuit of competition and collaboration—helps SMEs to develop their ability to effectively pursue technological innovations. We developed a multilevel conceptual model consisting of factors at the industry, dyadic, and firm level to understand the drivers of co‐opetition and discuss benefits and costs of co‐opetition for SMEs. We believe that this paper will stimulate future conceptual and empirical research on this important topic and has implications for SME managers and policymakers.

A Contingency Perspective on Organizational Learning: Integrating Environmental Context, Organizational Learning Processes, and Types of Learning:

Current research suggests that organizational learning (OL) occurs through different processes and describes various types of learning that are used in organizations. What is unclear, though, is what circumstances prompt an organization to engage in one learning process or the other. Equally confusing is the underlying relationship between learning processes and the types of learning. To address these issues, we develop a contingency model of organizational learning and suggest that perception of the environment influences the use of learning processes. We also show that differential emphasis on learning processes results in different types of learning. Our conceptual model connects perceptions of the environment, learning processes, and types of learning. The contingency framework offered in this article provides a more holistic perspective of OL and has implications for future research and management practice.

Mapping managers' market orientations regarding new product success

Research shows that managers’ cognitive structures influence their decisions and firm outcomes, and that managers’ shared understanding is critical to new product success. Yet, little is known about the content and structure of managers’ knowledge regarding their business’s market orientation (MO) and how such orientation relates to new product development. By drawing from research on managerial cognition, we suggest that an examination of managers’ cognitive maps of their business’s MO can provide valuable insights. First, cognitive maps provide information regarding the relative ranking of concepts that managers consider important to new product success. Second, they offer insights about the relationship among concepts by illustrating the causal logic flow, centrality, and strength of the association between concepts. Finally, cognitive maps reveal a gestalt or pattern of managers’ understandings. This pattern provides an overall view of their perceptions of their firms’ MO. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to begin developing theory to explain the nature and extent of the sharing of managers’ understanding of their business’s MO across a company within the context of new product development. We develop several theoretical propositions using established research on market orientation and an exploratory investigation of the cognitive maps of a stratified sample of thirty managers of a highly successful frozen food division of a multinational company. We argue that managers of innovative companies with a history of successful new products in moderately dynamic industries will have established market orientations, as reflected in cognitive maps, which emphasize customer orientations more than competitor or technological orientations. Moreover, we suggest that managers will consistently recognize the importance of interfunctional coordination because it influences the firm’s orientations towards customers, competitors, and technology by facilitating sharing of important market information necessary for successful new product development. Furthermore, we propose that the division of labor and functional specialization in a company will result in predictable differences across cognitive maps of managers in different functions and levels of the organization. For example, senior managers are likely to have a more balanced and integrated MO than junior managers, due to their knowledge of organization wide issues. The article also proposes an agenda for scholars interested in investigating the relationship between managers’ cognitive maps of their company’s market orientation and new product success. We note the importance of studying managers’ cognitive structures in different types of industries over time, and how managers’ cognitive structures may relate to their company’s ability to learn. Managers could use cognitive mapping to recognize and evaluate beliefs that inhibit the sharing and interpretation of information between managers, departments, and levels and could design appropriate interventions.

Impact of coopetition in the alliance portfolio and coopetition experience on firm innovation

This paper examines two interrelated questions: to what extent does coopetition in a firms alliance portfolio impact the firms innovation performance? And to what extent does a firms coopetition experience influence the relationship between coopetition in the alliance portfolio and innovation performance? Conceptually, we advance the concepts of balanced coopetition in a firms alliance portfolio and coopetition experience and suggest that both balanced coopetition and coopetition experience contribute to firms innovation outcomes. Results based on a longitudinal data of firms from the semiconductor industry show that moderate to high levels of balanced-strong coopetition in a firms alliance portfolio positively impact the firms coopetition-based innovation performance. Further, coopetition experience contributes to innovation performance and positively moderates the relationship between balanced-strong coopetition and innovation performance.

