تیم و منابع سازمانی، جهت گیری های استراتژیک و عملکرد شرکت در یک اقتصاد انتقالی

Firms in transitional economies are learning to develop strategies to exploit new market opportunities though bounded by their lack of market experience and resources as well as institutional and cultural heritage. This paper examines the managerial orientations of top managers in the transitional economy of China by focusing on a firm's team and organizational resources. Specifically, the following antecedents motivate a firm to put more emphases on strategic orientations: the firm has an effective top management team, strong managerial competences, and when the firm has ample endowment of slack resources, social network, and support from the institutional environment. Empirical results support that team orientation, managerial competence, social network, and local institutional support are instrumental in developing market-focused strategic orientations. In addition, strategic orientations with heavy emphases on overall low costs and product innovation relate to higher firm performance.

Gavetti and Rivkin (2007) call for a focus on the cognitive side of strategy, that is, on the study of how managers understand their environment (both internal and external) and search rationally for an effective strategy to exploit market opportunities (Johnson and Hoopes, 2003, Kabanoff and Brown, 2008 and Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000). One major theme of these studies is along the construct of strategic orientation. These studies include the content and dimensions of strategic orientations (Davis and Schul, 1993) and the relationships of orientations with environment, organizational design, location, and ultimately firm performance (Acquaah, 2007, Canina et al., 2005, Hitt et al., 1995, Morgan and Strong, 2003, Slater et al., 2006 and Wiklund and Shepherd, 2003). Although the study of strategies of firms in transitional economies receives much attention recently, these studies are however fragmented. Most of them focus only on the relationships between competitive strategies and firm performance, network and alliances, corporate governance, and international strategies (Luo and Tung, 2007, Tan et al., 2007 and Yiu et al., 2007), but not that much on the discussion of how a firm develops its strategies. Very often, top managers examine context-dependent factors in strategy formulation process. The heuristics of top managers in transitional economies are different from that of managers in mature economies because of the specific institutional and contextual factors of transitional economies (Tan et al., 2007 and Wright et al., 2005). Based on their limited and intuitive understanding of the firm, the market, as well as the institutional environment, some managers may behave aggressively when they see the opportunities in the market (Zhou et al., 2009) and put stronger emphases on value-added strategies. Some other managers however are more conservative and may choose to examine cautiously their internal resources before taking actions (Lau et al., 2008). This study brings together managerial cognitions and behavioral resource-based view perspectives (Gavetti and Rivkin, 2007 and Pitelis, 2007) by focusing on the effects of a firm's resources (both team and organizational) on the firm's strategic orientations, and subsequently firm performance in the transitional economy of China. Strategic orientation is about the long-term positioning of a firm in the competitive environment and represents the resource allocation priority of a firm. Within the transitional economy context, the study provides a better picture of how managers develop strategic orientations through their understanding and interpretation of team and organizational resources and what impact these orientations have on firm performance. This paper contributes to the literature by affirming the importance of team and organizational resources in such firms. This in turn allows us to better understand how firm resources are used to develop strategies during economic reform. It thus advances the under-studied strategizing process of firms in transitional economies (Wright et al., 2005).

Both team and organizational resources influence the strategic orientations of firms in a transitional economy. Drawing from managerial cognition perspective and resource-based view, this study analyzes the effects of team orientation, managerial competence, as well as slack resources and institutional support. The results confirm that team resources (i.e., effective team and strong managerial competence) have consistent positive effects on market-focused strategic orientations. This is consistent with the prediction that a more effective leadership team gives top managers more confidence to put more emphases on developing strategic orientations for the firm, regardless of cost-based or market-based. The results also indicate that organizational resources in general received mixed support only. Slack resources, in particular, have no effect on strategic orientations. Conceptually, firms in transitional economies are able to do more with more slack resources, especially when most other firms do not have sufficient resources. One possible explanation is that R&D investment and debt/equity ratio are not good indicators of slack resources in the Chinese context. The correlation matrix indicates that R&D expenses are related to overall low cost and product innovation. The regression results however show that their effects are not that evident when other resources are also considered. Thus, in China, having more R&D investment alone is not necessarily an antecedent of market-focused orientations. Some other motivations behind heavy R&D investment may present. Moreover, higher debts may not imply the capacity of a firm to borrow, but rather is a reflection of tough financial situation. Nevertheless, social network with key stakeholders has significant effects on all four orientations. This confirms the previous argument that social relationships play a critical role in the process of transiting to market economies (Hitt et al., 2002 and Ma et al., 2009). A rich endowment of social capital results in more proactive orientations. Compared with social network, local institutional support has opposite effects. It has negative effects on two strategic orientations. In other words, the higher the institutional support the firm received, the less emphasis put on product innovation and service differentiation. It follows that support from local community is in fact a constraint in being more strategic and innovative. It is possible that local government may have restrained the implementation of economic reform. In some cases, it is possible that some firms have a lot of buffer when they receive more support from local community such that they do not need to think and act so strategically in their operations. Thus, relying on more local support is not as good as building up social network as far as the shaping of strategic orientations is concerned. The impact of strategic orientations on firm performance has consistent results. Product innovation and overall low cost are two important predictors. Firms emphasizing these two orientations have positive effects on both financial and operational performance. After taking firm size into account, the effects of these two orientations on firm performance are still significant and therefore this pattern is similar across many firms in China. Perhaps in a transitional economy, it is necessary to focus on overall low cost and new products while the focus on marketing activities (i.e., brand and service differentiation) is not so useful. Past studies examine the effects of TMT more from the angle of demographics but not how top managers actually interact. This study provides support to the claim made by Priem et al. (1999) that the process and their resources are more relevant in organization studies, and we should go beyond the inherent limitation of relying on demographic traits. Using a sample of firms from a transitional economy, this study also provides a more powerful test in the sense that firms have much larger variances in their background and reform stages. This diverse sample provides stronger test of their orientations than those in market economies. From empirical results, private firms have stronger emphases on strategic orientations than firms of other ownership. Because of the transitional economy context, the role of social network is confirmed to be salient. This indicates a need to consider the unique contribution of contextual or institutional factors in examining strategic issues outside the market economy system (Scott, 2002). Future research may look into the complexity of interactions of managerial cognitions and objective environmental factors. This relates to the knowledge structure of top managers at a time of rapid institutional changes (Lau et al., 2002). The current study provides evidence that going beyond TMT demographics is a viable and necessary research line. The process of interactions of managerial cognitions and their relationships with firm outcomes is a fruitful research avenue. The current study uses measures from two informants and collects data in two periods. The potential biases from one single informant and cross-sectional self-reported measures are reduced. Nevertheless, it is better to have multiple informants in the team and performance measures. The study uses the samples of one single transitional economy, though it is the largest and more accessible so far in management studies. It is better to have samples from at least one more large transitional economy (for example Russia or India in BRIC) in order to examine the relationships comparatively. Further, a carefully designed longitudinal study can examine the impact of strategic orientations on the actual strategies taken and subsequent firm performance in the future. In sum, this study contributes to our understanding of strategic orientations in a transitional economy in that an effective team of top managers and strong managerial competences are instrumental in developing market-focused strategic orientations. The endowment of social network is another important organizational resource to rely on. In order for these transitional economy firms to perform, they have to emphasize both product innovation and cost-savings measures.