Vol. 6(4) April 2013
Evaluating Strategic Alliances in Small and Medium-Sized
Enterprises
Stacy Mitchell and Cem Canel*
The ability of firms to carry out operational strategies
such as differentiation, cost leadership or focused strategies can depend on their
ability to integrate technological advances relevant to their industry. Small and
Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), in particular, have many reasons to use strategic
alliances as a way to counteract the market power and financial resources possessed
by many large firms. This research intends to offer guidance to SMEs through the
development of a hybrid model that facilitates successful strategic alliances. The
hybrid model focuses on evaluating the motivations and risks involved with strategic
alliances and predicting key success factors and provides a 5-step guideline that
begins with problem definition and ends with evaluation of performance.
Full Text
Digital Media: To Be or Not To Be – An Advertiser’s
Dilemmas
Rungta S.
The Media landscape is getting transformed rapidly in
India and around the world. With increased globalization, India Media landscape
has become increasingly complex and varied. The advent of internet and mobile communication
has altered the rules of the game as far as the marketer; advertiser and media planners
are concerned. The so called “New Media” has impacted not just the old media but
has presented its own unique challenges in terms of nature of communication, measurement
of reach and its impact on consumer behaviour. The Indian Marketing communication
Industry is small compared to developed countries like US and UK and rapidly becoming
„developed‟ country like China. However the media fragmentation has meant that Indian
advertisers and media planner have had to face the same or added challenges of media
measurement as faced by their global counterparts. India is probably the only country
where Print and Digital media is both growing rapidly; unlike other nations where
one is growing at the cost of another. It is in this light that the research paper
aims to understand the nature and dimensions of challenges faced by Indian advertisers
and media planners from the perspective of Digital Media.
Full Text
Embedding Leadership driven Conscious Capitalism into
Corporate DNA
Coates Breena E.
Leaders in the 21st century corporate community have
embraced the notion of “conscious capitalism” (CC) and have translated that slogan
into varying degrees of action. At the core of their strategic initiatives, such
leaders embrace the concept of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL)—the three interconnected
corporate pillars of competitive advantage--people, planet and profit. To truly
ensure that the values of ecology and economics tie into sustainable practices,
conscious leadership embeds the principles behind corporate virtue into viable plans
that create a muscular CC strategy—i.e. one that goes well beyond “greenwashing”
to the concept of corporate social responsibility. This paper discusses three important
strategic leadership alignments for CC: 1) Leadership-driven strategic cultural
change from profit-maximization to the broader value of conscious capitalism. 2)
Validation by leaders and stakeholders that firms incur social and ecological debt
in their interconnected environments in the normal course of doing business, which
must be avoided proactively, or at least, remediated. 3) Leadership guidelines for
strategizing that will embed CC into the very DNA of the corporation.
Full Text
Quantum Leaps - The Resource Based View (RBV) and
the School of Industrial Organization (IO) Revisited
Philipson Sarah and Oghazi Pejvak*
This is a conceptual paper. In her doctoral thesis, “Capital
functions and the position of the workers” (in Swedish), published in 1980, Philpson36,
explored a Marxian theory of Business administration, based on a little known work
by Marx21, “Resultate des unmittelbares produktionsprozesses”. She explored the
three concepts “levels of functions of capital”, after Bettelheim8, the “generalisation
of capital functions” and hence globalisation and the possibility to use the concept
of “hegemony” in business administration, after Gramsci.15 Two of the principle
concepts were Marx’ “inner” and “outer” conditions of production. These pre-empted
the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the School of Industrial Organization (IO) with
hundred years. In Philipson36, she proposed 72 phenotypes for the principle strategic
situations for companies, based on their inner and outer conditions of production.
The resource based view and the Industrial Organization School have long been two
antagonistic explanations of the strategic possibilities of firms. This study is
a synthesis of these two schools based on the framework developed in Philipson36.
It suggests a phenomenology for studying firm strategy that might possibly give
precedence for a different mix of the two schools in the phenomenological cases.
In spite of the development of the RBV and the IO over the last 30 years, the most
interesting questions to pursue for strategy research are how companies transcends
their resources to reinvent themselves and how they transcend their resources to
face new environmental conditions of which they do not have enough experience and
resources; hence the trans-cendence of their limitations.
Full Text
Internationalization and Innovation in Emerging Markets:
Case Studies on Chinese, Malaysian and South African Multinational Companies
Urban Boris* and De Haaff N.
