French and British top managers' understanding of the structure and the dynamics of their industries: A cognitive analysis and comparison (original) (raw)
EXPLORING THE MENTAL MODELS OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGISTS: THE CASE FOR A PROCESSUAL APPROACH
Journal of Management Studies, 1994
Recently there have been a number of studies published which seek to further our understanding of the competitive structures of markets. These studies have used aggregated perceptual data in an attempt to uncover industry-level mental models of business environments. In this article we argue that such studies are predicated on the assumption that there are high levels of consensus within and between organizations in a given industry concerning the bases of competition and the positioning of particular organizations. In the present study we employ a similar methodology but focus on the mental models of individuals in order to examine empirically the nature and extent of such consensus. the research was carried out in the UK grocery retailing industry. Twenty-three managers from two organizations were each interviewed using a variant of the cognitive taxonomic interview procedures devised by Porac and his associates. the study revealed considerable variation in terms of the nature of the cognitive categories elicited from the participants and the overall complexity of their taxonomies relating to competitive structures, both within and between the organizations. However, the study also revealed considerable intra-organizational agreement regarding the categories which describe the self-identity of the research participants’organizations and their major competitors. We consider the implications of these findings for understanding processes of strategy development and implementation in organizations.
Purpose – Based on the theory of bounded rationality, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by top managerial management cognition in firms' efforts to obtain and maintain competitive advantage in a dynamic environment. Design/methodology/approach – A research framework of the relations between environment changes, management cognition, strategic actions, organizational capability evolution and organizational performance is built. Data are collected through interviews, internal documents, and external documents and consequently a qualitative database is built to construct a causal map between environment, cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability. Then by applying this causal map, a case study analysis of Vanward Group is carried out to explore its management cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability in a dynamic environment. Findings – The research propositions were tested and confirmed that top managerial management cognition is of bounded rationality and in dynamic environment it exerts direct and critical effect on their firms' strategic actions and organizational capability. Further discussion is extended to the roles played by institutional factors in organizational strategic decision process and the roles of top management in organizational dynamic capability. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability of this paper's conclusions to other firms is to be tested by large sample quantitative research. Practical implications – The research confirms the bounded rationality perspective in strategic management, and explores in depth the formation, evolution, and functions of top management cognition in a dynamic environment. It also emphasizes the non-economic factors related to the continuous acquisition and maintenance of competitive advantages in a dynamic environment. Originality/value – The paper releases the economic assumptions underlying industrial structure theory and resource-based views by emphasizing the effect of top management cognition on organizational strategic actions and organizational capabilities. It further enriches the institution-based view by illustrating how institutional environment affects top management cognition and consequently affects the changes in organizational strategic actions and organizational capability. Thus, the institutional context for organizational strategic decision making is emphasized. The paper contributes to research in dynamic capability by emphasizing top management roles in developing dynamic capability.
Cognitions on Competition: The Newcomers Impact
International Business Research, 2011
A growing stream of research in the strategy field explores in a social constructionist approach the competitive structures of industries from the perspective of industry participants. This work has indeed demonstrated that managers tend to develop strategic group representations based on categorization processes in order to simplify and make sense of their competitive environment. However, in most cases these studies focused on mature industries facing few environmental upheavals or protected from external threats. The aim of this paper is to extend this line of research by examining, in an increasingly dynamic industry, how top managers consider, regarding their own historic strategic group knowledge structures, new types of firms entering their traditional domestic competitive space. The main result, consistent with the cognitive inertia hypothesis, is that top managers tend to rely on cognitive maps that reflect obsolete industry boundaries rather than on configurations taking into account new competitive threats.
1998
This paper discusses the relationship between the subjective organisation and the perceived competitive structure of an industry based on an empirical study of the Carpi textileclothing district, which partially replicates a previous study of the Scottish knitwear industry conducted by other authors . The initial hypothesis to be tested is that an industry may be broken down into a number of subsets of firms within which competition is perceived as being fiercer as compared with firms in different subsets. These subsets, or groups, correspond to the groups or types of firms into which decision-makers -managers and entrepreneurial business owners alike -perceive the industry as being divided.
