Ruby P. Lee

Market-focused strategic flexibility: Conceptual advances and an integrative model

This article develops the concept of market-focused strategic flexibility. It begins with a review of the historical perspectives of strategic flexibility. To support the conceptualization, the authors offer a theoretical schema that considers market-focused strategic flexibility as conceptually rooted in capabilities theory, resource-based views of the firm, and options. With the conceptualization in place, the authors propose an integrative model that explicates the mediating role of market-focused strategic flexibility in marketing strategy frameworks. Propositions are developed relating market-driven and driving orientations to market-focused strategic flexibility with consideration for how turbulent macro environments modify the relationship. In addition, the authors offer propositions regarding outcomes of market-focused strategic flexibility under conditions of macro environmental turbulence.

Strategic Responses to New Technologies and Their Impact on Firm Performance

Modern corporations must adopt and assimilate new technologies to build and sustain competitive advantage. The authors develop a theoretical framework to understand the relationships among (1) strategic responses to new technologies, (2) organizational resources, and (3) firm performance. Specifically, they theorize that a strategic response can be categorized according to the dimensions of magnitude, domain, and speed, and they conceptualize organizational resources as tangible and intangible. The authors operationalize this framework for the adoption of the Internet by traditional store-based retailers, for which they posit strategic responses as the speed of (1) adopting the Internet as a communications channel, (2) adopting the Internet as a sales channel, and (3) forming e-alliances. In addition, they use resource slack to represent organizational resources. Results from nine years (1992–2000) of data on 106 firms establish the influence of strategic responses on firm performance (i.e., market valuation of the firm, operationalized as Tobins q). Specifically, the results show that both the adoption of the Internet as a communications channel and e-alliance formation positively influence firm performance. The positive effect of communications channel adoption on firm performance is enhanced further by the use of slack resources. Post hoc analysis reveals that the adoption of the Internet as a sales channel seems to matter only to firms that have preexisting catalog operations.

Systems Collaboration and Strategic Collaboration: Their Impacts on Supply Chain Responsiveness and Market Performance*

Recognizing the importance of interfirm collaboration and recent advancement of information technology (IT) to enhance joint decision making between firms, this study conceptualizes systems collaboration and strategic collaboration as two essential types of interfirm collaboration. The study then simultaneously examines the multiple roles of systems collaboration and strategic collaboration, and how they directly and indirectly influence a firms supply chain responsiveness and market performance. Hypotheses are tested on survey data collected from 184 firms. Results suggest that the sequential relationships among IT competency, interfirm collaboration, and supply chain responsiveness have significant market performance implications.

Knowledge Transfer Between Multinational Corporations' Headquarters and Their Subsidiaries: Influences on and Implications for New Product Outcomes

A multinational corporations (MNCs) competitive advantage depends increasingly on control over intangible resources, such as knowledge and relational capital. Although prior research has suggested that cross-border knowledge transfer in MNCs is critical to their new product outcomes, the conditions under which such knowledge transfer can serve to induce positive outcomes remain unclear. This study builds on resource-based theory to suggest that knowledge and MNC network strength are the two critical firm resources individually and collectively influencing new product outcomes. Because MNCs are subject to the pressures on various environmental changes, the authors rely on the contingency theory to examine when knowledge transfer works in differential global market and technological turbulence. The results of a survey of MNC headquarters show that the impacts of cross-border knowledge transfer on new product outcomes are not always positive, depending on the levels of network strength and environmental turbulence.

Zapping Behavior during Commercial Breaks

ABSTRACT The impact of consumer channel switching, or ‘zapping,’ on the effectiveness of TV commercials is addressed. Among the more significant findings in this research is the result that nonzappers can recall more of the brands advertised than zappers. Furthermore, for brands that are successfully recalled by zappers, those placed toward the end of a commercial break achieve the highest level of recall.

