Heiko Gebauer, Caroline Saul, Mirella Halidmann and Sasha Kramer
This paper aims to illustrate how managing multiple business models can become a key factor for succeeding in base-of-the-pyramid markets.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to illustrate how managing multiple business models can become a key factor for succeeding in base-of-the-pyramid markets.
Design/methodology/approach
Case study was conducted through an engaged scholarship approach.
Findings
The authors highlight that companies can manage multiple business models, if they are following these three steps: recognition of costs-and-benefits, improvement and growth and creation of synergies.
Practical implications
The study provides guidance on how to manage multiple business models.
Social implications
This paper discusses Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, a social enterprise, which provides basic sanitation in bade-of-the-pyramid markets.
Originality/value
Operating more than one business model could cause often strategic failures. Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods explored the advantages of having multiple business models in following three steps: recognition of costs-and-benefits, improvement and growth and creation of synergies.
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Heiko Gebauer, Caroline Jennings Saul and Mirella Haldimann
This paper aims to highlight how initial business models can be converted into a larger-scale solution for tapping into the emerging base-of-the-pyramid markets.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight how initial business models can be converted into a larger-scale solution for tapping into the emerging base-of-the-pyramid markets.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a qualitative, multi-case research design with 20 organizations tapping into the water market at the base-of-the-pyramid.
Findings
This paper explores three business models innovations: fostering value-in-context, allowing for modifiability and embracing organizational ambidexterity.
Research limitations/implications
Due to our qualitative research approach, generalizability of our findings is limited.
Practical implications
The description of the three business model innovations offers guidance for executives to make their business models financially more sustainable in base-of-the-pyramid markets.
Social implications
The water sector represents one especially interesting sector to examine business model innovations. For, among social goods, safe water remains a huge challenge to date where 700 million people remain without access to an improved water source.
Originality/value
Previous business model discussion in base-of-the-pyramid markets focuses on commercial goods. The authors focus on water as a social good. They demonstrate that the existing recommendations that business models in base-of-the-pyramid markets should be inclusive, complex, collaborative and scalable are mandatory, but not sufficient. In addition, business models should foster value-in-context, allow for modifiability and embrace organizational ambidexterity.
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Heiko Gebauer, Mirella Haldimann and Caroline Jennings Saul
The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of management innovations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of management innovations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply a multiple-case (embedded) design, with each organization representing a case, which entails a few embedded units of analysis. Case studies are about the base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) initiatives, during which all organizations are interested in management innovations which support them in coming up with and implementing between two and four new management practices.
Findings
The findings suggest four types of management innovations: efficiency-driven, externally recommended, problem-oriented, and opportunity-oriented management innovation.
Research limitations/implications
This paper explores and analyses management innovations, rather than testing them. As with most qualitative research, the transferability of the findings is limited.
Practical implications
Managers should vigorously pursue management innovations, not only in BoP markets, but also in all markets. Practitioners must, however, ensure that they are not fully absorbed by a single type of management innovation, and recognize the importance of pursing multiple ones.
Social implications
For academics, the authors revitalize the concept of engaged scholarship.
Originality/value
Surprisingly, previous research looks either into generic or specific management innovations. The typology is original, since the typology offers a more fine-grained view on management innovations.
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Heiko Gebauer, Mirella Haldimann and Caroline Jennings Saul
Despite the opportunities provided by pay-per-use (PPU) services, product companies in business-to-business sectors often fail to compete systematically by using them. The purpose…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the opportunities provided by pay-per-use (PPU) services, product companies in business-to-business sectors often fail to compete systematically by using them. The purpose of this paper is to explain how companies can avoid failures when it comes to PPU services. The paper describes the “seizing” capabilities needed to achieve the strategic objectives of PPU services.
Design/methodology/approach
The research process is divided into a pilot and an in-depth study. Altogether, 17 companies participated in the study.
Findings
The findings reveal that the seizing capabilities depend on the strategic objectives of PPU services. To expand the market share with PPU services, companies need to broaden the customer portfolio for PPU services, to align individual services within the entire service portfolio and to balance profits made by PPU services and other business lines. For strategic objectives such as rapid sales growth early in the market development and new market creation other seizing capabilities are required.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are not generalizable, due to the use of a qualitative study. The study is restricted to product companies in the business-to-business sector.
Practical implications
Managers often believe that extending and modularizing the service portfolio is beneficial. When achieving sales growth during the market development phase, these capabilities are in fact sometimes counterproductive. Practitioners have to look into the costs and benefits of setting-up their own financing company and working with banks.
Social implications
PPU services contribute to a more sustainable consumption and make product design more resource-efficient.
Originality/value
The study is original by virtue of systematically studying PPU services, providing a microfoundation for seizing capabilities and developing testable propositions for future research.
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Betty Steenkamer, Caroline Baan, Kim Putters, Hans van Oers and Hanneke Drewes
A range of strategies to improve pharmaceutical care has been implemented by population health management (PHM) initiatives. However, which strategies generate the desired…
Abstract
Purpose
A range of strategies to improve pharmaceutical care has been implemented by population health management (PHM) initiatives. However, which strategies generate the desired outcomes is largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to identify guiding principles underlying collaborative strategies to improve pharmaceutical care and the contextual factors and mechanisms through which these principles operate.