2018 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), 2018
This research reviews a comprehensive and somehow chronological literature in the models and frameworks of competition and strategy. Strategic management research is shaped around a core question that why some firms outperform others; several significant lines of work have emerged in the strategic management field since its infancy. These include industrial organization, the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities. Also, Competition essentially has been the focal point of scholars with diverse perspectives such as industrial economics and structural analysis, strategic groups, game theory, and competitive dynamics. In this research, we represent and summarize different perspectives of scholars in framing competition and strategy that is related to theory of the firm and differential firm performance; also, we show that there is a trend from static to dynamic frameworks of strategy and competition which have tried to find an answer to differential firm performance. Finally, we conclude by addressing the potential for utilizing new dynamic and systemic perspectives regarding theorizing dynamics of strategy and competition.
Strategy, Structure and Control In the Changing Corporation: A Survey-Based Investigation
Human Resource Management Journal, 1994
The ways in which companies have responded to the competitive challenges of growing internationalisation of markets and rapid shifts in consumption demand have been the subject of extensive enquiry. The search for the key ingredients of corporate success in a changing and uncertain international business environment has been the hallmark of much of this enquiry, both academic and prescriptive in nature. Within this broader canvass, the influence of the relationships between corporate strategy, structure and control on corporate performance has been a central focus of debate. In Britain the debate has been given specific impetus by concerns over the alleged short-term competitive outlook of much of the corporate sector. A longer-term, more strategic competitive outlook is said to be precluded by the predominance of diversified companies, organised around a growing number of highly devolved business units which are subject primarily to finanaal control. Much of the evidence supporting these claims comes from insightful accounts of individual, or small groups of, companies. Data on the wider population have been rarer.
A emergência de estudos comportamentais em estratégia
2021
We exclusively selected articles related to "Business" and "Management". This search generated 1,100 articles for our database, with 376 articles from the first period and 724 articles from the second period. We use matching techniques in the analyses performed using Bibexcel and SPSS. At the same time, in Ucinet, we created the network diagram which supports the relationships between the identified factors and confirmatory analysis of the findings. Originality / Relevance: Bibliometric studies are constantly seeking to analyze how the theoretical structure of theories is progressing, and in strategy, it has not been different. To verify how studies in strategy have evolved in theoretical terms, given their multidisciplinarity, a comparative study of two distinct but subsequent periods offers a global view of where the studies are heading. We discovered new theoretical fronts in essence to behavioral studies that emerged in previous studies and are strengthened in new research. Main results: The search identified 57 articles and six factors from 2007 to 2012 and 2013 to 2018 produced 22 articles and five factors. The results confirmed the evolution of studies in behavioral theories, especially regarding managers and their strategies as well as other findings, such as research related to environmental dynamics and competitive dynamics. We still have strong participation of studies with resource-based theory, transaction costs, and the emergence of new theories such as tournaments and behavioral strategy. Theoretical / methodological contributions: Bibliometric searches can be examples of how to analyze references. In this sense, this study helps researchers have a parameter in similar studies, with pairing analysis and the combination of analysis of two subsequent periods. On the theoretical side, the findings give strength to previous research, validating established theories and showing emerging theories. Social / management contributions: This research obtained results that confirm the multidisciplinarity in strategy studies. Behavioral theories have emerged and strengthened in recent years. For management, we found that the surveys substantially analyze the strategic behavior of senior members in strategic decisions, such as in company acquisitions, in the formation of alliances, and how managers will perform when they are under contracts, differentiated remuneration, or in competition. For this reason, some theories emerged in the second period, such as tournament theory, not highlighted in previous bibliometric studies. Finally, a comparative summary of the factors found in the two periods helps managers in managerial perspectives on organizational strategies.
