Dynamic Capability

Purpose-To further the understanding of industrialised house building (IHB) from a temporal, emergent corporate-ability perspective, this study aims to trace the build-up of corporate assets in an IHB company over time. The research draws on dynamic capabilities, acknowledging not only what assets the company have developed and currently are exploiting, but also how these assets were develop and managed (i.e. enhanced, combined, protected and potentially reconfigured) to sustain long-term competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach-A case study design was used to form a narrative that covers the evolution of an IHB company over a 25-year period. Corporate archival material, analysis of original data from a large number of research studies during 1993-2013 and retrospective reflections of owners and managers, including crosschecking interpretations of archival material, developed and triangulated the narrative. Findings-The study presents rich empirical findings on the build-up of corporate assets. Starting from a successive process of exploration and exploitation formation of dynamic capabilities eventually played out into an exponential dynamic capability build-up. The IHB case company displays the ability to not only continuously exploit and renew resources and competences, but also to sense, seize and reconfigure cumulative assets over time. The exponential development of dynamic capabilities resonates to literature on higher-order dynamic capabilities implying that: the accumulated and higher-order dynamic capabilities are difficult to imitate and a (any) company must possess higher-order dynamic capabilities to be able to exploit and/or take up IHB. Originality/value-The study is complementing and potentially challenging frequent framings of the IHB concept. Previous research has addressed and characterised IHB mainly by encapsulating a moment in time and, thus, characteristics are momentary and represent static views on IHB. However, IHB has seen a strong development over the past 25 years, and the study reflects on this development from the perspective of one of the IHB-forerunner companies in Sweden. By exploring from a company perspective the developments, reconfiguration and capacity to develop/reconfigure over time in a changing environment, the study introduces an alternative understanding of IHB as dynamic capabilities.

This article analyzes the process of technology strategy formulation in two cases of Brazilian subsidiaries from
telecom industry. One company belongs to the equipment layer (EQUIPCOMPANY), and the other to the
network layer (NETCOMPANY). In EQUIPCOMPANY, technology strategy and corporate strategy are
formulated in conjunction, and the subsidiary is involved in the creation of global products. The main advantage
of this approach is the alignment around a common vision and the synergy created among subsidiaries.
However, the subsidiaries’ autonomy to create innovations highly adapted to a specific country is limited. In
NETCOMPANY, the technology strategy derives from the marketing vision of the future, and the Brazilian
subsidiary can define its own strategy, merely requesting parent company approval for implementation. This
approach brings agility to decision making and allows its subsidiaries to create innovations highly adapted to
local specific needs. Nevertheless, NETCOMPANY faces poor coordination among subsidiaries, possible duplication
of work and investment, and a lack of synergy and collaboration on innovation projects.

Trong bối cảnh kinh tế thế giới đang hội nhập toàn cầu, sự cạnh tranh không còn gói gọn trong phạm vi quốc gia mà nó vượt ra biên giới quốc tế. Các doanh nghiệp đang đối mặt với sự cạnh tranh gay gắt chưa từng có. Một câu hỏi đặt ra: tại sao một số công ty lại thành công lớn mạnh đến vậy, trong khi một số khác không thể tồn tại quá vài tháng? Một trong những nhân tố hàng đầu quyết định sự thành bại của doanh nghiệp chính là năng lực cạnh tranh. Doanh nghiệp có được năng lực cạnh tranh cao thì tồn tại và ngược lai, doanh nghiệp có năng lực cạnh tranh thấp thì thất bại. Và trong môi trường toàn cầu thì ngày càng khẳng định tính đúng đắn của nó. Vì thế yêu cầu cấp bách đối với các doanh nghiệp là phải phát hiện ra các nguồn lực tạo ra lợi thế cạnh tranh từ đó duy trì và phát triển nhằm đảm bảo lợi thế cạnh tranh bền vững trong tương lai trước những thay đổi nhanh chóng của thị trường. Bài báo tập trung vào nghiên cứu năng lực cạnh tranh động, xây dựng mô hình để đánh giá tiêu thức này. Trên cơ sở nghiên cứu thực nghiệm tại công ty cổ phần thép Thái Bình Dương, bài báo gợi mở những hàm ý về mặt lý thuyết và thực tế cho các nhà quản lý trong việc nâng cao khả năng cạnh tranh của doanh nghiệp.

Gender issues are well-researched in the general management literature, particular in studies on new ventures. Unfortunately, gender issues have been largely ignored in the dynamic capabilities literature. We address this gap by analyzing the effects of gender diversity on dynamic capabilities among micro firms. We consider the gender of managers and personnel in 124 Ukrainian tourism micro firms. We examine how a manager’s gender affects the firm’s sensing capacities and investigate how it moderates team gender diversity’s impact on sensing capacities. We also investigate how personnel composition impacts seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We find that female managers have several shortcomings concerning a firm’s sensing capacity but that personnel gender diversity increases this capacity. Team gender diversity has positive effects on a firm’s seizing and reconfiguration abilities. Our study advances research on gender diversity and its impact on firm capabilities and illustrates its relevance for staffing practices in micro firms.

