The elephant in the room of dynamic capabilities: bringing two diverging conversations together
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the reasons for this, using author cocitation analysis to inform their analysis, and show that there are ways to unify the field that rely, paradoxically, on integrating the two contradictory views, while still preserving the assumptions that led to their differences.
Abstract: A critical issue has been absent from the conversation on dynamic capabilities: the two seminal papers represent not only different but contradictory understandings of the construct’s core elements. Here, we explore the reasons for this, using author cocitation analysis to inform our analysis. Our findings suggest that the field is being socially constructed on the basis of two separate domains of knowledge and that underlying structural impediments have impeded dialog across the domains. In light of this evidence, then, we take up the challenge to find a solution to this dilemma. By employing a contingency-based approach, we show that there are ways to unify the field that rely, paradoxically, on integrating the two contradictory views, while still preserving the assumptions that led to their differences. Copyright 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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TL;DR: It is revealed that digital transformation is an ongoing process of using new digital technologies in everyday organizational life, which recognizes agility as the core mechanism for the strategic renewal of an organization's business model, collaborative approach, and eventually the culture.
760 citations
TL;DR: This article develops a meta-framework that specifies antecedents, dimensions, mechanisms, moderators, and outcomes of dynamic capabilities identified in the literature to date and proposes a forward-looking research agenda that outlines directions for future research.
Abstract: Although the dynamic capabilities perspective has become one of the most frequently used theoretical lenses in management research, critics have repeatedly voiced their frustration with this literature, particularly bemoaning the lack of empirical knowledge and the underspecification of the construct of dynamic capabilities. But research on dynamic capabilities has advanced considerably since its early years, in which most contributions to this literature were purely conceptual. A plethora of empirical studies as well as further theoretical elaborations have shed substantial light on a variety of specific, measurable factors connected to dynamic capabilities. Our article starts out by analyzing these studies to develop a meta-framework that specifies antecedents, dimensions, mechanisms, moderators, and outcomes of dynamic capabilities identified in the literature to date. This framework provides a comprehensive and systematic synthesis of the dynamic capabilities perspective that reflects the richness of the research while at the same time unifying it into a cohesive, overarching model. Such an analysis has not yet been undertaken; no comprehensive framework with this level of detail has previously been presented for dynamic capabilities. Our analysis shows where research has made the most progress and where gaps and unresolved tensions remain. Based on this analysis, we propose a forward-looking research agenda that outlines directions for future research.
524 citations
TL;DR: This review organizes emerging insights in a multi-level cognitive model of capability development and deployment that suggests that routines and capabilities are based in particular understandings about how things should be done, that the value of these capabilities is subject to interpretation, and that even the presence of capabilities may be useless without managerial interpretations of their match to the environment.
Abstract: Research on managerial cognition and on organizational capabilities has essentially developed in two parallel tracks. We know much from the resource-based view about the relationship between capabi...
310 citations
TL;DR: A longitudinal analysis of a B2B company's journey to enact its B2C digital strategy, using the dynamic capabilities approach, results in an aligning process model that is comprised of three phases (exploratory, building, and extending) and generalizable organizational aligning actions that form the organization's sensing, seizing, and transforming capacities.
Abstract: Prior IS research has not fully addressed the aligning process in the highly dynamic context of digital strategy. To address this gap, we conduct a longitudinal analysis of a B2B company's journey to enact its B2C digital strategy, using the dynamic capabilities approach. We found that as an organization shifts towards a digital strategy, misalignments between the emergent strategy and resources give rise to tension. Our study resulted in the development of an aligning process model that is comprised of three phases (exploratory, building, and extending) and generalizable organizational aligning actions that form the organization's sensing, seizing, and transforming capacities. These aligning actions iteratively reconfigured organizational resources and refined strategy in order to respond to both changes in the environment and internal tensions. We also recognized that there are challenges to alignment, and conceptualized them as paradoxical tensions. This provided insights as to how such tensions are triggered and how they can be addressed. Finally, by applying the dynamic capabilities approach to aligning, we also show that alignment is not separate from such capabilities, but that aligning is enacted through the sensing, seizing and transforming capacities and their attendant aligning actions.
