Browsing by Author "Tarba, Shlomo"

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    The ambidextrous interaction of RBV-KBV and Regional Social Capital and their impact on SME management
    (Elsevier, 2022-01-18) kraus, Patrick; Stokes, Peter; Moore, Neil; Bernd, Britzelmaier; Tarba, Shlomo; Dekel Dachs, Ofer; Rodgers, Peter
    This paper presents the argument that regional culture, encompassed within intricate forms of social capital, is inextricably linked to the resource-based view (RBV) concept—which is focussed on any inimitable resources possessed by a firm. These encompass knowledge (which pertains to the knowledge-based view – KBV)—including the cultural knowledge and understandings that are specific to a given region—as a key resource that is available to a firm and contributes to make it competitive. This paper presents the conceptual development of the RBV-KBV within an organizational ambidexterity framework and highlights how regional context, the RBV-KBV, and firm dynamics inter-operate. By so doing, it responds to the call to fill an important gap in the literature, underscoring the vital role of the regionally contextualised RBV-KBV. Rather than viewing these contexts as taken-as-given entities, it is important to see them as culturally, socially, and historically constructed and rooted phenomena. Drawing empirically on a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with German manufacturing SMEs in the Baden-Württemberg (BW) region (SW Germany), our study provides novel insights into how SMEs manage resources and regional social capital in order to expand judiciously into international (emerging) markets. In so doing, it presents a novel conceptual ambidextrous organizational framework that shows how companies move from a traditional exploitative and conservative form of regional cultural RBV-KBV to a more explorative and innovative internationalising one. Further, our study also contributes fresh insights into the explorative ‘hidden champions’ phenomenon by showing how the latent BW conservative RBV-KBV and its regional social capital-informed exploitative postures act as persistent moderating drivers of explorative internationalisation.
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    Cultural Antecedents of Sustainability and Regional Economic Development - A Study of SME 'Mittelstand' Firms in Baden-Württemberg (Germany)
    (Elsevier, 2020-01-20) Kraus, P; Cooper, Cary; Stokes, Peter; Liu, Yipeng; Moore, Neil; Britzelmaier, Bernd; Tarba, Shlomo
    This paper examines behavioural and regional/geographic cultural antecedents of sustainability in SME contexts. The study identifies prevailing macro-representations of sustainability in the literature and highlights an over-focus on large firms constituting the predominant unit of analysis. Moreover, there is a propensity in the literature to view sustainability primarily in terms of ‘environmental’ – closely linked to a corporate strategic imperative narrative of economic competitiveness and profitability. Overall, this perspective tends to generate accounts which are acultural, apolitical and ahistorical in terms of innovative actions and sustainability practices. In response, using a conceptual framework of moral identity, the paper develops a more micro-foundational insight to sustainability (developing notions of ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’) and examines regional economic development attitudes at individual owner-manager/managing director level in small-to-medium sized firms. Methodologically, an inductively-framed interview schedule was employed with owner-managers and managing directors (n= 30) of manufacturing SMEs in the Baden-Württemberg region (Germany). The study identified a range of micro-foundational behavioural antecedents operating in the sample companies. In particular, it underlined that many of the SME owner-managers/managing directors expressed views informed by a particular moral identity connected with a perspective rooted in regionally bound, longstanding and ‘expected’ behaviours of trust, fairness, honesty and community responsibility. They viewed themselves as distinctive from larger companies which they saw as pursuing a different orientation based on weaker value systems, short-term performance and market/shareholder returns. In contrast, the sample exhibited longer-term sustainability perspectives based on a deep historical linkage with local culture, community and a sense of obligation towards economic protection of employees.
