Firm‐specific knowledge resources and competitive advantage: the roles of economic‐ and relationship‐based employee governance mechanisms

Wang, Heli; He, Jinyu; Mahoney, Josepht T.

doi:10.1002/smj.787

Cited by 385 publications

(381 citation statements)

References 100 publications

(131 reference statements)

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“…It is also proved that the deployment of firm-specific knowledge requires specific settings. Employees who hold the key knowledge may be reluctant to make specialized human capital investments when they are deployed inappropriately (Wang, He, & Mahoney, 2009). To some extent, older firms or firms with more experiences can develop and understand their technological domains and recognize optimal conditions for recombination (Zahra & George, 2002;Kotha, Zheng, & George, 2011).…”

Section: Reconfiguration Capabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic capabilities and organizational performance: The mediating role of innovation

Zhou

Feng

et al. 2017

Journal of Management & Organization

167

105

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How firms' dynamic capabilities lead to their competitive advantage and improved firm performance has been a core issue and full of debates. In this research, we theorize that dynamic capabilities, which could be defined by three distinct dimensions (sensing capability, integration capability, and reconfiguration capability), facilitate different types of innovation that in turn improve firm performance. Based on a sample of 204 Chinese firms, results from partial least squares structural equation modeling analyses generally support our arguments despite some nuanced differences existing among different dimensions of dynamic capabilities. This study contributes to dynamic capabilities literature by reducing the scarcity of empirical research and by uncovering the mechanisms through which dynamic capabilities influence firm performance.

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Section: Reconfiguration Capabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic capabilities and organizational performance: The mediating role of innovation

Zhou

Feng

et al. 2017

Journal of Management & Organization

167

105

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“…We also contribute to the stream of literature on human capital that deals with how organizations can persuade employees to invest in developing their own human capital (Wang et al 2009, Wang andBarney 2006). An underlying assumption of this literature is that organizations must make formal investments to develop human capital of employees.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sink or Swim: The Role of Workplace Context in Shaping Career Advancement and Human-Capital Development

Chattopadhyay

Choudhury

2017

Organization Science

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We develop and test predictions on how early-career challenges arising from the workplace context affect short-and long-term career advancement of individuals. Typically an organization's decision to deploy a manager to one of several possible contexts is endogenous to unobservable factors, and selection makes it challenging to disentangle the effect of workplace context on individual career advancement. We work around this problem by studying an organization, the Indian Administrative Services, which deploys entrylevel managers quasi-randomly across India. We find that managers deployed to more challenging contexts early in their careers experience faster career advancement in the short term. We present suggestive evidence that this is because challenging contexts provide managers more opportunities to develop skills ('crucible experiences'), and a greater motivation to relocate out of the challenging context. We also find that managers deployed to a challenging context early in their careers continue to experience faster advancement in the long term, suggesting that initial deployment to a challenging context is associated with human capital development. Managers initially deployed to more challenging contexts were not, however, more likely to break into the upper echelons of the organization Key words: context; location; workplace context, career advancement, performance; individuals; promotion; crucible experiences; motivation; internal mobility; human capital development; microfoundations.1 The authors thank Janet Bercovitz, Ethan Bernstein, Gina Dokko, David Kryscynski, Joseph Mahoney, Mario Schjiven, Deepak Somaya, Olav Sorenson, Michael Toffel, seminar audiences at Sumantra Ghoshal Conference, London Business School, The Wharton Business School and University of Washington at St. Louis, the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their comments, suggestions and advice on this paper, and Katie Moore for editorial help. 2Career advancement measured in terms of promotions, and human-capital development during employment, are important topics for both individuals and organizations (Coff 1997, Wang andBarney 2006). The path to career advancement affects future rewards for both individuals and organizations (Bidwell and Mollick 2015), and prior literature has shown that career experiences can shape and reveal human capital and affect career advancement of individuals (Campbell 2013, Dokko et al. 2009). The literature has also documented that early career experiences have a lasting effect on subsequent job performance via socialization, approaches to problem solving (Tilcsik 2014), and access to reputationbuilding opportunities (Briscoe and Kellogg 2011).Past work has studied how contextual features like resource munificence affect individuals, but much of this work has focused on the impact of economic and technological factors on individual performance (Tilcisk 2014). A relatively unexplored area is studying the impact of workplace challengeuncertainty and threats arising from the broader sociopolitical cont...

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“…Prahalad and Hamel (2008) do not address the influence of IT in the development of core competence of the firm. Another study by Wang and Mahoney (2009) concurs that RBV contributes to sustainable performance of the firm, but lacks the link of IT with firm competitiveness. Among the empirical studies that have been conducted in the Kenya local environment, there is none that directly relates to the influence of IT capabilities on competitiveness of the firm.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 97%

Mediation by Firm Competence on the Relationship between Information Technology and Competitiveness of Consultancy Firms in Nairobi County, Kenya

Nchebere²

2017

ijsrm

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The business environment is constantly changing according to the influence of competitive forces and other environmental factors. Firms respond to the conditions surrounding them by adjusting their purpose and shape via deployment of appropriate strategic capabilities to match the environmental challenges and enhance competitiveness. Increasingly many firms have resorted to heavy investments in IT capabilities, to cope with the changing business environment. However, only some firms receive pay offs while many others do not. This study is of the view that the difference in competitiveness of firms with respect to the heavy IT investments is in how the individual firm competence mediates the deployment IT capabilities. However, there is scarcity of information on mediation of firm competence on the deployment of IT capabilities as a source of competitiveness. This study undertook to explore how firm competence mediates the deployment of information technology to build competitiveness among consultancy firms Nairobi County, Kenya. This study tested the null hypothesis that firm competence does not mediate the relationship between IT capabilities and firm competitiveness. This study adopted a positivist philosophy approach, cross-sectional explanatory research design and random sampling method in order to obtain the primary data. From the total population of 265 consultancy firms in Nairobi, a target sample of 200 consultancy firms was picked via Microsoft excel generated random numbers. Data collection was done via structured questionnaires, after which multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data. External validity of the questionnaire was complied with by adequate sample size, which for this study was 200. The reliability of the research instrument was tested via test-retest method on the same pilot sample and the instrument refined to achieve a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.855. The outcome of this study was in line with the theoretical and conceptual predictions. The study found that Firm competence partially mediates the relationship between IT capabilities and firm competitiveness, within the context of consultancy business firms in Nairobi County, and the consultancy firms can strengthen this relationship by increasing the level of email usage by the organization, automation of organizational processes and automation of customer information, which will give rise to better firm competence and ultimately higher level of competiveness. Finally the study recommended that consultancy business firms in Nairobi County should increase the level of email usage by the organization, resulting in better firm competence and subsequently higher level of firm competiveness.

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Firm‐specific knowledge resources and competitive advantage: the roles of economic‐ and relationship‐based employee governance mechanisms

Cited by 385 publications

References 100 publications

Dynamic capabilities and organizational performance: The mediating role of innovation

Dynamic capabilities and organizational performance: The mediating role of innovation

Sink or Swim: The Role of Workplace Context in Shaping Career Advancement and Human-Capital Development

Mediation by Firm Competence on the Relationship between Information Technology and Competitiveness of Consultancy Firms in Nairobi County, Kenya

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