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This study aims to examine the impact of the regulatory focus of the top management team (TMT) members on the technological diversification of firms in high-technology industries based on the upper echelons theory and regulatory focus theory and explore the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty.

This paper uses data on the Chinese Growth Enterprises Market Board (GEM)-listed companies from 2012 to 2016. The authors collected data on TMT regulatory focus from firms’ annual reports by Python programming. A fixed-effects model was used to test our hypotheses.

Results indicate that TMTs with a high promotion focus are associated with greater technological diversification, while TMTs with a high prevention focus are linked to lower technological diversification. Moreover, environmental uncertainty amplifies the positive relationship between promotion-focused TMTs and technological diversification, while it diminishes the negative relationship between prevention-focused TMTs and technological diversification.

This study is limited to high-technology firms listed on the Chinese GEM, which may restrict the generalizability of the findings. Future research could validate these results in different countries and industries to enhance their robustness. Additionally, this study focuses on the impact of TMT regulatory focus on technological diversification; future studies could explore its influence on other strategic decisions, such as digital transformation or innovation strategies.

The results suggest that firms should carefully consider the regulatory focus of their TMT when making strategic decisions regarding technological diversification. Boards of directors should ensure that the TMT’s regulatory focus aligns with the firm’s strategic objectives, particularly in high-technology industries. Moreover, firms should adapt their strategies to the level of environmental uncertainty to better navigate the risks and opportunities presented by a dynamic market environment.

Supportive evidence allows authors to discuss how our findings contribute to the upper echelons theory, as well as the emerging stream of firm technological diversification, which provided valuable psychological insights into the factors influencing TMT strategic decision-making. Meanwhile, this paper integrates the factors of the industry macro-environment to explore the changes in the TMT regulatory focus on firm technological diversification under different contexts.

To answer the questions: what roles windows of opportunity act in the catchup process of latecomers, what strategies latecomer enterprises should adopt to size windows of opportunity to catch-up with incumbents even going beyond?

This paper studies the catch-up history of the Chinese mobile phone industry and proposes a sectoral innovation system under scenario of technology paradigm shifts. Then a history-friendly simulation model and counterfactual analysis are conducted to learn how different windows of opportunity and catch-up strategies influence the catch-up performance of latecomers.

Results show latecomers can catch up with technology ability by utilizing technology window and path-creating strategy. However, catching up with the market is not guaranteed. Demand window can help latecomers to catch up with market as it increases their survival rates, different sized windows benefit different strategies. However, it also enlarges incumbents' scale effect. Without technology window technology catch up is not guaranteed. Two windows have combination effects. Demand window affects the “degree” of change in survival rates, while the technology window affects the “speed” of change. Demand window provides security; technology window provides the possibility of a breakthrough for technology ability.

The findings of this paper provide theoretical guidance for latecomer enterprises to choose appropriate catch-up strategies to seize different opportunity windows.

This paper emphasizes the abrupt change of industrial innovation system caused by technology paradigm shifts, which makes up for the shortcomings of previous researches on industrial innovation system which either studied the influence of static factors or based on the influence of continuous changes.

This article aims to unfold digital servitization by exploring the key resources and resource orchestration (i.e. resource configuration and interaction).

This article conducted an explorative two-stage research strategy of Chinese servitized manufacturers using a preliminary case study and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) design. The data collection was conducted between 2016 and 2021.

This article identifies five key resources – radical, complex technological resources, complementary, specific market resources and digital resources – and their configurations – leveraging market opportunities, leveraging innovation integration and leveraging resource advantages – to facilitate servitization in the digital age. The findings underscore the interaction between technological and market resources as well as the role of digital resources in promoting the servitization journey.

This article contributes to the understanding of servitization in the digital context by examining the key resources and their interactions involved. It builds upon the configurational logic of servitization, expanding the existing framework in the digital context and highlighting the significance of technological and market resource orchestration and interaction in servitization research. Moreover, the paper contributes through its exploratory two-stage approach, going beyond a conceptual understanding of servitization by focusing on both the factors that enable servitization (WHAT) and the configurations that lead to servitization (HOW). Additionally, the article investigates the attributes of resources as lower-level components, addressing the need to explore the micro-level practice of resource realignment. By providing clarity on the configurations of servitization, the paper offers practical guidelines for practitioners on how to effectively utilize resources and benefit from digital servitization.

As various different and even contradictory concepts are proposed to depict a firm's capabilities related to big data, and extant relevant research is fragmented and scattered in several disciplines, there is currently a lack of holistic and comprehensive understanding of how big data alters value creation by facilitating firm capabilities. To narrow this gap, this study aims to synthesize current knowledge on the firm capabilities and transformation of value creation facilitated by big data.

The authors adopt an inductive and rigorous approach to conduct a systematic review of 185 works, following the “Grounded Theory Literature-Review Method”.

The authors introduce and develop the concept of big data competency, present an inductive framework to open the black box of big data competency following the logic of virtual value chain, provide a structure of big data competency that consists of two dimensions, namely, big data capitalization and big data exploitation, and further explain the evolution of value creation structure from value chain to value network by connecting the attributes of big data competency (i.e. connectivity and complementarity) with the transformation of value creation (i.e. optimizing and pioneering).

The big data competency, an inclusive concept of firm capabilities to deal with big data, is proposed. Based on this concept, the authors highlight the significant contributions that extant research has made toward our understanding of how big data alters value creation by facilitating firm capabilities. Besides, the authors provide a future research agenda that academics can rely on to study the strategic management of big data.