Competitive Dynamics and Creating Sustainable Advantage
2010
[Excerpt] Firms that earn persistently higher levels of profit than competitors have a competitive advantage (Grant, 2008; Porter, 1985). A variety of theories within the strategy domain address competitive advantage as a way of explaining how management decisions or market factors lead to superior economic performance. According to Michael Porter (1985), to have a competitive advantage a firm must create superior value for buyers by offering lower prices than competitors for equivalent services or by providing unique services that a buyer is willing to pay for at a premium price. Using this definition, a given firm must devise a competitive strategy that is able to establish a profitable and sustainable position relative to competitors. Porter (1985) argues that a firm's profitability is also determined by the attractiveness of the industry. He offers a framework of competitive forces that are a function of industry structure or the underlying economic and technical characteristics of an industry. The positioning paradigm associated with Porter (1980) and grounded in industrial organization (10) argues that market structure drives firm level positional strategies (Mintzberg, 1994). This 10 foundation serves as the conceptual home for Chapter 15 by Kim and Canina, which notes that the nature of the market affects a firm's ability to compete. The chapter explores the complexity of market definition in the hospitality industry by examining clusters of competitive relationships. Using data from U.S. hotels, this chapter raises important questions about how best to define market boundaries and the implications of these definitions for determining appropriate competitors for strategic analysis.
System Dynamics and Strategy: Towards Compelling Behavioural Theories of Strategic Dynamics
2008
There are increasing opportunities for work at the intersection of system dynamics and strategy to make important contributions to mainstream strategy thinking and practice. Strategy scholars are calling for and need theories (models) to explain the dynamics of strategy phenomena to complement the large volume of work that has examined cross-sectional differences among firms and industries. There is also a burgeoning behavioural movement in strategy to incorporate realistic cognitive assumptions in managerial decision making in place of the optimizing assumptions of perfect rationality. Scholars working at the intersection of system dynamics and strategy are well positioned to build compelling behavioural theories of strategic dynamics that penetrate the strategy mainstream. However, there are other competing ideas and methods and there are significant challenges to overcome. This article lays out the promising opportunities and, we hope, helps point the way for future research. 1 S...
Managers' mental categorizations of competitors
Competitive Intelligence Review, 2000
The existence of mental categorizations and mental models has been documented in the literature. However, categorizations and models have not been explored in the context of competitor definitions from a manager's point of view. This article explores the potential for managers to define their competitive environment in relation to their experiences, rather than define the competitive environment through arbitrary industry or product distinctions. Several propositions are put forth in an attempt to encourage further research.
2015
Using the dual concepts of 'dominant logic' and institutional logics, this paper examines how senior managers in the context of transition economy navigate between the competing logics of statedependency and market-dependency when seeking to explain their firms' business strategies. By comparing accounts in matched-paired case studies drawn from state versus private sectors, the study reveals how top teams develop shared dominant logics which are patterned in a manner which reveals that the degree of state-dependency was the critical variable and that market was a subsidiary variable. Further, the study found that it was the top teams in the state-owned firms which articulated the more confident, proactive expansionary plans, while the top managers in the private sector firms presented more cautious and incremental business strategies. Contextual conditions are described which help account for these contrasting patterns.
On the structural dimension of competitive strategy
2002
This paper aims at establishing the existence of systematic differences in the nature of competitive strategies available to individual firms across industries. By means of qualitative content analysis, we extracted a matrix of 76 industries times 12 strategies reported as being characteristic in a series of monographs. Subsequent tests for the statistical significance of observed differences in the typical strategy portfolio show an evident link to an industry’s general reliance on intangible investments, human resources, and inputs from external services.
MANAGERIAL COGNITION: A REVIEW AND RECONCEPTUALISATION
MANAGERIAL COGNITION: A REVIEW AND RECONCEPTUALISATION, 2020
The managerial cognition construct has been used in strategic management literature to illustrate various organisational phenomena related to organisational capabilities building and strategic outcomes. This article reviews the relevant literature to determine key dimensions of this construct and offer a reconceptualisation of managerial cognition. Based on the dynamic theory and managerial cognition perspective, this article distinguishes between cognition of environment and cognition of resources as two subsets of managerial cognition. This article then advances that cognition of the environment and cognition of resources can differentially and complementarily influence the creation of capabilities of an organisation and its competitive advantage.
