Browsing by Author "Hughes, Mathew"
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Item Open Access Digital transformation of industrial businesses: A dynamic capability approach(Elsevier, 2021-11-03) Ghosh, Swapan; Hughes, Mathew; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Hughes, PaulIndustrial firms are under severe pressure to undertake digital transformation and leverage the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and emerging technologies for the integration of industrial machines to share information on a real-time or near real-time basis. Though in recent years researchers have focused their attention on digital transformation, there is limited scholarly guidance for developing capabilities for such transformation. Drawing on dynamic capability theory and exploratory qualitative interviews with senior ‘elite’ executives from five of the world’s largest multinational firms, the study outlines a new conceptual framework for digital transformative capability development. The integrative framework demonstrates how the three core capabilities of digital sensing, digital seizing, and digital reconfiguring manifest through associated capabilities of Strategic Sensing, Rapid Prototyping, Organization Structure, Business Model Transformation, and Cultural/Mindset Transformation. Internal and external contingencies are proposed as moderators of the relationship between IIoT and emerging technologies, and digital transformative capability development. Collectively, the article makes the case for Digital Transformation Capability and sheds new light on the digital transformation process. Implications for theory and practice are highlighted, and limitations are discussed.Item Open Access Does Ownership Matter for Service Delivery Value? An Examination of Citizens’ Service Satisfaction(2017-01-01) Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Hughes, Paul; Hughes, Mathew; Glennon, RussGovernments across the world outsource service delivery to external agents, but does ownership matter for service delivery value? Though theory points to clear ownership differences on effectiveness, there remains limited empirical evidence of the impact of ownership on citizens’ satisfaction. Focusing on local authorities in England, we draw on secondary data (2007 and 2009) to examine if ownership type matters. The findings indicate that ownership–public, nonprofit, private–confers no direct benefits for citizens’ satisfaction suggesting that the outsourcing decision should not rely on unfounded assumptions about performance differentials between ownership types. The implications for public management are explored.Item Open Access Explaining the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in emerging economies: The intermediate roles of absorptive capacity and improvisation(Springer, 2017-10-07) Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Hughes, Mathew; Arshad, DarwinaResearch has established the relevance of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) to firm performance but skepticism remains because of the ambiguity surrounding how EO might improve firm performance. We examine the key concepts of absorptive capacity and improvisation as two alternative learning modes serving as intermediate steps between EO and firm performance. Locating our study within manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia, we find that absorptive capacity enhances the EO–performance relationship, both as a moderator and a mediator. In contrast to expectations, however, improvisation showed no such effects but conferred its own separate benefits instead. We further discuss the different effects of these learning modes on high performance and low performance groups.Item Open Access Family-Unique Resources, Marketing Resources, and Family Owners’ Willingness to Pursue Radical Innovation: A Model and Test(Elsevier, 2022-03-27) Hu, Qilin; Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, PaulInterest in the family–marketing interface has snowballed, with considerable interest in family brand image as one marketing resource. However, a broader conceptualization of marketing resources is needed to understand their potential contribution to family business outcomes. We must also not lose sight of those family-unique resources that differentiate family firms. Drawing on the attention-based view of the firm and depicting resources as possessing attention-guiding properties, we provide a theory and model that anticipates an adverse effect from marketing resources on family owners’ willingness to pursue radical innovation. We predict how this effect is contingent on family patient capital and family social capital as two family-unique resources. Data from a two-phased, multi-respondent, matched survey of private small-to-medium-sized family firms in the manufacturing industry in Chongqing region, China, validate our theory and model. Our study provides a new theory and insights to explain heterogeneity in family firm innovation behavior.Item Open Access In Pursuit of a 'Whole Brain' Approach to Undergraduate Teaching: Implications of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Model(2016-02-24) Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.The question of ‘how we learn’ continues to direct scholarly debate, yet undergraduate teaching is typically designed to homogenise the learning environment. This is despite heterogeneous learning outcomes ensuing for students, owing to their different learning styles. Accordingly, we examine the relationship between teaching methodologies and learning styles. Drawing on the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument and the theory of ‘whole-brain’ teaching, we find a suite of teaching methodologies that are generic across learning styles—tutorials, group work, firm-oriented case studies, game playing, reading journal papers, handouts, PowerPoint slides, in-class examples, in-class short exercises, and videos—and find a group of teaching methodologies—lectures, seminars, people-oriented case studies, creative problem-solving, reading