آیا صنعت یک مشکل است؟ بررسی نقش ساختار صنعت و یادگیری سازمانی در نوآوری و کارایی نام تجاری

A manager's perception of industry structure (dynamism) has the potential to impact various organizational strategies and behaviors. This may be particularly so with regard to perceptions driving organizational learning orientations and innovation based marketing strategy. The position taken here suggests that firms operating within a competitive industry tend to pursue innovative ways of performing value-creating activities, which requires the development of learning capabilities. The results of a study of SMEs suggest that market focused learning, relative to other learning capabilities plays a key role in the relationships between industry structure, innovation and brand performance. The findings also show that market focused learning and internally focused learning influence innovation and that innovation influences a brand's performance.

The strategic marketing literature reflects a growing interest in the role of competitive environment on a firm's marketing strategy and performance (e.g. McKee et al., 1989, Gruca and Sudharshan, 1995, Day and Wensley, 1988 and Cooper, 2000). Some researchers have examined the influence of competitive environment on innovation, which is a central strategy pursued by firms for value creation and gaining positional advantages in competitive markets (e.g. Cooper, 2000), whilst others have examined the impact on market adaptability (e.g. McKee et al., 1989), market orientation (e.g. Slater and Narver, 1995) and brand performance (e.g. Gatignon et al., 1990). In relation to competitive environment and firm capabilities the industrial organization and resource-based views have traditionally produced competing explanations for the persistence of unequal returns (Powell, 1996) and are seen as being at odds with each other. However, it has been suggested that in fact the two views may complement each other in explaining firm performance (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993 and Mahoney and Pandian, 1992). As yet, empirical studies examining these complementarities have been limited, however, the processes through which industry structure influences competitive marketing strategy may offer the potential for improved understanding of environment-firm impacts on brand performance. Drawing on organizational learning theory and strategic choice theory, it is argued that a firm's strategic adaptation occurs through managerial perceptions of its industry environment. As such, the focus here is on exploring the relationship between industry environment, organizational learning, innovation and a firm's brand performance.

The theoretical starting point in this paper was that managerial perceptions of industry structure play a key role in the learning and innovation process. It was believed that firms experiencing competitive environments attempt to achieve positional advantages by challenging their current assumptions about the ways of performing activities in the value chain. They tend to perceive innovative ways of performing activities of the value chain, which requires such firms to build and nurture distinctive learning capabilities. We concur with Ghemawat (1991), arguing that without a challenging environment firms lack impetus for discretionary managerial decisions on strategy crafting. In effect a central theme of our research was that industry competitiveness leads to greater learning and learning in turn drives organizational innovation and brand performance. The conceptual framework presented and tested here largely supports this view. However, the strength of the relationship of industry environment was weaker than expected suggesting the need for further research into both industry specific and firm-specific factors jointly impacting on a firm's learning strategies. It is our view that by focusing on key environmental forces and firm capabilities such as learning and innovation greater gains can be made in understanding firm performance. Such an approach brings together both external and internal determinants and in effect provides a macro industry and micro firm basis to explore competitive marketing strategies.