Research Summary
We apply a resource‐based view to investigate how the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) affects competitive capabilities and performance. Following prior work on using chess ...as a controlled setting for studying competitive interactions, we compare the same players’ capabilities and performance across conventional, centaur, and engine chess tournaments. Our analysis shows that AI adoption triggers interrelated substitution and complementation dynamics, which make humans’ traditional competitive capabilities obsolete, while creating new sources of persistent heterogeneity when humans interact with chess engines. These novel human‐machine capabilities are unrelated, or even negatively related, to traditional capabilities. We contribute an integrated view of substitution and complementation, which identifies AI as the driver of these dynamics and explains how they jointly shift the sources of competitive advantage.
Managerial Summary
AI‐based technologies increasingly substitute and complement humans in managerial tasks such as decision making. We investigate how such change affects the sources of competitive advantage. AI‐based engines’ adoption in chess allows us to investigate competitive capabilities and performance in human, AI, and hybrid settings. We find that neither humans nor AI in isolation explain performance differences in the AI and hybrid settings. Instead, a new decision‐making resource emerges at the human‐AI intersection, which drives performance but is unrelated or even negatively related to humans’ original capability. Our results document how AI adoption changes the sources of competitive advantage and, in turn, requires managers to develop new capabilities to stay relevant in an AI‐based competitive landscape.
The resource-based view (RBV) provides a rich framework for analyzing the role of a firm’s tangible and intangible resources in creating and sustaining competitive advantage. As a result, it has been ...widely used to explain entrepreneurial firms’ strategic choices that generate such an advantage. While researchers have established the usefulness of the RBV, they have overlooked the fundamental question of how entrepreneurial firms manage their resources to gain competitive advantage. This paper examines this issue in the context of independently owned startups, which typically lack resources, are constrained in their access to key resource providers, and have limited experience in assembling and managing resources. Adopting a broader conceptualization of startups’ resource management process, the paper identifies several questionable assumptions in related RBV-based research. Further, recognizing the limits of RBV to determine ex ante the nature and magnitude of entrepreneurs’ resourcefulness when managing their resources, the paper suggests linkages between the RBV and several entrepreneurship frameworks and outlines promising research questions.
Recent studies suggest the relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage may be jointly affected by organizational and environmental factors. We enrich this nascent perspective ...by developing a configurational theoretical framework – underpinned by the mechanism of strategic fit – wherein dynamic capabilities lead to a competitive advantage when they support a strategic orientation appropriate for the levels of dynamism and munificence in the environment. Results of a fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis using primary data show that dynamic capabilities lead to a competitive advantage in dynamic, munificent environments by enabling the combination of differentiation and low‐cost orientations. In stable, non‐munificent environments, dynamic capabilities are effective in support of a low‐cost orientation. The central insight of this study is that the relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage is contingent upon the strategic fit between organizational and environmental factors, contributing to a more rigorous and configurational dynamic capabilities view.
This research empirically investigates the relationship between organizational culture, knowledge sharing, organizational innovation, and competitive advantage. Data were collected from 294 ...industrial managers, and PLS-SEM was used to validate data and examine the hypothesized relationships. Results revealed that organizational culture, knowledge sharing, and organizational innovation positively affect competitive advantage. More specifically, organizational culture fosters knowledge-sharing and innovation activities among the workforce and links them with high-level business processes that could be conducive to acquiring advanced manufacturing capabilities. The present study highlighted that organizational culture is indispensable for business operational success, and knowledge-sharing and organizational innovation appear to be key drivers for gaining competitive advantage.
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•Organizational culture is important to sustain competitive advantage.•We suggest KS and OI as modern-firms drivers important to expand CA.•This study explores KS and OI contribute to sustainable business development.
Strategic human resource management scholars have drawn on the resource-based view of the firm to argue that a high commitment human resource (HCHR) strategy leads to firm competitive advantage by ...creating greater firm-level employee-based resources that are rare and valuable. While there is early empirical support for this mediated model, prior studies have largely ignored two key aspects of the RBV perspective. First, extant research has not effectively explained why differences in employee-based resources persist across firms that have adopted the same firm-level HR strategy. Second, this body of research has largely ignored contemporary thinking on the RBV which suggests that employee-based resources only lead to competitive advantage when they are a fit to other organization capabilities that enable the firm to effectively orchestrate them for productive use. I draw on the literature on dynamic managerial capabilities to argue that CEO managerial cognition, social capital, and human capital help to explain when pursuing an HCHR strategy potentially leads to greater firm-level employee-based resources and when firms are able to effectively manage and deploy these employee-based resources for competitive advantage.