Internationalization and globalization have allowed for
increased multinational enterprise (MNE) participation in emerging markets primarily
through the worldwide integration of financial systems, lower barriers to entry
leading to deregulation and trade liberalization and the emergence of a global cultural
and economic homogeneity. Several case studies of listed MNEs suggest that the entrepreneurial
orientation (EO) of these firms is linked to success, with firms engaged in multiple
modes of internationalization. Additionally, EO enablers such as networks, knowledge,
resources and culture are important for internationalization success. These case
studies in each country elucidate and integrate the constructs under investigation
in a practical manner.
Full Text
Do Organizational Defensive Patterns hinder Women
Engineering Profession to learn Information and Communication Technology? A Case
Study in the Hong Kong Transport Sector
Yau Hon Keung
The concept of organizational learning has a long lineage
in the management literature. Its popularity has been increasing as new theoretical
contributions emerge. Its importance is underpinned by the need to respond to stimuli
in the external environment. There are many recognizable aspects to this response
to stimuli. All organizations contain in varying degrees, skilled incompetence,
organizational defensive routines, fancy footwork that forms an organizational defensive
pattern. The organizational defensive patterns occur in all organizations, including
private and public organizations, voluntary organizations, universities and schools,
as well as families. Few women join the engineering profession traditionally and
few studies relate organizational learning to women. The purpose of this study is
to investigate the reason why organizational defensive patterns hinder female engineering
staff to learn information and communication technology (ICT) when a new ICT is
adopted from other organizations. The findings show that there are no significant
effects of on-the-job intervention methods on skilled incompetence, organizational
defensive routines and fancy footwork respectively.
Full Text
Celebrity Advertisements and Its Impact on Consumers
Rangarajan R.* and Ponnarasi B.
Celebrities have become major spectacles of today’s media
culture. Celebrities include from film world, sports world and fashion world etc.
The celebrities who are endorsing the product must have the knowledge over the product
and the agencies that they are trusted. The major role of the celebrity endorsement
is to build the brand image and also make the customer to go for repeat purchase
so that the product can identified. Last but not least the sales factor should be
satisfied by the celebrity for whom they have endorsed. For this research study
we randomly approached students and faculties of Madras University. We explained
the intention of the research while they were selecting one of the multiple choices
in the questionnaire. The study focuses on identifying the celebrity advertisement,
the results showed that the highest percentages (87%) fell under the status of single
than married with (13%). Men and women seem to like celebrity the most in a commercial
followed by music.
Full Text
Learning Orientation, Dynamic Capabilities and Performance
in Korean High-Tech Ventures
Kwon Yung-Chul S
To examine the antecedents and consequences of the dynamic
capabilities of high-tech ventures, three subcomponents of dynamic capabilities
are explored: environment sensing, innovative responding and resource renewing.
An analysis of 158 high-tech ventures in Korea shows that dynamic capabilities are
well captured by a meta-construct of these three subcomponents which have significant
effects on the business performance. In addition, the organization culture of learning
orientation is shown to facilitate a firm’s dynamic capabilities. These results
provide important insights into the effectiveness of the dynamic capabilities of
high-tech ventures.
Full Text
Compensatory Consumption
Singh Sukhdev1* and Singh Shallu
The present paper focuses on the review of concepts,
theories and empirical underpinnings of compensatory consumption through literature
studies primarily in the light of shopping as a tool for compensatory consumption,
also considering the review of parallel subjects as well, interpret the consumer
research in the context of this perspective. A review of available literature was
done in order to understand the various forms, types and levels of Compensatory
Consumption. The findings of the paper implicitly point out that Mood Repair, Self-gift
giving, Impulse Buying, Compulsive Buying, Addictive Consumption and Conspicuous
Consumption/ Status Consumption are the types and levels of compensatory consumption.
Literature suggests ample studies conducted for the parallel subjects like compulsive
buying, impulsive disorders, self gift giving, addictive consumption etc. Concept
of Compensatory Consumption has emerged as the strongest form of consumer buying
behavior which leads to retail therapy. This involves buying behavior due to different
mood swings and lack of x, could be cured by a supply of x, but it may also be cured
by a supply of y. If y is used, this process if called as compensation which leads
to compensatory buying behaviour. Researchers have now understood the importance
of the applicability of these findings to understand and predict consumers’ buying
behavior.
Full Text