Purpose – Based on case studies in engineering services companies contracted by Petrobras, which strongly demands the building of dynamic capabilities in its supplier base, we sought to understand how these capabilities are constructed over time. Consequently, we propose new indicators of dynamic capabilities (DCs) and tested their relevance empirically.

Design/methodology/approach – Initially, we analysed the relationship of fourteen engineering services companies with Petrobras. Next, we selected two cases to carry out a deeper investigation, evaluating three projects with Petrobras in each case and identifying the creation of dynamic capacities during the projects.

Findings – By performing a comprehensive analysis of the case studies, we conclude that through their contracts with Petrobras the engineering services companies develop capabilities that increase the quality and the complexity of the services provided. The four indicators proposed were validated in the field.

Originality/value – Empirical studies contribute to understanding the various theoretical interpretations of DCs. In the cases studied, the creation of DCs is linked to new projects with the client. The accumulation of knowledge and learning, when transformed into learning routines and practices, allow companies to develop or reformulate existing skills

Full Citation: Khavandkar, E., Theodorakopoulos, N., Hart, M. and Preston, J. (2016). Leading the Diffusion of Intellectual Capital Management Practices in Science Parks, In: H. SHIPTON, P. BUDHWAR, P. SPARROW and A. BROWN, eds., Human resource management, innovation and performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Chapter 4., pp. 213-231. This chapter discusses how leadership interventions in science parks can promote the diffusion of intellectual capital management (ICM) practices. It focuses on how operationalization operationalisation of the different social interactions leads to the accommodation of suitable mechanisms for diffusion of those practices associated with ICM among tenants in of science parks, under the theoretical notion of the ecosystem. This issue is becoming important in the case of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), as intellectual capital is likely to be the key source of competitive advantage (European Commission, 2006; Huggins & Weir, 2012). SMEs generally have advantages over established companies in terms of learning (Davenport, 2005; Lee et al., 2010). In order to prevent science parks from becoming just real estate brokerage entities, managers and policy makers need to undertake a range of boundary-spanning activities to optimise the mobility of intangible and tangible knowledge and resources. This notion reflects the fact that science park management could, and should, harness ideas for strategic change when they seek to unleash an SME’s entrepreneurial potential. This chapter explores the ways in which leadership interventions in science park ecosystems may orchestrate tenants’ management insight and strategic foresight. It also outlines their contributions to the development of ICM practices in SMEs by propagating co-specialisation opportunities whilst understanding the cognitive consonance of the various roles played by tenants and other stakeholders in the science park ecosystem, not simply by resource or geography. This chapter is useful to the directors and CEOs of science parks for four primary reasons:. Ffirst, to clarify the relationships between the science park and its key players; second, to build an understanding of the different social mechanisms for diffusion of intellectual capital management practices; third, to understand the cognitive patterns in possible adaptation preferences and conditions within SMEs; and fourth, to educate managers about the types and roles of external agents’ involvements in the diffusion of ICM practices.

Estudos mostram que investimento em capacitação para os colaboradores traz benefícios para a organização, como o aumento de produtividade e a qualidade do produto ou serviço entregue. Por outro lado, o investimento necessário tem sido cada vez maior em razão dos custos diretos e indiretos relacionados às capacitações realizadas. Assim, o presente estudo foi realizado a partir da necessidade de aumentar a quantidade de qualificações dos colaboradores dentro de uma organização de grande porte, buscando, assim, uma maneira de suprir essa alta demanda, com redução intensa de custos e, ao mesmo tempo, garantindo a sua qualidade. O método desenvolvido é caracterizado por utilizar conceitos de Capacitação Dinâmica e Gestão de Competências, de modo a contribuir com as estratégias e necessidades da organização em atender às lacunas de competências. Por fim, houve uma a redução de 36% do custo médio de treinamento, atendendo à alta demanda por meio de um incremento de 164% na quantidade de capacitações, e, ao mesmo tempo, garantindo a qualidade.

Over the last 15 years the dynamic capability view of firm strategy, with its emphasis on those capabilities that allow a firm to react to and accommodate changing market and organizational environments, has become one of the dominant theoretical explanations for the differential performance of competing firms. Although the dynamic capabilities literature has expanded rapidly, recent reviews suggest that the scholarly contribution of this literature has been limited, due mainly to theoretical inconsistencies and a lack of commonly agreed definitions of the core constructs. As noted by many authors, even the basic meaning of a ‘dynamic capability’ is unclear. This lack of consensus has been viewed as a hindrance to theoretical advancement and makes the comparability of empirical findings problematic. This paper provides a systematic and analytic review of previous contributions to the dynamic capability view of firm strategy. To do this we use textual data analysis to review 107 papers published in 12 leading management journals between 1997 and 2011. We identify the core themes and constructs prevalent in the literature and discover differences between foci in conceptual versus empirical papers.

How do firms leverage existing innovations for the next round of innovations? We develop a novel concept of generative capability in product innovation to address this question. Generative capability applies the mechanisms of iteration and rapid knowledge integration to guide innovation activities. Based on panel data from 2001 to 2009 of 56,344 manufacturing firm-year observations in China, we find that institutional complexity and internationalization are positively related to generative capability, that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have lower levels of generative capability than do firms with other ownership structures, and that generative capability improves firms' performance significantly. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of generative capability for theoretical development and point to a number of fruitful areas for future research.