DCT Schilke & Goerzen (2010) - Schilke (2014)

Question 1

Schilke & Goerzen (2010)

Answer 1

To what extent do second order alliance management capabilities influence alliance performance?

Question 2

summary Schilke & Goerzen (2010)

Answer 2

A firm’s alliance capability provides competitive advantage. Alliance management captures the degree to which organizations possess relevant management routines that enable them to effectively manage their portfolio of strategic alliances. Strategic alliances pose a significant managerial challenge given the complexities and uncertainties associated with managing projects across organizational boundaries.

Question 3

Two factors have been identified empirically as key organizational-level determinants of alliance success:

Answer 3

1. Alliance experience = defined as the extent to which a company has previously been involved in strategic alliances.
2. Alliance structures = which are specialized organizational units and personnel dedicated to the management of strategic alliances.

Question 4

four types of organizational routines

Answer 4

coordination, learning, sensing and transformation

Question 5

Coordination

Answer 5

Strategic alliances differentiates between two central coordination tasks of alliance management: Interorganizational coordination and alliance portfolio coordination.

Question 6

Interorganizational coordination

Answer 6

Refers to the governance of individual alliances
- Ensures that single alliances are governed efficiently and that he legitimacy of transaction
between partners is enhanced

Question 7

Alliance portfolio management

Answer 7

deals with the integration of all of an organization’s strategic alliances

Question 8

Alliance portfolio coordination

Answer 8

aims to identify these interdependences, avoid duplicate actions,
and produce synergies among the individual alliances
- By identifying and creating synergies between single alliances, alliance portfolio coordination
has the potential to make an alliance portfolio more than the sum of its parts.
- Alliance portfolio coordination aims to allocate limited resources to alliance projects that allow
maximal gain at bearable levels of risk.

Question 9

Learning

Question 10

Sensing

Question 11

Transformation

Question 12

Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between alliance management capability and alliance portfolio performance

Answer 12

Previous alliance experience will aid companies in developing adequate alliance management routines, thereby avoiding mistakes when establishing and managing further alliances.

Question 13

Alliance management capability mediates the effect of alliance experience on alliance portfolio performance

Answer 13

One of the major advantages of formal alliance structures is that these structures help to oversee the entire organization (Sampson, 2005). Consequently, they can aid knowledge codification and facilitate communication over functional areas within the firm

Question 14

Alliance management capability mediates the effect of alliance structures on alliance portfolio performance

Answer 14

The results showed that, in each of the five models, alliance experience and alliance structures had a significant effect on the single alliance management dimension, which, in turn, had a significant impact on alliance portfolio performance.
We only obtained partial mediation for each single dimension (i.e., at least one the direct effects of alliance experience and alliance structures on alliance portfolio performance remained significant).

Question 15

Schilke (2014)

Answer 15

To what extent is the influence of dynamic capabilities on competitive advantage different for the level of environmental dynamism?
This article empirically investigates the link between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage and examines the efficacy of dynamic capabilities under conditions of varying environ- mental dynamism.

Question 16

Dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage

Answer 16

• All organizational change needs to originate from dynamic capabilities; in particular, contingent,
  creative improvisation is typically not associated with dynamic capabilities
• A firm is said to have a competitive advantage when it enjoys greater success than current or
  potential competitors in its industry

Question 17

A more contingent view

Answer 17

the benefits of dynamic capabilities depend not only on the existence of the underlying organizational routines, but also on the context in which these capabilities are deployed

Question 18

Environmental dynamism

Answer 18

building on Miller and Friesen’s (1983) influential conception that views both volatility (rate and amount of change) and unpredictability (uncertainty) as fundamental characteristics of environmental dynamism’
- Example: changes in industry structure, the instability of market demand, and the probability of environmental shocks are important elements of environmental dynamism

Question 19

Environments with little dynamism

Answer 19

characterized by infrequent changes, and market participants usually anticipate those changes that do occur

Question 20

Environments with high dynamism

Answer 20

those where rapid and discontinuous changes are common.

Question 21

Environments in the middle

Answer 21

moderately dynamic environments with regular changes that occur along
roughly predictable and linear paths.

Question 22

Two competing views on the effect of environmental dynamism on the link between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage

Answer 22

1. There has to be a critical need to change in order to gain significant value from these capabilities
2. Routine-based dynamic capabilities are not always an adequate means of change, even if there is a significant need for resource configurations

Question 23

1. There has to be a critical need to change in order to gain significant value from these capabilities

Answer 23

o Building and using dynamic capabilities are costly
o Acknowledging that developing dynamic capabilities involves serious costs has implications
for their potential value
If a firm rarely has a need to change, its performance relative to competitors may suffer
when it devotes significant resources to developing these capabilities
This observation emphasizes the importance of balancing the costs of a given dynamic
capability and its actual use
o Dynamic capabilities can be viewed as ‘strategic options’ hat allow firms to (re)shape their
existing resource base when the opportunity or need arises The lower the need for change, the less likely the opportunity to ‘strike’ the option, making dynamic capabilities comparatively less valuable.

Question 24

2. Routine-based dynamic capabilities are not always an adequate means of change, even if there is a significant need for resource configurations

Answer 24

o Routines underlying dynamic capabilities they are path dependent and therefore based
on interpretations and outcomes of past actions
o Routine-based, history dependent organizational change is typically very effective for
adapting locally and incrementally based on past experiences, but research on experiential learning argues that this type of organizational change may prove problematic when previously unknown forces continuously alter the basis of competitive success, as is the case in highly dynamic environments.

Question 25

two kinds of problems for dynamic capabilities

Answer 25

1. Matching problem
2. Inertia Problem

Question 26

1. Matching problem

Answer 26

o Intrinsic to the way in which dynamic capabilities work. Following a patterned stimulus–response logic, they match particular environmental states with certain avenues for organizational change
o The environment is monitored, and appropriate organizational changes that proved successful under similar conditions in the past are invoked
o The environment needs to be in an ‘in-family’ state—a situation that was previously experienced, analyzed, and understood (high dynamism environment)

Question 27

2. Inertia problem

Answer 27

o Given that a proven response to an identified problem exists in organizational
memory, experimentation with alternatives becomes less attractive, crowding out
explorative activities that would go beyond the beaten track
o It can pertain not only to an organization’s zero-order capabilities but to its
dynamic capabilities as well, since routine-based organizational change tends to
favor local adaptations
o When environmental dynamism is high and contextual change is fundamental and
discontinuous, long-jump reorientations that require entirely novel solutions often prove more beneficial for a firm’s competitive advantage than local adaptations from within the current set of available actions

Question 28

LOW DYNAMIC CAPABILTIES:

Answer 28

When environmental dynamism is low, the potential of dynamic capabilities is limited because there are few occasions to exercise them effectively.
- In these situations, organizational routines for adapting the resource base may be of reduced
value, in particular when considering the costs associated with them. Therefore, when environmental dynamism is low, I suggest that dynamic capabilities exert relatively weak influence on the competitive advantage of firms.

Question 29

HIGH DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES:

Answer 29

When environmental dynamism is high, dynamic capabilities may also have a relatively weak impact on the competitive advantage of firms. Although there is opportunities for resource reconfiguration. There can be too much going on which effect the quality of resource reconfiguration.
* The researcher expects that dynamic capabilities have the relatively strongest positive effect on the competitive advantage of firms when environmental dynamism is intermediate

Question 30

H1

Answer 30

The relationship between alliance management capability and competitive advantage is strongest under intermediate levels of environmental dynamism but comparatively weaker when dynamism is low or high.