Extending the Environment-Strategy- Performance Framework: The Roles of Multinational Corporation Network Strength, Market Responsiveness, and Product Innovation

The purpose of this study is to extend the traditional environment–strategy–performance framework by including network theory to examine when a foreign firm can use its multinational corporation (MNC) network strength to buffer market turbulence and technological turbulence and when the foreign firm can deploy it to support the influences of marketing strategic postures (i.e., market responsiveness and product innovation) on firm performance. The author tests the hypotheses on data collected from 140 foreign firms in China. Although prior research has demonstrated that firms often use multiple strategies and resources to cope with environmental forces, the findings illustrate that different environmental segments have unequal bearings on market responsiveness, product innovation, and MNC network strength. In addition, despite the direct positive influences of individual marketing strategic postures and MNC network strength on firm performance, their combined effects are mixed. The author concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for research and practice.

Enhancing Innovation Through International Joint Venture Portfolios: From the Emerging Firm Perspective

Anecdotal evidence continues to suggest that many firms in emerging economies (EEs) lack innovation. To investigate how these firms might improve their innovation, the authors integrate resource dependence theory with network theory and the resource-based view to theorize that EE firms can advance their innovation by configuring their international joint venture (IJV) portfolio characteristics at the network and focal firm levels. The results indicate that an EE firms innovation improves when structural hole positions in its IJV portfolio increase but decreases when network centrality increases. Such relationships are further contingent on two focal firm-level IJV portfolio characteristics: IJV portfolio size and IJV portfolio resource commitment.

Is Product Imitation Good for Firm Performance? An Examination of Product Imitation Types and Contingency Factors

Despite the prevailing phenomenon of product imitation in transition economies, theoretical development of product imitation strategies still lags behind anecdotal evidence. The authors distinguish between pure imitation and creative imitation and examine their contingent effects on firm performance. They test hypotheses on data collected from multiple sources, including top and middle managers and archival financial data from 192 firms in China. The findings indicate that creative imitation has a stronger positive effect on financial performance (i.e., lagged return on assets) than pure imitation. Furthermore, pure imitation and creative imitation, when coupled with strong marketing capability, positively affect market performance (i.e., market share). Finally, compared with their local counterparts, foreign firms operating in China benefit less from pure and creative imitations in terms of financial performance.

Community orientation, strategic flexibility, and financial performance in hospitals.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The objective of this study was to examine how community orientation and strategic flexibility affect accounting measures of financial performance in acute care hospitals. This cross‐sectional study used organizational data from the American Hospital Association, environmental data from the Area Resource File, and financial data from the Healthcare Cost Report Information System. We tested our hypotheses on 1,779 hospitals using OLS regression models that controlled for organizational and environmental factors that might affect financial performance. The community orientation of a hospital had a negative impact on its short‐term financial performance. However, the strategic flexibility of a hospital with regard to structure and resources was significantly and positively associated with hospital performance. Our findings are important to healthcare managers. Specifically, although a community orientation is thought to be essential for improving the health of populations, the healthcare market may lack clarity concerning the wants and needs of patients and payers to such a degree that this orientation does not result in improved short‐term financial performance. In contrast, when a hospital maintains flexibility in its resource allocations and organizational structure, it can meet changing needs and uncertainties and thereby enhance financial performance.

A typology of interfirm relationships: the role of information technology and reciprocity

Purpose – This paper aims to advance interfirm relationship (IR) research by applying a theoretically based typology in IR settings and empirically investigating the association of information technology (IT) and relational reciprocity with IR types.Design/methodology/approach – This study draws on Fiskes relational models theory to conceptualize an IR typology. In a business service context, a questionnaire was administered and IR types modeled via a multivariate logistic regression with IT pervasiveness, IT customization, reciprocity and embeddedness as predicting variables.Findings – The IR typology comprises communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing types. The authors find that reciprocity is more likely to associate with an equality‐matching relationship and a communal sharing relationship than with a market‐pricing relationship. Pervasive use of IT fosters an equality‐matching IR, but IT‐enabled customization distances an IR from an equality‐matching relationship.Re...