DCT Schilke & Goerzen (2010) - Schilke (2014) Flashcards
Schilke & Goerzen (2010)
To what extent do second order alliance management capabilities influence alliance performance?
summary Schilke & Goerzen (2010)
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.
Two factors have been identified empirically as key organizational-level determinants of alliance success:
- Alliance experience = defined as the extent to which a company has previously been involved in strategic alliances.
- Alliance structures = which are specialized organizational units and personnel dedicated to the management of strategic alliances.
four types of organizational routines
coordination, learning, sensing and transformation
Coordination
Strategic alliances differentiates between two central coordination tasks of alliance management: Interorganizational coordination and alliance portfolio coordination.
Interorganizational coordination
Refers to the governance of individual alliances
- Ensures that single alliances are governed efficiently and that he legitimacy of transaction
between partners is enhanced
Alliance portfolio management
deals with the integration of all of an organization’s strategic alliances
Alliance portfolio coordination
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.
Learning
Sensing
Transformation
Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between alliance management capability and alliance portfolio performance
Previous alliance experience will aid companies in developing adequate alliance management routines, thereby avoiding mistakes when establishing and managing further alliances.
Alliance management capability mediates the effect of alliance experience on alliance portfolio performance
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
Alliance management capability mediates the effect of alliance structures on alliance portfolio performance
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).
Schilke (2014)
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.
Dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage
- 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
A more contingent view
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
Environmental dynamism
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
Environments with little dynamism
characterized by infrequent changes, and market participants usually anticipate those changes that do occur
Environments with high dynamism
those where rapid and discontinuous changes are common.
Environments in the middle
moderately dynamic environments with regular changes that occur along
roughly predictable and linear paths.
Two competing views on the effect of environmental dynamism on the link between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage
- There has to be a critical need to change in order to gain significant value from these capabilities
- Routine-based dynamic capabilities are not always an adequate means of change, even if there is a significant need for resource configurations
- There has to be a critical need to change in order to gain significant value from these capabilities
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.
- Routine-based dynamic capabilities are not always an adequate means of change, even if there is a significant need for resource configurations
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.
two kinds of problems for dynamic capabilities
- Matching problem
- Inertia Problem
- Matching problem
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)
- Inertia problem
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
LOW DYNAMIC CAPABILTIES:
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.
HIGH DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES:
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
H1
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.