:] “Argumenta Oeconomica”, Tom 22, nr 2, ISSN 1233-5835, pp. 33-51, 2012
The paper proposes the use of the meta-paradigmatic analysis in investigating organizational problems. First, I analyse the phenomenon of multi-paradigmaticism in management studies. I will characterize four management paradigms accentuating the differences between them. Then, I will point to the potential relationships between the paradigms stressing the possibilities of combining cognitive perspectives. The metaparadigmatic perspective can be particularly useful in the following fields: the theory of organization, organizational culture, knowledge management, human capital management and the methodology of management. Keywords: management paradigms, meta-paradigmatic method, paradigms of social sciences
The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, and Change Management: Annual Review, 2010
The literature relating to strategy is full of contradictions. Top managers are expected to be tough-minded but flexible, to have tight controls on some areas and loose controls on others, to have an inspiring broad vision along meticulous attention to detail, to have a linear sense of rationality but to thrive on chaos. It is therefore our intention to find out how top managers make sense of these contradictions, how they integrate these contradictions in their experience and their management. This is because top managers live very fragmented lives. Although strategic decision making has long been a topic of great interest in the field of strategic management, most of the studies have not addressed the cognitive dimension of decision making, namely the question of how decision makers actually think. Strategy is a work of fiction and therefore all strategists are authors of fiction and the question is how top managers understand this fiction, their role and how they see themselves in this fiction. This paper will address these and similar questions and will try to find answers to them based on an analytical approach. The study took place in the context of the clothing and textile industries in Portugal and the companies targeted in this study are of medium and large sizes.
Evolving Patterns of Organizational Beliefs in the Formation of Strategy
Journal of Marketing, 1994
By examining marketing's strategic role through the lenses of managers operating throughout the organizational structure, researchers and strategists can gain special insights. Adopting a structural-cognitive perspective, the authors employed a longitudinal design, coupled with snowball sampling, to explore the beliefs and changes in beliefs of key actors in a major strategic decision. The results show a dramatic conflict across functions in the interpretation of a proposed new strategy and its consequences. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of the results for the study of managerial thought worlds, organizational learning, and strategy development. E merging marketing and strategic management conceptualizations depict strategic decisions as rather disorderly and disjointed processes around which competing functional areas and actors at different hierarchical levels contend (Anderson 1982; Hutt, Reingen, and Ronchetto 1988; Pennings 1985). However, "much of the discussion of strategic marketing continues to reflect an economically rational view of managerial decision making and organizational behavior" (Walker, Ruekert, and Roering 1987, p. 13). In particular, Ruekert and Walker (1987a, p. 1) observe that the marketing literature ''largely ignores or assumes away the political processes, jockeying for influence, conflicts, and communication difficulties'' that arise during decision making and implementation. Thus, very limited empirical attention has been given to examining the partisan interplay between marketing and other functional units as strategies are formed, even though the traditional paradigms of marketing are expanding to incorporate negotiated exchanges with internal and external coalitions (Day 1992; Day and Wensley 1983; Webster 1992). Understanding such partisan interplay is critical to understanding the role that marketing performs in negotiating strategy with other functional units. Managers, representing various functional areas, are likely to perceive a strategic decision from perspectives that originate in different functional subcultures, different beliefs about desired ends and their means of achievement, and different self-identities and selfinterests (
Reconceptualizing Strategy: The Relational View
Atlantic Business Journal , 2023
The traditional literature of strategy (e.g., the resource-based view and the industry structure analysis) is focused on inter-firm competition (i.e., zero-sum games) and attaining sustainable competitive advantages. However, scholars of strategy and other disciplines have for several years demonstrated the relevance of interfirm cooperation and the various benefits that result from the diverse collaborative relationships developed between firms. An extended review of the literature allows us to articulate a different view, which may complement the conventional perspective on strategy (i.e., strategy as a deliberate plan that allows the firm to adapt to hostile and uncertain macroenvironmental conditions). According to that relational view, strategy permits the firm to shape its business context (i.e., the set of counterparts with which it maintains some kind of relationship, such as suppliers, customers, competitors, and complementors) and in that way, obtain advantages (some of them collaborative). Firms are advised to pay attention not only to their environment, but also to the surrounding business context and thus be able to manage the strategic change that will bring about adaptation and shaping to cope with relevant external changes (both environmental and contextual) if they aim at a superior performance.