Strategy scholars have argued that capabilities can influence firm performance through a variety of means and mechanisms. However, the role of capabilities and their proposed contributions have been narrowly theorized and insufficiently tested. We contribute to resolving these issues by considering the conditions under which ordinary and dynamic capabilities contribute to higher relative firm performance. We do so by examining the positive and negative contributions of capabilities to relative firm performance as well as the effects of environmental dynamism and the degree of capability heterogeneity. We utilize measures of relative firm performance at both the process and firm level within a sample of Chilean firms, which due to a dynamic environment allows for a clearer link between the environment and the use of capabilities. We find that environmental dynamism negatively affects the contribution of ordinary capabilities and positively affects the contribution of dynamic capabilities to relative firm performance. Further, heterogeneity strengthens the contribution of dynamic capabilities to relative firm performance, but is less important for ordinary capabilities. Interestingly, we find support for the direct effects of capabilities to be stronger with a process-level performance measure, whereas the influences of environmental dynamism and heterogeneity are stronger with a firm-level measure.higher. The reason for this, as explained above, is that ordinary capabilities allow the firm to enhance existing processes, products, and services. Therefore, we propose the following relationship:Hypothesis 1a: The greater the use of ordinary capabilities, the greater the relative performance of the firm.
Innovation requires the entrepreneurial capabilities of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation. Such capabilities generally accrue over time from a firm's cumulative learning and experience. In this study, we theorize that firm age should therefore moderate the firm's ability to leverage these capabilities for innovation activity, such that older firms can obtain higher outputs from their capabilities than younger firms can. We examine this relationship using a sample of 676 small and medium enterprises. We find that when both younger and older firms have highly developed innovation capabilities, older firms appear to enjoy higher levels of innovation activity than younger firms do. However, younger firms generally appear more likely to have higher levels of innovation activity than older firms do, when neither firm has highly developed innovation capabilities. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for research and practice.
Over the past 50 years, we have witnessed considerable growth in business education, increased competition among business schools, and higher expectations for faculty scholarship. Increasing competition among scholars for limited publication opportunities in top‐tier journals and the proliferation of bottom‐tier journals has given rise to a variety of systemic ethical issues and dilemmas, for scholars and their institutions. In this article, we critically examine the current state of normative publishing activities and expectations, including doctoral education, promotion and tenure processes and research expectations, editorial and peer review processes, academic freedom, acceptable breadth, depth, and accuracy or legitimacy of research designs and methodologies, academic integrity, replication, and data availability concerning the trends and implications of contemporary and future management scholarship. We also provide recommendations for additional research and discussion on these issues.
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