textbooks, guest speakers, in-class small group exercises, homework, role play, problem-based learning, self-directed learning, project-based learning, and class debates—that target and develop specific learning styles. Implications of the ‘whole brain’ model for teaching and learning are discussed.Item Open Access Knowledge-based Theory, Entrepreneurial Orientation, Stakeholder Engagement, and Firm Performance(Wiley, 2021-08-14) Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Chang, Yi Ying; Chang, Che YuanResearch summary: Our understanding of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is limited by the inattention to why a firm arranges itself to give rise to EO, what sets its strategic intent, and what affects its contribution to performance. These omissions have led to calls for a causally adjacent theory of EO. Grounded in knowledge-based theory, we investigated (a) how knowledge production gives rise to EO, (b) how the relationship between EO and profitability is mediated by knowledge use, and (c) how this relationship between EO and knowledge use is moderated by stakeholder engagement. Using multi- respondent, multi-source data from small-and-midsize enterprises in two economically distinct East Asian countries, Taiwan and Japan, empirical evidence supports our theory. Our findings are consistent across both studies. We contribute a knowledge-based theory of EO. Managerial summary: Why do some firms organize to be entrepreneurial while others do not, and why do some entrepreneurially oriented firms profit more financially than others? We find that those firms that organize processes to accumulate, aggregate, activate, store, manage, and distribute knowledge become more entrepreneurial oriented as the means to create wealth from this 'knowledge production‘. In other words, knowledge production can affect perceptions of opportunities and resources, leading to choices about organizational arrangements to best use knowledge. However, we find that the firm also needs to be adept at knowledge use to profit financially from its entrepreneurial endeavors, and leading firms utilize stakeholder engagement to strengthen the relationship between entrepreneurial behavior and knowledge use on the route to greater profitability.Item Open Access Marketing as an Investment in Shareholder Value(Wiley, 2018-01-25) Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, Paul; Yan, Ji (Karena); Sousa, Carlos M. P.We present resource-based and capability-based arguments of marketing investment intensity to offer a strategic view of marketing as an investment in shareholder value. We find that marketing investment intensity has a U-shaped quadratic effect on shareholder value creation (Tobin's q) that calls for marketing investment to be protected and increased, not surrendered. We show how marketing investments interact with investments in R&D, human capital and operations to reveal how strategic co-investments can alter the shareholder value of marketing. Finally, we show how competitive intensity and failings in the firm's investment productivity (its ability to convert investment expenditure into sales) point to malaise in the firm's own strategic architecture as a fault for perceived poor returns from marketing investments. Our findings suggest that marketing investment should not be scapegoated when its contributions to shareholder value are not as expected. When invested in strategically and in combination with other investments, marketing can unlock exciting improvements in shareholder value.Item Open Access Micro-foundations of Organizational Ambidexterity in the Context of Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions(Elsevier, 2020-01-25) Hughes, Paul; Hughes, Mathew; Stokes, Peter; Lee, Hanna; Rodgers, Peter; Degbey, WilliamMicro-foundational approaches can enable firms to develop organizational ambidexterity, which is critical to long-term prosperity. However, to date, few studies have examined how mergers and acquisitions (M&A)—processes reliant on knowledge transfer—provide a useful organizational context through which to understand the achievement of organizational ambidexterity. Considering organizational ambidexterity from the viewpoint of exploitative and explorative innovation, we examine how behavioural contexts (corporate entrepreneurship) and structure (integration) regulate knowledge transfer activities at the micro-foundational and firm levels within a cross-border M&A context. Analysis of 143 cross-border M&As completed by United Kingdom (UK) acquiring firms revealed that: (1) knowledge sharing between the acquirer and the acquired leads to organizational ambidexterity; (2) increased use of the acquired target’s capabilities has a negative effect on organizational ambidexterity; (3) overall, capability sharing is positively related to organizational ambidexterity; (4) corporate entrepreneurship has both negative and positive moderating effects (on use of the acquired target’s capabilities and capability sharing, respectively), while integration positively moderates the effects of knowledge sharing on organizational ambidexterity.Item Open Access The Multi-Level Effects of Corporate Entrepreneurial Orientation on Business Unit Radical Innovation and Financial Performance(Elsevier, 2020-03-20) Hughes, Mathew; Chang, Yi Ying; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Hughes, Paul; Chang, Che-YuanCorporate enterprises must support its business units to adapt to changes that are increasingly dramatic and complex. In response, corporate entities must organize to embed a corporate entrepreneurial orientation (EO) that pervades the actions of its business units to create the radical innovations needed to thrive in these circumstances. By developing a global willingness–local ability framework, we test a multi-level model of corporate EO by conceptualizing its effects on business unit radical innovation and business unit financial performance, moderated by business unit R&D resourcing and business unit absorptive capacity. With data from 2820 business units of 1290 Taiwanese