Design/methodology/approach
The evaluation was informed by a realist methodology examining the links between PHM strategies, their outcomes and the contexts and mechanisms by which these strategies operate. Guiding principles were identified by grouping context-specific strategies with specific outcomes.
Findings
In total, ten guiding principles were identified: create agreement and commitment based on a long-term vision; foster cooperation and representation at the board level; use layered governance structures; create awareness at all levels; enable interpersonal links at all levels; create learning environments; organize shared responsibility; adjust financial strategies to market contexts; organize mutual gains; and align regional agreements with national policies and regulations. Contextual factors such as shared savings influenced the effectiveness of the guiding principles. Mechanisms by which these guiding principles operate were, for instance, fostering trust and creating a shared sense of the problem.
Practical implications
The guiding principles highlight how collaboration can be stimulated to improve pharmaceutical care while taking into account local constraints and possibilities. The interdependency of these principles necessitates effectuating them together in order to realize the best possible improvements and outcomes.
Originality/value
This is the first study using a realist approach to understand the guiding principles underlying collaboration to improve pharmaceutical care.
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Betty Steenkamer, Esther de Weger, Hanneke Drewes, Kim Putters, Hans Van Oers and Caroline Baan
The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how population health management (PHM) strategies can successfully integrate and reorganize public health, health care, social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how population health management (PHM) strategies can successfully integrate and reorganize public health, health care, social care and community services to improve population health and quality of care while reducing costs growth, this study compared four large-scale transformation programs: Greater Manchester Devolution, Vancouver Healthy City Strategy, Gen-H Cincinnati and Gesundes Kinzigtal.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the realist methodology, this explorative comparative case-study investigated PHM initiatives' key features and participants' experiences of developing such initiatives. A semi-structured interview guideline based on a theoretical framework for PHM guided the interviews with stakeholders (20) from different sectors.
Findings
Five initial program theories important to the development of PHM were formulated: (1) create trust in a shared vision and understanding of the PHM rationale to establish stakeholders' commitment to the partnership; (2) create shared ownership for achieving the initiative's goals; (3) create shared financial interest that reduces perceived financial risks to provide financial sustainability; (4) create a learning environment to secure initiative's credibility and (5) create citizens' and professionals' awareness of the required attitudes and behaviours.
Originality/value
The study highlights initial program theories for the implementation of PHM including different strategies and structures underpinning the initiatives. These insights provide a deeper understanding of how large-scale transformation could be developed.
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Caroline Kaehr Serra and Stefano Borzillo
The aim of this paper is to provide board members, managers, and researchers of new ventures with insights into how to manage a first-time succession process successfully…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to provide board members, managers, and researchers of new ventures with insights into how to manage a first-time succession process successfully. Successful succession is defined, both in terms of the quality of the experience for the stakeholders involved – in other words, how the founder-CEO, the professional incoming CEO, the top management team, and board members experience the process regarding distrust, resentment, tensions, and intention to leave – and in terms of the effectiveness of the succession, meaning organizational performance levels such as sales growth and return on assets. Depending on the initiating forces of succession (i.e. emanating from founder-CEO, the top management team (TMT), and the board/venture capitalists), evidence is offered on how best to leverage the six factors to allow for a successful succession.
Design/methodology/approach
The research design is built on a case study conducted in 15 first-time successions in new ventures in the high-tech industry. Primary data (interviews, direct observation) and secondary data (archival and internal documents) were analyzed using mainly qualitative methods, enabling cross-comparison between the 15 cases under investigation.
Findings
Our cross-case data analysis uncovered six factors that shaped first-time successions in 15 new ventures. The analysis also revealed that the interplay between these factors, as well as their relative importance, differed depending on who initiated the succession (the founder, the TMT, or the board/venture capitalists). These different sets of interplays led to three patterns of factors that were managed differently in each case in order to ensure the success of a succession process: (1) in the “all hands-on-deck” pattern, a legitimate case for change and the inclusion of the TMT in the succession process are the factors in which to invest the most managerial efforts to ensure a successful succession process; (2) in the “hand-in-glove” pattern, the new CEO's soft skills and the relationship between the incoming and outgoing CEOs have to be leveraged for succession to succeed; and (3) in the “heavy hand” pattern, procedural fairness and succession timing have to be managed to ensure success. A total of six cases of unsuccessful succession were also analyzed. Based on this analysis, two types of malpractice are presented that compromise succession.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are based on a comparative case study of 15 new ventures in the high-tech industry that have experienced first-time succession within the last two years. Further empirical evidence would be required to generalize our results to the high-tech industry at large.
Practical implications
This paper provides founders, managers, and board members with practical recommendations on how best to manage first-time succession in a new venture depending on the initiating force of the succession.
Originality/value
This paper highlights what past literature has not yet revealed, namely that the interplay of factors contributing to a successful succession varies depending on the initiating force behind it, and each succession needs to be managed differently if it is to prove successful. This paper thus enriches existing theory by filling the unexplored links between success in first-time succession and the initiating force of the succession. Some insights into frequently occurring malpractice in the succession process are also presented.
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“GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him,” is an aphorism which has been accepted for many years. But, like many other household words, it is not always true. Even if it were, the dog…
Abstract
“GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him,” is an aphorism which has been accepted for many years. But, like many other household words, it is not always true. Even if it were, the dog to be operated upon would probably prefer a gala day at his Tyburn Tree to being executed in an obscure back yard.