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    The efficacy of market sensing and family-controlled board in the new product development performance of family firms in emerging market
    (Elsevier, 2021-12-09) Khan, Huda; Zahoor, Nadia; Gerged, Ali Meftah; Tarba, Shlomo; Makrides, Anna
    A call has recently been made for scholarly research aimed at understanding how family-owned firms can enhance their performance. Only a handful of studies have hitherto examined the capabilities of such firms in relation to innovation-related outcomes. In addition to this gap, past studies have examined either the mediation or moderation model, which has not fully elucidated the essence of how these firms can improve their new product development performance. By addressing these critical gaps by using survey data collected from 253 family-owned small-medium enterprises (SMEs) based in the UAE, we found that market sensing capabilities mediate the influence of socio-emotional wealth on new product performance. Such mediated influence has also been found to be positively moderated when a firm’s board is controlled by family members. Our conceptual model is underpinned by the dynamic capability and upper echelons theoretical perspectives. Our findings offer useful insights for both practice and theory.
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    Entrepreneurial stories, narratives and reading – Their role in building entrepreneurial being and behaviour
    (Sage, 2019-11-15) Manning, Paul; Stokes, Peter; Tarba, Shlomo; Rodgers, Peter
    The article undertakes an innovative study focusing on the choices and manners of entrepreneur reading as a means of developing resilience and responding to the challenges and crises that entrepreneurial activity presents. The article explores predominant patterns of entrepreneurial learning and challenges the assumptions on which these are grounded. This allows original insights and perspectives to be developed with which to enhance understanding of entrepreneurial sense-making. The study employs a qualitative methodology involving purposive semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs to determine the ways in which they identify, engage with and operationalize entrepreneurial behaviour based on their reading. The ensuing fieldwork provided a range of findings and discussion themes centred on dynamic and non-linear behaviour, reading and transformative learning events, and social interaction and reading. The study concludes with a range of observations on the power of reading in assisting entrepreneurs to develop resilience and behaviours for coping with the challenges and crises which are an integral aspect of entrepreneurial activity.
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    The Performative University: ‘Targets’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Taking Back Freedom’ in Academia
    (Sage Publications, 2020-06-22) Jones, David; Visser, Max; Stokes, Peter; Ortenblad, Anders; Deem, Rosemary; Rodgers, Peter; Tarba, Shlomo
    This special issue assembles eight papers which provide insights into the working lives of early career to more senior academics, from several different countries. The first common theme which emerges is around the predominance of ‘targets’, enacting aspects of quantification and the ideal of perfect control and fabrication. The second theme is about the ensuing precarious evocation of ‘terror’ impacting on mental well-being, albeit enacted in diverse ways. Furthermore, several papers highlight a particular type of response, beyond complicity to ‘take freedom back’ (the third theme). This freedom is used to assert an emerging parallel form of resistance over time, from overt, planned, institutional collective representation towards more informal, post-recognition forms of collaborative, covert, counter spaces (both virtually and physically). Such resistance is underpinned by a collective care, generosity and embrace of vulnerability, whereby a reflexive collegiality is enacted. We feel that these emergent practices should encourage senior management, including vice-chancellors, to rethink performative practices. Situating the papers in the context of the current coronavirus crisis, they point towards new forms of seeing and organising which open up, rather than close down, academic freedom to unleash collaborative emancipatory power so as to contribute to the public and ecological good.