305 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define dynamic capability as the potential to systematically solve problems, enabled by its propensity to sense opportunities and threats, to make timely decisions, and to implement strategic decisions and changes efficiently, thereby ensuring the right direction.
260 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the link between firm resources and sustained competitive advantage and analyzed the potential of several firm resources for generating sustained competitive advantages, including value, rareness, imitability, and substitutability.
46,648 citations
TL;DR: The dynamic capabilities framework as mentioned in this paper analyzes the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture by private enterprise firms operating in environments of rapid technological change, and suggests that private wealth creation in regimes of rapid technology change depends in large measure on honing intemal technological, organizational, and managerial processes inside the firm.
Abstract: The dynamic capabilities framework analyzes the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture by private enterprise firms operating in environments of rapid technological change. The competitive advantage of firms is seen as resting on distinctive processes (ways of coordinating and combining), shaped by the firm's (specific) asset positions (such as the firm's portfolio of difftcult-to- trade knowledge assets and complementary assets), and the evolution path(s) it has aflopted or inherited. The importance of path dependencies is amplified where conditions of increasing retums exist. Whether and how a firm's competitive advantage is eroded depends on the stability of market demand, and the ease of replicability (expanding intemally) and imitatability (replication by competitors). If correct, the framework suggests that private wealth creation in regimes of rapid technological change depends in large measure on honing intemal technological, organizational, and managerial processes inside the firm. In short, identifying new opportunities and organizing effectively and efficiently to embrace them are generally more fundamental to private wealth creation than is strategizing, if by strategizing one means engaging in business conduct that keeps competitors off balance, raises rival's costs, and excludes new entrants. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
27,902 citations
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25 Nov 1994TL;DR: This paper presents mathematical representation of social networks in the social and behavioral sciences through the lens of Dyadic and Triadic Interaction Models, which describes the relationships between actor and group measures and the structure of networks.
Abstract: Part I. Introduction: Networks, Relations, and Structure: 1. Relations and networks in the social and behavioral sciences 2. Social network data: collection and application Part II. Mathematical Representations of Social Networks: 3. Notation 4. Graphs and matrixes Part III. Structural and Locational Properties: 5. Centrality, prestige, and related actor and group measures 6. Structural balance, clusterability, and transitivity 7. Cohesive subgroups 8. Affiliations, co-memberships, and overlapping subgroups Part IV. Roles and Positions: 9. Structural equivalence 10. Blockmodels 11. Relational algebras 12. Network positions and roles Part V. Dyadic and Triadic Methods: 13. Dyads 14. Triads Part VI. Statistical Dyadic Interaction Models: 15. Statistical analysis of single relational networks 16. Stochastic blockmodels and goodness-of-fit indices Part VII. Epilogue: 17. Future directions.
17,104 citations
TL;DR: In this article, three distinct intuitive notions of centrality are uncovered and existing measures are refined to embody these conceptions, and the implications of these measures for the experimental study of small groups are examined.
14,757 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1959
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the role of large and small firms in a growing economy and found that large firms are more likely to acquire and merge smaller firms in order to increase their size.
Abstract: Introduction Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Firm in Theory 3. The Productive Opportunity of the Firm and the 'Entrepreneur' 4. Expansion Without Merger: The Receding Managerial Limit 5. 'Inherited' Resources and the Direction of Expansion 6. The Economies of Size and the Economies of Growth 7. The Economics of Diversification 8. Expansion Through Acquisition and Merger 9. The Rate of Growth of Firms Through Time 10. The Position of Large and Small Firms in a Growing Economy 11. Growing Firms in a Growing Economy: The Process of Industrial Concentration and the Pattern of Dominance
14,137 citations