Understanding how and why some firms have proficiency in exploring and exploiting opportunities is a cutting-edge research problem. Our central thesis is that information technology (IT) performs a key role in firms’ opportunity exploration and exploitation. We test the proposed theory using partial least squares path modeling on a combination of survey and secondary data from 203 Spanish firms. We find that: (1) IT infrastructure provides the foundation to build business experimentation and the flexibility to sense and explore business opportunities; and (2) IT-enabled business flexibility helps firms to develop the operational proficiency to exploit opportunities and increase their performance.

How information technology influences opportunity exploration and exploitation firm’s capabilities

https://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/redir.pf?u=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F2112.11822;h=repec:arx:papers:2112.11822

The co-evolutionary relationship between digitalization and organizational agility: Ongoing debates, theoretical developments and future research perspectives

This paper presents a conceptual model reflecting relationships between visionary leadership and service employee creativity through organizational inertia and knowledge-donating behavior. The research sample consists of 423 employees of 21 four-star hotels in Egypt. The PLS-SEM results revealed that service employee creativity is enhanced when they realize their leaders have visions for the future, are capable of overcoming organizational inertia, along with keeping up with simultaneous changes. The results revealed that this behavior dampens the negative relationship between visionary leadership and organizational inertia. The theoretical and practical implications of the extracted results are discussed. 

/pdf/leader-vision-organizational-inertia-and-service-hotel-1h6h687s.pdf

Leader vision, organizational inertia and service hotel employee creativity: Role of knowledge-donating

Despite researchers having averred that big data analytics (BDA) transforms firms' ways of doing business, knowledge about operationalizing these technologies in organizations to achieve strategic objectives is lacking. Moreover, organizations' great appetite for big data and limited empirical proof of whether BDA impacts organizations' transformational capacity poses a need for further empirical investigation. Therefore, this study explores the association between big data analytics management capabilities (BDAMC) and innovation performance via dynamic capabilities (DC), by applying the PLS-SEM technique to analyzing the feedback of 149 firms. Consequently, we ground our arguments on dynamic capability and social capital theory rather than a resource-based view that does not provide suitable explanations for the deployment of resources to adapt to change. Accordingly, we advance this research stream by finding that BDAMC significantly enhances innovation performance through DC. We also extend the literature by disclosing how BDAMC strengthens DC via strategic alignment and social capital. 

/pdf/how-do-firms-create-business-value-and-dynamic-capabilities-81lwm585.pdf

How do firms create business value and dynamic capabilities by leveraging big data analytics management capability?

This research examines the linkage between entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable innovation. Research shows that the effects of entrepreneurial orientation on the exploitation and exploration of sustainable innovation are significantly positive, whereby absorptive capacity acts in a significant mediating role. The interaction between entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity helps organizations overcome organizational inertia and strengthen the sustainability of innovation. By introducing the absorptive capacity theory and the view of organizational inertia, we have conducted empirical research on 392 Chinese environmentally friendly companies that have passed China’s national high-tech enterprise certification. We verified the relevant hypotheses in our framework in a structural model analysis using Mplus. To further look at the interaction terms of potential and realized absorptive capacity, we used PROCESS in SPSS to evaluate the conditional effects of absorptive capacity on coefficient paths between entrepreneurial orientation and the two types of innovation. The results show that entrepreneurial orientation improves the absorptive capacity of organizations, thereby promoting their sustainable innovation. Furthermore, based on the theory of sustainable innovation, we proved the positive impact of realized and potential absorptive capacity on the exploitation and exploration of sustainable innovation. Organizations could balance exploitation and exploration to implement sustainable innovation by adjusting their potential and realized absorptive capacities. Our results can help environmentally friendly organizations adjust the combination of entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity to overcome organizational inertia, manage exploitation and exploration, and implement sustainable innovation.

Does Entrepreneurial Orientation Lead to Successful Sustainable Innovation? The Evidence from Chinese Environmentally Friendly Companies

Firms have increasingly relied on information technology (IT) to remain agile in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Drawing on the organizational inertia theory and literature on IT-enabled agile, this study examines the relationship between organizational inertia, IT ambidexterity (i.e., IT exploration and exploitation), and organizational agility. Quantitative data were collected from 326 respondents through a questionnaire survey in China and analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling. Results show that organizational agility is negatively influenced by organizational inertia, whereas IT exploration and exploitation positively related to organizational agility and IT exploitation is the dominant force. Furthermore, IT exploration and exploitation partially mediate the relationship between organizational inertia and agility. These findings offer new theoretical perspectives on organizational agility and guide practitioners to deal with related inertia issues to effectively improve organizational agility.

Jie Zhen

Papers

Impact of organizational inertia on organizational agility: the role of IT ambidexterity

A Multicircle Order Acceptance Strategy for Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems Considering Customer Choice of Last-Mile Delivery Modes and Time Slots