We appreciate the opportunity to revisit the conversation about corporate objectives by responding to Goranvoa and Ryan’s (2021) paper, which focuses on the trends that impact shareholders and their ...relationship with firms. We structure our response to the authors in the following way: First, we argue that the governance challenges raised by Goranova and Ryan, in so far as they impact firms, make a case for stakeholder management. Second, we point out two shareholder‐centric trends the authors fail to describe, which also support stakeholder management. In the third section, we respond directly to the authors’ claim that competitive advantage is a more useful focus for the corporate objective by 1) noting that the authors utilize a strawman conceptualization of stakeholder theory in their argument, 2) detailing the existing strategy literature that connects competitive advantage and stakeholder relationships, and 3) arguing that competitive advantage is not sufficient, it needs to be augmented with a stakeholder focused cooperative advantage. Together, our response to the authors and the larger stakeholder perspective on corporate objectives offer a much‐needed human‐centric lens on how people coordinate their actions to create and trade value.
We present an analytical framework explaining offshoring in this paper. We address the question: why do firms offshore their business functions? Given the growing prevalence of offshoring as a ...dominant business practice in the world of global business, this question merits further research attention. We propose that firms embark on offshoring when they perceive three sets of interrelated advantages: disintegration advantages (D), location-specific resourcing advantages (L) and externalization advantages (E). Theories from multiple disciplines form the foundation of Disintegration–Location–Externalization (DLE) framework. Implications for managers, government policy makers and recommendations for future research are explored.
This study explored a novel economical and efficient process for treating actual low-ammonia nitrogen electroplating tail wastewater. A pilot scale system of denitrification-partial ...nitrification/anaerobic ammonium oxidation (DN-PN/A) was constructed and operated for 190 days. The partial nitrification (PN) reactor, filled with zeolite, increased free ammonia concentration beyond the nitrite oxidizing bacteria threshold and successfully supplied NO2--N, with nitrite accumulation rate exceeding 90 %. Over 109 days, the total nitrogen removal rate achieved was 80.2 ± 7.41 %, and the chemical oxygen demand removal rate reached 79.68 ± 9.53 %. The dominant functional bacteria were Nitrosomonas (5.45 %) and Candidatus Anammoxoglobus (28.84 %) in PN reactor and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) reactor. This process, characterized by rapid start-up, strong shock resistance, and low cost, alleviates the pressure of ammonium pollution control, promotes the sustainable development of the electroplating industry and has the potential for application in the treatment of other industrial wastewater.This study explored a novel economical and efficient process for treating actual low-ammonia nitrogen electroplating tail wastewater. A pilot scale system of denitrification-partial nitrification/anaerobic ammonium oxidation (DN-PN/A) was constructed and operated for 190 days. The partial nitrification (PN) reactor, filled with zeolite, increased free ammonia concentration beyond the nitrite oxidizing bacteria threshold and successfully supplied NO2--N, with nitrite accumulation rate exceeding 90 %. Over 109 days, the total nitrogen removal rate achieved was 80.2 ± 7.41 %, and the chemical oxygen demand removal rate reached 79.68 ± 9.53 %. The dominant functional bacteria were Nitrosomonas (5.45 %) and Candidatus Anammoxoglobus (28.84 %) in PN reactor and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox) reactor. This process, characterized by rapid start-up, strong shock resistance, and low cost, alleviates the pressure of ammonium pollution control, promotes the sustainable development of the electroplating industry and has the potential for application in the treatment of other industrial wastewater.
This review discusses the recent advances in both theories and analytical applications of multi-way calibrations based on various high-order analytical data. In the theory part, we focus on some ...aspects of multi-way calibration, such as multilinear models and their extensions, multi-way calibration algorithms with second-order or higher-order advantages, and other fundamental issues. According to different types of high-order instrument signals, recent applications of second-, third-, and fourth-order calibrations are then discussed, and their contributions to green analytical chemistry are highlighted.
•The theories and applications of multi-way calibration have been systematically introduced.•The theory part focused on multilinear models, algorithms and some fundamental issues.•Different high-order instrumental data acquisition procedures have been described.•Representative applications published from 2015 to 2020 have been reviewed.•The advantages and contributions of multi-way calibration methods have been emphasized.
We consider the applicability to digital platforms of extant international business scholarship. The organization of digital platforms has been seen to such an extent as predicated upon the bundling ...of external resources for collective value creation that their expansion may follow the logic of externalization. We further that literature contrasting the governance of network multinationals with that of platform-centric ecosystems. Building on and extending the theory of the ecosystem, we propose the concept of ecosystem-specific advantages. We identify costs and difficulties in the transfer of such advantages to new markets, emphasizing in particular the idea of bottlenecks. We then propose a framework that can be applied to future research on digital platforms, focusing on the users, suppliers of complementary products, and platform firms. We also call for research on the dynamic process of creating, transferring, and upgrading ecosystem-specific advantages.
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