corporations from two separate surveys, we find support for our theoretical expectations and contribute much-needed knowledge of the multi-level effects of EO and the conditions to turn EO into actual innovation activity and profit from it.Item Open Access Planning to Improvise? The Role of Reasoning in the Strategy Process: Evidence from Malaysia(Spinger, 2017-07-10) Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Arshad, Darwina; Hughes, Mathew; Leone, VitorPlanning and improvisation are depicted as alternate decision-making orientations in the strategy process literature, executed by two parallel cognitive contexts: rational or intuitive, but can rationality and intuition be harmonised in the strategy process? Strategic managers may not have to choose to either plan or improvise, rather there is a need to shift the focus of research from such trade-offs to paradoxical thinking. Drawing on survey data from Malaysian research-intensive firms, we investigate how strategy develops through managers’ strategic reasoning under key external (market turbulence) and internal (centralisation, manager level) contingencies. In contrast to common assumptions in the management literature, we find that both rational and intuitive reasoning can drive planning and improvisation for firms in emerging economies, with additional positive moderation effects under centralisation and manager level. Firms that achieve high levels of both planning and improvisation concurrently are characterised by significantly greater rationality relative to the high planning group and the high improvisation group. The findings extend strategy process research, highlighting how firms in emerging economies differ from theory derived from developed economies.Item Open Access Product-Market Planning Capability and Profitability(Elsevier, 2020-08-21) Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Morgan, Robert E.; Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, Chih-Hsien LoisWe test the profit implication of product-market planning as a dynamic capability, from a contingency theory perspective. Among a sample of high-technology industrial organizations, we find that product-market planning capability is significantly and positively related to profits under marketing differentiation, but negative implications ensue for those adopting cost efficiency strategies. Pursuing hybrid strategies has no significant effect, while technological turbulence also has no moderating effect. Additional analysis establishes the temporal effects of product-market planning capability on 3-year lagged profits. These differential results are considered within a contingency framework. Implications are identified and discussed for industrial marketing management theory and practice.Item Open Access Radical Innovation in Family Firms: A Systematic Analysis and Research Agenda(Emerald, 2020) Hu, Qilin; Hughes, MathewPurpose – Investigation of family firm radical innovation is burgeoning but far less prevalent than studies of family firm innovation in general. Concurrently, studies repeatedly report that family firms exhibit mostly conservative and incremental innovation rather than more radical ones. This is unfortunate because without radical innovation, family firms risk a competency trap in which long-term competitiveness is lost to more innovative rivals. This situation has led to urgent calls among scholars to explicitly acknowledge the heterogeneity of family firm innovation and to understand the conditions for family firm radical innovation. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic review of 51 papers categorized into four scholarly conversations build the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry. Findings – This study analyzes 51 leading articles and identify four persistent theoretical positions: (1) RBV and capabilities, (2) agency and stewardship, (3) behavioral agency and socioemotional wealth, and (4) the ability and willingness paradox. The authors identify key research problems and research questions needing urgent scholarly and present a framework that captures their complementary and competing assumptions to enable rigorous future research. Originality/value – To galvanize and spearhead future research efforts, this paper provides a critical analysis of the current understanding of family firm radical innovation with a specific emphasis on the theoretical assumptions at the core of existing investigations and the 8 most important research questions in need of answers.Item Open Access The Role of Marketing Resources in Radical Innovation Activity: Antecedents and Payoffs(Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2015-08-17) Kyriakopoulos, Kyriakos; Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, PaulWhile radical product innovations represent significant engines of firm growth, questions remain over whether marketing helps or hurts (1) a firm’s radical product innovation activity and (2) its rewards from radical product innovation activity. By attaching an attention-based view of the firm to a market-based assets view of marketing, this article examine the role of three marketing resources—market knowledge, reputation, and relational resources—on radical innovation activity. Our conceptual framework posits differentiated effects among marketing resources as antecedents of radical innovation activity and as moderators of its impact on firms’ financial performance. Using a survey of a broad set of high-tech B2B firms to test hypotheses, it is found that firms with strong relational resources enjoy a higher propensity for, and stronger financial rewards from, radical innovation activity. Reputational resources come with a trade-off as they hurt the incidence of radical innovation but enhance its financial rewards. However, market knowledge resources appear to hurt both radical innovation activity and its financial rewards. Our results point to the multi-faceted role of marketing in radical innovation activity, which is unlikely to come with a single benefit or liability as prior work often posits. Rather, our research