Aimé Heene, Rudy Martens and Ron Sanchez
The paper “Linking learning, customer value, and resource investment decisions: Developing dynamic capabilities” by Graham Hubbard, Angelina Zubac, and Lester Johnson suggests…
Abstract
The paper “Linking learning, customer value, and resource investment decisions: Developing dynamic capabilities” by Graham Hubbard, Angelina Zubac, and Lester Johnson suggests that strategic capabilities are developed when market learning processes are directly integrated into a firm's investment processes. Explicitly linking market learning processes and resource investment decisions is essential in building and maintaining competitive advantage. Based on a broad theoretical exploration, this paper presents six derived hypotheses about learning and dynamic capabilities development:H1Successful firms have higher levels of dynamic capabilities than less successful firms.H2Dynamic capabilities are more important and better developed in successful firms in dynamic markets than in mature markets.H3Successful firms learn more about customer value than do less successful firms.H4Managerial perceptions of how customer value can be created are more aligned in successful firms than less successful firms.H5Resource investment decision making is more aligned with market learning processes in successful firms than less successful firms.H6Firms in dynamic markets are more oriented to customer learning than those in mature markets.The paper argues that previous work on analyzing capabilities of organizations has not been directly linked to how firms actually learn, specifically about customers and about ways of creating customer value. Yet it is the process of learning about customers that is critical for creating value for customers and for targeting investments in resources that support the activities and processes necessary to create and deliver that value. The integration of learning about customers into resource investment decision processes is thus argued to be critical to the creation of firm value and to the development of dynamic capability in an organization.
The forces driving change in MBA education in Australia areanalysed and the resulting changes that are occurring are described.Reduced government funding, the emerging…
Abstract
The forces driving change in MBA education in Australia are analysed and the resulting changes that are occurring are described. Reduced government funding, the emerging globalisation of the market and increased institutional flexibility are leading to a wider choice of providers and course types. Choices regarding course length, teaching/learning methodologies, full or part‐time courses, content and costs are discussed. The potential emergence of a project‐based MBA market for corporate clients is also considered through examination of the MBA (Mt Eliza) course.
Details
Keywords
This paper explains how a variety of business units within a listed corporation have tried to define their strategic capabilities, as part of a process of developing independent…
Abstract
This paper explains how a variety of business units within a listed corporation have tried to define their strategic capabilities, as part of a process of developing independent business strategies within the corporation's corporate strategy. This paper describes the processes by which strategic capabilities were identified in each unit, the differences and similarities between the capabilities identified at the business unit level, and their consistency (or otherwise) with an overall corporate strategic positioning.
This paper is based on the author's consulting experience with both the parent corporation and its individual business units over a period of 15 years, and most recently on an intensive relationship with one division of the corporation and its 13 business units began three years ago. An objective of these relationships has been clarifying each business unit's strategy and any basis for sustainable competitive advantage of its strategic capabilities. What emerged from this process is a set of definitions of business unit strategic capabilities which are both similar to, but in some cases different from, the corporate parent's perceptions of the strategic capabilities of its business units.
This paper describes the process by which a first representation of “strategic capabilities” emerged in each business unit. For each unit, the agreed descriptions of strategic capabilities helped guide strategic decision making and implementation and assisted each unit in clarifying its strategic positioning in its markets. However, considerable differences remain in the articulation of each unit's capabilities and in what capabilities are considered to exist in the business units.
This paper is designed to give practitioners and academics a case study through which to consider practicalities involved in articulating and operationalizing strategic capabilities in general and in defining corporate strategies in particular.
Graham Hubbard, Angelina Zubac and Lester Johnson
This paper suggests that firm strategic capabilities are developed through accumulated learning and associated investment processes and that it is these learning processes, and…
Abstract
This paper suggests that firm strategic capabilities are developed through accumulated learning and associated investment processes and that it is these learning processes, and the resource investments that follow from decisions about them, rather than the activities or resources of the firm per se, that provide a basis of sustainable competitive advantage. Specifically, we suggest that gathering information about customer behavior, the managerial perceptions that come from learning about customer behavior, and the investment decisions that follow from those perceptions provide the basis for the development, or for the failure to develop, of firm capabilities. We further argue that such learning processes will differ with market environments, and that firm performance will reflect such learning processes actually develop in different market environments.
Graham Hubbard, Angelina Zubac, Lester Johnson and Ron Sanchez
Drawing on concepts from the resource-based view, the dynamic capabilities school, and competence-base theory, this chapter develops a value chain framework for evaluating and…
Abstract
Drawing on concepts from the resource-based view, the dynamic capabilities school, and competence-base theory, this chapter develops a value chain framework for evaluating and managing resources and capabilities. In common with activity-based value chains, our framework is a method for representing and analyzing the firm, and identifying what may be its optimal configuration. However, as opposed to an activity-based value chain, our approach is specifically designed to help clarify interrelationships between a firm's various assets and capabilities. Thus, it may help researchers and managers alike to analyze to what extent a firm's successes may be attributed to a certain set of resources and capabilities and whether there is scope to further develop them to advance the firm's strategies. Our value chain framework can be used singly or in conjunction with an activity value chain framework, depending on the strategic problem being addressed. However, we suggest that our resource and capabilities value chain will be most useful when determining how a firm's business processes should be funded, what resources and capabilities should make them up, or how these decisions could affect the firm's present organizational structure.
Angelina Zubac, Graham Hubbard and Lester W. Johnson
The paper aims to explain why the customer value construct is important to resource‐based view (RBV) scholars and how one might define it to study it.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explain why the customer value construct is important to resource‐based view (RBV) scholars and how one might define it to study it.
Design/methodology/approach
By a summary of the ideas behind the RBV and previously applied definitions of customer value, the paper explains why Woodruff's multidimensional definition of customer value is suited to studying customer value from a managerial perspective. To this end, it develops a framework and derives three research questions for studying how managers use the firm's resources to create customer value.
Findings
It was found that to understand how managers invest in dynamic capabilities to create customer value one must identify how a firm's managers develop a shared understanding of their customers' values and the firm's capacity to deliver on them. This shared understanding will need to reflect customers' multidimensional values and what is most important to the firm.
Practical implications
These phenomena are best studied qualitatively because the focus is on understanding how managers work together and use the resources at their disposal to create customer value. The performance effects of different resource investment decisions can be examined by including high and low performing firms in the study dataset.
Originality/value
The paper describes a framework that can explain how managers map customer value and its different dimensions against the resources at the firm which they believe can deliver an optimal product and service mix to the firm's customers.
Details
Keywords
Rudy Martens, Aimé Heene and Ron Sanchez
This volume begins with a literature review of the different approaches to the management of competences in interorganizational relations. In Frédéric Prevot's paper, “The…
Abstract
This volume begins with a literature review of the different approaches to the management of competences in interorganizational relations. In Frédéric Prevot's paper, “The management of competences in the context of interorganizational relations,” the existing literature is structured in a two-dimensional model based on the nature of the relationship (cooperation or competition) and the actions taken on the competences (leveraging or building). Four objectives for the management of competences in the context of interorganizational relationships are thus derived: (1) sharing of competences, (2) protection of competences, (3) creation of competences, and (4) acquisition of competences. Each competence objective then requires specific management approaches to achieve.