This paper represents an empirical study of how geographic proximity influences the search advantage and the transfer problem of interfirm networks.

By using the data collected from 226 Chinese manufacturing firms, this study examines the proposed hypotheses.

The authors’ findings suggest that (1) geographic proximity is an important antecedent for promoting knowledge transfer, whereas it lowers the degree of knowledge novelty; and (2) geographic proximity also moderates the effects of interfirm networks on knowledge novelty and knowledge transfer.

This study contributes the literature of interfirm network and provides practical implications by addressing the ways in which manufacturing firms can promote knowledge transfer and acquire novel knowledge.

Green supplier selection (GSS) is acknowledged as important governance in green supply chain management (GSCM). However, this paper argues that GSS is not a stand-alone GSCM governance mode that determines manufacturers' environmental performance but rather one that needs to be aligned with contractual governance, particularly contractual control and adaptation, to promote environmental performance effects. This paper adopts GSS as ex ante governance and introduces behavior and outcome controls as ex post contractual control and adaptation, respectively. Thus, this paper addresses how GSS affects environmental performance directly and indirectly through behavior and outcome controls within transaction cost economics (TCE) theory.

This research model was tested on 300 Chinese manufacturing firms, and multiple regression analysis was used to validate our hypotheses.

A direct relationship was observed between GSS and environmental performance. This direct relationship is positively mediated by behavior and outcome controls.

This paper develops and elucidates an integrative green supply chain process proceeding from the implementation of ex ante GSS and ex post contractual governance to the realization of environmental performance. Furthermore, this paper considers two different forms of contractual governance, specifically contractual control and adaptation, and explains how they can be implemented using behavior and outcome controls from the perspective of TCE theory.

There is a research gap in strategic management regarding the complement from managerial cognition literature to the behavioral theory of firm, as well as linkage between cognitive structure and cognitive process of strategy formulation in the field of managerial cognition, which also calls for further exploration. The purpose of this paper is to construct a model from an integrated view for explaining the process of cognitive reconstruction under incremental changes.

Qualitative research is conducted in the form of 17 semi-structured interviews in four hidden champions operating in China. Based on the model generated from the literature review, this paper adopts the abductive logic for data analysis.

This paper draws the following conclusions. The cognitive structure is shaped by the changing environment and the performance feedback, the variance in structural attributes will affect whether the changing environment destructs the effectiveness of original cognitive structure or not, the centrality of cognitive structure will promote the efficiency of tried-and-true organizational adaptations to incremental changes, and cognitive structure reconstruction is the result of the recursive process of trial-and-error learning.

This paper proposes the model explaining the interaction mechanisms between cognitive structure and strategy formulation process. It also presents the iterative sense-making process for reconstructing cognitive structure in strategy formulation. Both of them extend the understanding on managerial cognition in organizational adaptations to incremental environmental changes.

The high degree of likely disruption challenges organizations at all levels to develop and implement innovative strategies. Ensuring supply chain continuity even during emergency and complex situations is critical for organizations. Therefore, this study explores some strategies adopted by firms based on innovation and blockchain-enabled digital transformation to reduce risk in their supply chain.

This study follows the qualitative form of enquiry. The authors interviewed 26 professionals from the supply chain domain. After three-layered coding and mapping multiple layers to the data of interviews, the authors identified emerging themes and sub-themes through a thematic analysis.

The authors identified type of risks that can affect global supply chains along with both the role of blockchain and innovation culture in minimizing the degree of such risks and the challenges in adopting blockchain technologies. This led us to develop a framework to address supply chain risk through digital transformation through innovation and blockchain.

This research offers exciting implications for practice by drawing on the insights gathered to facilitate supply chain risk management through innovation and blockchain applications for organizations that are strongly impacted by digital transformation practices around the world. The study also offers the utilization of a framework followed by propositions to reduce supply chain risks in the digital transformation era.

This study focuses on presenting a mechanism of supply chain risk management through the application of innovation and blockchain technology for the digital transformation of a value chain. Blockchain can offer an innovative platform to ready the supply chain for future dynamic situations.

This study aims to elucidate the process and internal mechanism of place identity construction in traditional villages under the impact of tourism by taking Cuandixia village as a case. The research methods comprise participatory observation and in-depth interviews with the residents. The main results are as follows: the impact of tourism on traditional villages is mainly reflected in space reconstruction, livelihood change, social relations restructuring and culture change; under the impact of tourism, the representation of residents’ identity construction shows complexity, with positive and negative effects; and the place identity construction of residents affects their perception of and attitudes toward tourism. Moreover, self-esteem and self-efficacy principles play a key role in their perception of tourism. This study provides some reference for further investigation of the tourism development model and the mental mechanism of residents in traditional villages.

The purpose of this paper is to exhibit the mediation and moderation influence of organizational motivation and organization characteristics between intellectual capital and innovation capability of the textile and apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The shift of the traditional tangible assets toward more subtle forms of intellectual capital creates a crucial factor for the achievement of innovation capability and competitive advantage. In this study area, previous works have exclusively focused on the co-alignment between intellectual capital and innovation capability as compelled to deliver competitive advantage. The random sampling technique and structured questionnaires were administrated as a research instrument to collect the data. The results demonstrated that intellectual capital has a significant positive relationship on innovation capability with mediated and moderated effects. The findings of this research will be useful for the textile and apparel industry to understand and apply intellectual capital to create innovation capability in their organizations.