heightens the alertness of managers to assess their firms’ marketing strength as a bundle of stocks of several marketing resources. Managers must understand the distinct benefits and drawbacks of each resource in developing and launching radical innovations. Our research underscores the differentiated value of marketing in radical innovation activity in B2B high-tech contrary to the entrenched idea of a limited or even stifling role of marketing in this context.Item Open Access Social Capital and Learning Advantages: A Problem of Absorptive Capacity(Wiley, 2014-08-20) Hughes, Mathew; Morgan, Robert E.; Ireland, R. Duane; Hughes, PaulTheoretically, social capital allows entrepreneurial firms to capitalize on learning advantages of newness and gain access to knowledge as the foundation for improved performance. But this understates its complexity. We consider whether learning through social capital relationships has a direct effect on performance and whether absorptive capacity mediates and moderates this relationship. We find that network-based learning has no direct relationship with performance, but this is mediated in each instance by absorptive capacity and is moderated twice. Our findings challenge the learning advantages of newness thesis and reveal how absorptive capacity can enable business performance from a firm's network relationships.Item Open Access Strategic Entrepreneurship Behaviours and the Innovation Ambidexterity of Young Technology-Based Firms in Incubators(Sage, 2020-07) Hughes, Mathew; Hughes, Paul; Morgan, Robert E.; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Lee, YounggeunInnovation ambidexterity is especially complex for young technology-based firms because they are resource-challenged and knowledge-deficient in strategic terms; but they possess considerable scope for entrepreneurship. Strategic entrepreneurship may provide a solution. Incubators emerged as a policy solution precisely due to this dilemma. We conceptualise that strategic entrepreneurship, as a synthesis of young technology-based firms’ opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviours, can affect both explorative and exploitative innovation activities in these firms, and expect that subsequent innovation ambidexterity affects profitability. Our empirical analyses reveal complex and competing interrelationships that both ease and exacerbate the tensions associated with innovation ambidexterity. We contribute to theory by testing strategic entrepreneurship as it applies to innovation ambidexterity and evidence behaviours that contribute to its foundations. To entrepreneurs and managers, we offer a set of prescriptions for innovation ambidexterity in young firms that accounts for the complementarities between complex and theoretically opposing constructs.Item Open Access Strategy, operations, and profitability: the role of resource orchestration(Emerald, 2018-04-03) Hughes, Paul; Hodgkinson, Ian R.; Elliott, Karen; Hughes, MathewPurpose – Developing and implementing strategies to maximize profitability is a fundamental challenge facing manufacturers. The complexity of orchestrating resources in practice has been overlooked in the operations field and it is now necessary to go beyond the direct effects of individual resources and uncover different resource configurations that maximize profitability. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on a sample of US manufacturing firms, multiple regression analysis (MRA) and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) are performed to examine the effects of resource orchestration on firm profitability over time. By comparing the findings between analyses, the study represents a move away from examining the net effects of resource levers on performance alone. Findings – The findings characterize the resource conditions for manufacturers’ high performance, and also for absence of high performance. Pension and retirement expense is a core resource condition with R&D and SG&A as consistent peripheral conditions for profitability. Moreover, although workforce size was found to have a significant negative effect under MRA, this plays a role in manufacturers’ performance as a peripheral resource condition under fsQCA. Originality/value – Accounting for different resource deployment configurations, this study deepens knowledge of resource orchestration and presents findings that enable manufacturers to maximize profitability. An empirical contribution is offered by the introduction of a new method for examining manufacturing strategy configurations: fsQCA.Item Open Access Understanding knowledge transfer in M&As: An integration of resource orchestration and social capital theories and evidence from UK acquiring firms(Elsevier, 2021-12-14) Lee, Hanna; Um, Ki-Hyun; Hughes, Paul; Hughes, Mathew; Shine, Eun-KyuWhile knowledge transfer is one of the key components in determining Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) success, the current M&A literature has produced inconsistent findings regarding its antecedents and consequences. To address this research gap, this study explores the roles of functional integration and shared goals in facilitating knowledge transfer, which will in turn determine M&A success. To provide a more nuanced understanding of knowledge transfer, this study examines bilateral knowledge flows (e.g., knowledge transfer to a target firm from the UK acquiring firm and knowledge transfer from a target firm to the UK acquiring firm). Our research framework is built upon two different theoretical perspectives, namely resource orchestration and social capital theories. Our propositions were tested empirically across a sample of 131 UK cross-border M&A firms. Our results reveal that the affirmative roles of functional integration and shared goals in increasing knowledge transfer both to and from a target firm are confirmed and that knowledge transfer to the target firm is deemed decisive for M&A success. Based on the findings, we discuss theoretical and practical implications, followed by limitations and future study consideration.