چشم انداز مزیت ـ منابع عملکرد استراتژی محصول - بازار و سرمایه استراتژیک در شرکت های فن آوری پیشرفته

Contrary to common misconceptions, firms tend generally to remain constant in their strategic approach to markets and rarely deviate from their prevailing strategic archetype. Consequently, the effectiveness of a firm's product–market strategy is as important as its persistence in achieving overall strategic performance. Adopting a resource-advantage perspective, we examine the extent to which resource bundles differ among firms within a product–market strategy performance typology. Analyzing data generated from high-technology industrial manufacturers, we find that successful strategists are endowed with significantly greater levels of resources–that include ‘strategy championing’, ‘strategy commitment’, ‘implementation support’, ‘implementation effectiveness’, ‘learning’, and ‘memory’–in contrast with unsuccessful strategists, hopeful strategists, and fortunate strategists. Further, important inter-group differences are identified and discussed, along with the implications of this study for researchers and marketing managers.

According to the resource-based view, resources are either tangible or intangible and both heterogeneous and imperfectly mobile among firms (Barney, 1991)—with emphasis on the possession of these resources. In contrast, competence-based theory seeks to explain how firms develop strategies to effectively deploy resources in such a way as to enable the firm to compete in a marketplace (Sanchez, Heene, & Thomas, 1996). The resource-advantage theory (hereafter R-A theory) of competition draws on both theories viewing resources as significantly heterogeneous and imperfectly mobile between firms and emphasizes resource deployment over mere resource possession (Hunt, 2000 and Hunt and Morgan, 1995). R-A theory considers resources as, “the tangible and intangible entities available to the firm that enable it to produce efficiently and/or effectively a market offering that has value for some market segment or segments” (Hunt & Morgan, 1995, p.6). So, in contrast to the resource-based view, possessing valuable, durable, and inimitable tangible or intangible resources alone do not allow the firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Rather, it is necessary to cultivate and deploy all value creating, tangible and intangible entities through product–market strategy. Resources may be described as tangible (physical) or intangible (non-physical). Under R-A theory intangible resources can include organizational learning; relationships; entrepreneurial skills and capabilities; culture; brands, and so forth. The implication of intangible resources being heterogeneous and imperfectly mobile is the potential this provides for creating value and achieving competitive advantage. Hence they may be referred to as strategic. To achieve a sustainable advantageous position, the firm must use resources which are hard for competitors to imitate or acquire. These resources should therefore be mostly intangible (making them harder to obtain and also lack transparency); heterogeneous and so differ between firms; and, imperfectly mobile so that even if competitors can see what intangible elements contribute to value and advantage, they are then difficult to acquire. Firms may be regarded as bundles of strategic resources, capabilities, and competencies that provide a distinct source of competitive heterogeneity (Barney, 1991). Capabilities and competencies are intangible in nature and involve the capacity of firms to deploy resources advantageously through product–market strategy (Hunt, 2000). They are complex bundles of skills and accumulated knowledge enabling firms to utilize their resources to create value and competitive advantage (Day, 1994). R-A theory (Hunt, 2000 and Hunt and Morgan, 1995) views competencies as distinct resources to be employed in product–market strategy. Firms may develop comparative advantages not only from their resource bundles but also by combining lower order resources into distinct combinations or composites termed higher order resources, synonymous with competencies (Hunt, 2000). These, like other strategic resources, can be applied through product–market strategy to create superior value and competitive advantage. Informed by R-A theory, we propose a multi-dimensional construct described as strategic capital. The ‘capital’ metaphor has been widely used in the management and cognate disciplines to refer to resources within the firm that contribute to its market value. Here, we employ the term ‘strategic capital’ as a construct that captures some of the salient resources enabling the successful realization of product–market strategy. We argue that this is a higher order resource composed of human, organizational, informational, and relational capital elements ( Hunt & Morgan, 1995) and the manner in which strategic capital can be manifest in firms is through intangibles inclusive, but not exhaustive, of strategy championing, strategy commitment, strategy implementation support, strategy implementation effectiveness, learning, and memory. We contend that comparative advantage in these intangible resources creates strategic capital that can be leveraged to improve the product–market strategy performance of firms. Our objective in this study is to address recent calls for research adopting R-A theory. We attempt to contribute to this literature by empirically examining whether strategic capital differences exist across firm groups identified from a product–market strategy performance typology. We begin by discussing product–market strategy and strategy adherence in the light of R-A theory, and our rationale for using typologies is then presented. The theoretical underpinnings of strategic capital are then considered leading to our hypothesis. The research method, analysis, results, and implications are then discussed.

R-A theory posits that superior performing product–market strategies are a result of comparative advantages in strategic capital (Hunt & Morgan, 1995). We hypothesized that significant differences in strategic capital would be found between high performing firms and low performing firms, such that high performing firms would be endowed with greater levels of strategic capital. Our findings confirm this hypothesis as successful strategists were endowed with consistently greater levels of strategic capital relative to unsuccessful strategists, hopeful strategists, and fortunate strategists. Four dimensions of strategic capital in particular contribute to explaining differences between these groups and to achieving superior levels of performance. Specifically, implementation support, implementation effectiveness, learning, and memory were shown to vary significantly between each group whereby higher performing firms exhibited greater mean levels of these resources relative to low performers. Inadequacies in implementation support and an inability to implement product–market strategy constrain the successful realization of product–market strategy. This conclusion is echoed by Menon et al. (1999) where interviews with managers revealed strategies often failed due to a lack of necessary implementation support, although they neglected to investigate this in their work. Further, without the ability to effectively implement product–market strategy, the firm is unable to deploy its available resources to exploit comparative advantages it may hold in other areas. Exploiting resources to effectively implement product–market strategy means the firm is able to compete using its chosen methods. It is apparent that successful strategists are endowed with greater learning and memory capabilities relative to rivals, and as such these resources play a key role in achieving superior strategy performance. Such conclusions are consistent with research from Moorman and Miner (1997) and Baker and Sinkula (1999) which associate learning and memory with superior firm performance. These results are also consistent with R-A theory. Firms, by learning through competing in the marketplace, can become aware of their relative resource and marketplace positions which prompt them to learn more about competitors' offerings and sources of advantage (Hunt, 2000). This can correspond with the degradation of competitors' comparative advantages. Therefore, learning and memory can become key resources in the battle for comparative advantages in delivering superior value and performance. The results for the high strategy adherence groups demonstrate a strong presence of strategy commitment which contributes to our understanding of adherence. Significant differences were found between successful strategists and the two low adherence groups along the dimension of commitment and it is apparent that high adherence firms are particularly endowed with strong strategy commitment from organizational members. This implies that high adherence firms in setting themselves to one clear product–market strategy can foster greater strategy commitment and gain comparative advantages over rivals along this dimension. This should help firms in both developing product–market strategy and in realizing the strategy it would most like to employ; thus allowing the firm to approach and compete in the marketplace as it intended and bring to market superior valued offers.