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    Searching for a new perspective on institutional voids, networks, and the internationalisation of SMEs in emerging economies: A systematic literature review
    (Emerald, 2021-04-12) Dekel-Dachs, Ofer; Marta, Najda-Janoszka; Stokes, Peter; Amon, Simba; Tarba, Shlomo
    In recent decades, institutional theory has risen to prominence as a popular and powerful explanation for the internationalisation processes of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Within this domain, scholars argue that institutions are more than just background conditions (Liedong et al., 2020a); rather, they have a direct bearing on the strategic options available to entrepreneurs. The literature explores how resource-seeking SMEs adapt their internationalisation strategies to different institutional contexts; the assumption being that these enterprises can achieve and sustain competitive advantages in international markets through strategies that overcome or capitalise on the nature of such markets’ institutional environments (Marquis and Raynard, 2015). Nevertheless, SMEs often limit themselves to conforming to institutions in regard to endorsement, legitimacy, and access to resources (Su et al., 2017). Increasingly, however, the contemporary literature has signalled that institutions often fail to provide efficient solutions suited to internationalising SMEs (Schuck, 2014). In 2020, consistent with this resource-based focus, two notable systematic literature reviews were published within the area of SME internationalisation. Dabic et al. (2020) noted the lack of human capital in the conversation on the internationalisation of SMEs, insisting that this lacuna represents a major barrier for the successful completion of the related processes. Likewise, Chandra et al. (2020) showed how institutional barriers significantly impact SME internationalisation processes in developing economies. Therein, an important contribution was the recognition of the role played by networks in compensating for this institutional void. More specifically, they described how, in the absence of institutional support, SMEs create partnerships aimed at accelerating their internationalisation with foreign venture capitalists. Aligned with other observers (e.g., Greenwood et al., 2014), we present an alternative perspective, contending that the resource-based perspective that currently dominates the literature over-emphasises the lack of resources and that scholars should instead strive to better understand the conditions and processes that provide the context for any lack of resources. In constructing our argument, we review and critique the literature on internationalisation, institutions, and institutional voids. We claim that the gap left by weak formal institutions has given rise to complex alternative arrangements that offer support mechanisms for SMEs (Webb et al., 2014). Our review makes a distinctive contribution in relation to the creative and unorthodox arrangements that SMEs employ to overcome any market and formal institutional barriers. Accordingly, our review reveals unorthodox networks and networking as key enablers of SME internationalisation (Andersson, 2000). Building on this literature, the current argument notes that both intra- and inter-sectorial relationships provide novel opportunities for SMEs to access international markets and resources (Bembom and Schwens, 2018). Diverging from the top-down resource-based view of the role played by formal institutions in the internationalisation process, we bring informal institutions and networks to the fore and develop a bottom-up, community-driven conceptualisation of the internationalisation of SMEs under conditions of institutional voids. Thus, the overall objective of our research is to promote the development of a novel concept that comprises a participatory ecosystem. Rather than viewing internationalisation as the efforts made by a single entrepreneur to penetrate a particular external market, we perceive it as the collective map of a value chain consisting of multiple stakeholders, including formal institutions, their policies, and their services. The aim of this approach is to inspire contemporary scholars to develop an alternative understanding of SME participation in market environments; one that prioritises the access of entrepreneurs to market opportunities, rather than being predicated on the availability of resources. Undoubtedly, developing economy SMEs have to deal with limited resources (Dekel-Dachs et al., 2020), a reality over which they have little control. However, they do have options vis-à-vis how they react to it. For instance, the wider their access to information and market processes, the greater their capability for innovation. The participatory ecosystem promoted herein conceptualises institutions as the facilitators of a wide range of market actors in a network, who are thus enabled to support each other and create market opportunities in a more inclusive and efficient fashion. From this perspective, our systematic review contributes to the scholarship on international marketing in three important ways: First, it advances the understanding of the role played by formal and informal institutions in the internationalization processes of SMEs in contexts characterized by varying levels of economic development. Second, it explores networks as specific marketing vehicles that address the institutional voids found across developed and emerging markets. Thirdly, it points at how SMEs develop alternative informal arrangements in order to overcome any barriers created by institutional voids.
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    Work intensification and Ambidexterity - the Notions of Extreme and ‘Everyday’ Experiences in Emergency Contexts: Surfacing Dynamics in the Ambulance Service
    (Taylor and Francis, 2019-05-23) Wankhade, Paresh; Stokes, Peter; Tarba, Shlomo; Rogers, Peter
    Many organizational contexts have experienced radical changes resulting in work intensification. Whilst emergency services face evident ‘macro-extreme’ challenges (emergencies, major traumas) employees also experience parallel, everyday ‘routine’ in microsettings. How such micro-episodes interact with macro-extreme dynamics remains underexplored providing an opportunity to extend literature on micro-foundational organizational ambidexterity. This paper empirically examines these dynamics in the UK Ambulance Service by developing a conceptual model to explore the exploitative and explorative shifts and manifestations of work intensification. The findings demonstrate a recognition of macro-type intense-extremes impacts but less appreciation of their interaction with micro-situational mundane-extremes.