How Does Centrality in Coopetition Networks Matter? An Empirical Investigation in the Mobile Telephone Industry

This research examines how a firms position in a coopetitive network (formed through cooperation among firms within an industry) influences the extent of the firms competitive aggressiveness and market performance. The authors collected data on the competitive and cooperative actions of firms in the mobile telephone industry from 2000 to 2006, using structured content analysis of news reports. The results show that the centrality of a firm in a coopetitive network contributes to the firms competitive aggressiveness through increased volume and variety of competitive actions. Further, the more central a firm is in the network, the greater is its market performance. Firms that undertake more volume and variety of competitive actions improve their market performance. Overall, these results show that being in a central position in a coopetition network is quite advantageous for the firm.

Firm competitive behavior as a determinant of CEO pay

Purpose – To provide insight, explanation, and empirical evidence into how and why CEOs get paid the amounts that they do.Design/methodology/approach – This paper blends several methodologies. Using qualitative interviews with several high level managers, it develops a coding listing to capture how pharmaceutical firms compete within their industry. The paper then uses a structured content analysis approach to capture the specific and observable competitive moves that pharmaceutical firms launch.Findings – Base pay and bonus of the CEO are greater for firms that launch higher volumes of competitive actions. Furthermore, the variety of competitive moves appears to influence a CEOs base salary.Research limitations/implications – This study has limited external validity since the firms in this sample are all large US pharmaceutical firms. The research implication is that, to date, firm size and past performance were identified as the single greatest predictors of CEO pay. Findings from this study suggest th...

The Impact of the CEO Pay Gap on Firm Competitive Behavior

The authors investigate how pay differences between the CEO and the rest of the members of the top management team influence a firms competitive behavior as reflected in the observable and purposeful competitive moves launched by the firm. Using data from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, the authors found a positive relationship between the CEO pay gap and the volume and complexity dimensions of firm competitive behavior. The authors discuss both theoretical and managerial implications of these findings as they relate to important topics such as competitive strategy, corporate governance, and executive compensation.

Cause Mapping in Strategic Management Research: Processes, Issues, and Observations

Our primary objective is to provide method-related broad guidelines to researchers on the entire spectrum of issues involved in cause mapping and to encourage researchers to use causal mapping techniques in strategy research. We challenge strategists to open the black box and investigate the mental models that depict the cause and effect beliefs of managers, “walk” readers through the causal mapping process by discussing the “nuts and bolts” of cause mapping, provide an illustration, and outline “key issues to consider.” We conclude with a discussion of some promising research directions.

In Search of Precision in Absorptive Capacity Research: A Synthesis of the Literature and Consolidation of Findings:

This paper addresses two fundamental problems in the absorptive capacity (AC) literature: conceptual ambiguity on what AC is and a lack of synthesized empirical findings showing how AC matters for firm outcomes. We take a two-pronged approach to address these problems: (1) conceptual distillation of the literature to discern the core AC dimensions, outcomes, and contingent external knowledge conditions and (2) meta-analysis of the empirical literature to synthesize the findings. For conceptual distillation, we identify three dimensions of AC: absorptive effort (i.e., the knowledge-building investments made by a firm), absorptive knowledge base (i.e., the current knowledge stock of a firm), and absorptive process (i.e., a firm’s internal procedures and practices related to knowledge diffusion). We develop these dimensions by explicating their theoretical roots, functions, mechanisms, and corresponding measures. Leveraging the conceptual distillation, we conduct meta-analyses of the empirical literature and synthesize key findings. We find that AC has a significant positive effect on firm outcomes and that the most commonly used dimension, absorptive effort, has the lowest mean effect size. We also find that knowledge acquisition and innovation generation fully mediate the effect of absorptive knowledge base but partially mediate the effects of absorptive effort and absorptive process on firm performance. Furthermore, AC’s effects on firm outcomes vary across external knowledge contingencies. Overall, this paper provides a strong theoretical and empirical basis to advance a dimensional approach in AC research and thereby facilitates a more rigorous research necessary for cumulative knowledge development on this important topic.