Networking strategy as a strategic management tool

Many research studies in operations and strategic management have investigated how different kinds of decisions regarding business relationships can positively affect firm’s operations performance, resources endowment, and competitive position. Very few studies exist trying to illuminate the actual behavior of managers when making strategic decisions concerning their company relationships with other companies as opposed to normative theory. By collecting data from 13 business agreements from 3 firms, the purpose of this paper is explore linkages between the “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue and the “set” of networking decisions that they actually consider whe…

HTA implementation in Sicily: a bottom-up approach

Strategic intents and drivers in business networking decisions: Literature arguments and empirical findings

Groupthink and Project Performance: The Influence of Personal Traits and Interpersonal Ties

Contains fulltext : 166103.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This study explores whether the negative impact of “groupthink concurrence-seeking behavior” (GTB) on business process reengineering (BPR) projects is affected by group members personal traits and interpersonal ties within the group. To this purpose we conduct and present the results of a longitudinal controlled field experiment over 18 BPR projects lasting 3 months and involving 18 teams comprising 71 first-year MBA students. The main contribution of this study is twofold. First, we explicitly consider and measure the core construct of groupthink phenomenon: that is, GTB. Existing organizational behavior literature has, …

Networking Strategies as Enabler for Competitive Advantage Creation: market-based and resource-based Perspectives

This paper explores the potential of networking strategy as a source of competitive advantage by integrating market-based and resource-based logics. It contributes to production economics literature by considering not just supply chain network structures but also others kinds of network that can emerge from horizontal agreements (i.e. alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, consortia, etc.). The paper reviews the literature and develops propositions regarding how make/buy/make together decisions, governance mechanisms and network-base structures allow firms both to pursue pre fixed operations performance objectives and obtain/create valuable resources. The practical applications of the pro…

Networking strategies as enabler for competitive advantage creation: a market-based and a resource-based perspectives

The purpose of this work is to explore the potential of networking strategy as a source of competitive advantage by integrating market-based and resource-based logics. According to the former logic a firm identifies operations performance objectives as drivers for achieving its wished competitive position and advantage. According to the latter logic the firm achieves a competitive advantage through the obtainment and/or the creation of valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable resources. Both operations performance objectives and strategic resource needs should, thus, directly affect networking strategy decisions. The question is whether they effectively do and how. In thi…

Networking strategy for competitive advantage

This paper explores the potential of networking strategy as a source of competitive advantage by integrating market- based and resource-based logics. It contributes to operations management literature by considering not just supply chain structures but also others kinds of network that can emerge from horizontal agreements (i.e. alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, etc.). The paper reviews the literature and develops propositions regarding how make/buy/make together decisions, governance mechanisms and network-base structures allow firms both to pursue operations performance objectives and obtain/create valuable resources. A case study supports the propositions and shows a practical app…

Best practice strategies in business process redesign: an experimental study

This paper presents investigates the determinants for best practices’ adoption in business process redesign. Specifically, we evaluate the role of the best practices in business process redesign by exploring their adoption dependences from the process typology and the goals of the redesign project. In order to answer to our research questions, we conducted an experimental study over 18 business process redesign projects carried out by 18 teams of students. The experimental study shows that there exists a business practice strategic orientation in redesigning a process, i.e. evident correlations exist among the adoption of specific practices with the adoption of other specific practices, but…

Business agreements objectives and decisions: a field research

PurposeMany research studies in operations management (OM) and strategic management (SM) investigate how different kinds of firm decisions regarding business relationships can positively affect a firm's operations performance, resource endowment, and competitive position. Very few studies exist, however, that have attempted to illuminate the actual behaviors of managers when making strategic decisions about their intercompany relationships; rather, most existing studies focus on normative theory. The purpose of this paper is to explore linkages between the “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue, the “set” of networking decisions they make, and the “set” of busines…

Achieving operations performance objectives through networking strategy

The main objective of this paper is to investigate how firms make strategic networking decisions in order to pursue competitive advantage. Literature analysis with theory building purposes and two case studies to support our theoretical findings and to explore the linkages between networking strategy and operations performance objectives constitute our research methods. Our analysis led to the definition of networking strategy in terms of decisional dimensions, and found effective linkages between networking decisions made by managers and wished operations performance objectives.

How firms are using networking decisions to achieve strategic objectives: Building theories from four case studies

Many research studies in OM literature have investigated how different kinds of focal firm decisions regarding business vertical relationships (i.e. with both suppliers and buyers) can positively affect firm’s operations performance and thus improve its competitive position. In this paper we extend this genre of study by also considering business horizontal relationships (i.e with competitors and firms that own complementary capabilities) and by considering the impact of business relationships not only on focal firm’s operations performance but also on its resources endowment. We present four cases that describe what are the strategic manager intents (in term of operations performance and r…

Management by objective enhances innovation behavior: An exploratory study in global management consulting

The goal of this study is to explain the complex effect of management by objective practices on employees' innovative behavior. Instead of considering individual goal orientation and/or formal creativeness-related goal assignment (as in the recent literature), the focus of this paper is on exploring whether the official adoption of management by objective practices may foster employee innovative behavior. Basing on the results of 2 exploratory interviews with 2 senior managers of 2 global consulting companies, we build our conceptual model. We use a goal-based view to this purpose. Then, we test the model by using data collected by surveying 80 consultants employed in 17 different managemen…

Do horizontal relationships matter to production and operations managers?

This paper shifts the focus of production, operations and supply chain management business relationships from the vertical to the horizontal side and calls for more research on this issue. The main intent is to provide managerially oriented arguments regarding the linkages between the achievement of operations-related goals and decisions related to horizontal business relationships. Specifically, we address the following research question: Does a linkage exist between production and operations objectives and the decisions a company makes about horizontal agreements, particularly horizontal governance mode choice? To answer this research question, we develop literature-based hypotheses and c…

How firm boundaries are drawn

While many studies exist regarding the firm choice to make vs. buy, there has been little study about the choice between make, buy or ally. In this paper we investigate how firms choose among make, buy or make together when they have to organize a particular transaction. In particular we develop theory-based hypothesis that link the theoretical determinants of firm’s boundaries to the governance choice. In order to test such hypothesis we operationalize the main constructs in measurable variables and we collect information for that. The final sample represents 4316 mergers and acquisitions, alliances, and divestitures announced and completed by 88 of the first-ranked 100 members of the 2000…

Shared Leadership Regulates Operational Team Performance in the Presence of Extreme Decisional Consensus/Conflict: Evidences from Business Process Reengineering

External knowledge sourcing for R&D activities: antecedents and implications of governance mode choice

This paper investigates how internal and external factors affect the choice between alliances and joint ventures (A&JVs) and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for the external sourcing of research and development (R&D) activities, and whether or not such a choice is really con- tingent, that is, is it the best choice in terms of its impact on firms’ innovative performance under those circumstances? We build a set of hypotheses based on both the transaction-cost theory and the resource-based view, and test them through a secondary data source analy- sis. We found that companies adopt either R&D M&A or A&JV depending on internal (e.g. resources and capabilities, innovation experience) and exter…