Continuous Value Creation Research Articles

Human capital in knowledge-based firms: Re-creating value post-pandemic

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: In today’s volatile business environment, the competitive advantages of firms are temporary. The top management does not, and cannot, have all the answers to increasingly complex and rapidly changing problem situations facing their firms. Since the COVID-19 crisis, organizations have been under pressure to improve their knowledge management practices to continue creating value. Knowledge management capabilities are essential for business performance and competitive advantage. In order to ensure continuous value creation, we conducted research to identify various drivers and dimensions that were revitalized in the ongoing KM practices post-pandemic. METHODOLOGY: In this study, 81 research papers published between January 2010 and March 2022, have been examined from a knowledge management, human capital, and value creation perspective, aiming to understand how a firm can continue to create value before, during, and after the pandemic. RESULTS/CONCLUSION: Our review identifies critical factors in knowledge management and value creation and how companies generate value by leveraging KM during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the research, the authors describe their findings in the form of a conceptual framework which deals with the various drivers and the factors within the KM architecture.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Financial Growth of Quoted Pharmaceutical Companies in Nigeria

Pharmaceutical companies have a critical role in ensuring that people have access to high-quality and affordable medical services. They provide a wide range of healthcare offerings, including preventive care and emergency interventions. The pharmaceutical industry is complex and ever-evolving, requiring an entrepreneurial mindset and continuous value creation to maintain high levels of performance. While pharmaceutical companies contribute significantly to the social and economic well- being of individuals in both developed and developing countries, there are instances where their performance may not meet expectations, evident in declining financial growth. The study adopted a survey research design. The population of the study was 308 executive manager, directors and marketing department official in these quoted pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria. Data was collected using a valid and reliable questionnaire with a Cronbach alpha value greater than 0.7. Data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential tools. Multiple and Hierarchical Regression Analysis were used to determine the effect of the variables using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The results revealed that entrepreneurial orientation had significant effect on financial growth of quoted pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria (Adj. R2 = 0.200; F (5, 296) = 16.093, p < 0.05). The study concluded that entrepreneurial orientation had significant influence on financial growth of quoted pharmaceutical companies in Nigeria. The study recommended that management of pharmaceutical companies should adopt strategies that would enable them to identify and capitalize on emerging market opportunities, as well as improving their organizational performance. Moreover, the companies should also focus on creating a culture that encourages innovation, risk-taking and pro-activeness, as well as improving their organizational agility and flexibility to enhance financial growth.

Value Creation in Platform Enterprises: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Platform enterprises have emerged as one of the most popular business models in the era of knowledge economy. The success of platform enterprises relies on continuous value creation by constructing an efficient platform and attracting more users to participate in order to create more value for the users and by the users. This study is to explore the key factors that drive value creation in platform enterprises’ ecosystem to help better understand the management of platform enterprises as the knowledge-based entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets. This study employs a newly emerged method—a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to empirically analyze the antecedent configurations of value creation for Chinese platform enterprises. This method extends qualitative comparative analysis by integrating fuzzy-sets and fuzzy-logic principles with qualitative comparative analysis principles, which offers a more realistic approach. This paper identifies different configurations for high and non-high levels of value creation in platform enterprises. The results show that continuous user commitment is crucial to creating positive value for Chinese platform enterprises, and active user participation and knowledge sharing as well as platform construction/improvement are the key elements that determine the platform enterprises’ value creation process. The results also demonstrate a hybrid value creation logic with efficiency and innovation in platform enterprises. This study further identifies an asymmetric causality in the Chinese platform enterprises’ value creation process that is crucial for knowledge sharing and effective management of platform enterprises. The findings can shed light on the strategic management of platform enterprises for emerging markets.

Understanding how firm attributes affect voice in brand community

PurposeCustomers' continuous value creation (e.g. voice) is an important research issue for the success of brand virtual community (BVC) and new product development, while it is rarely studied from a firm perspective. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how firm attributes exert influences on continuous voice intention in brand virtual communities.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected through a survey in mobile brand virtual communities in China, and 291 valid responses for data analysis were included to test the research model by using partial least squares (PLSs).FindingsThe results show that intrinsic motivation to voice is positively associated with continuous voice intention. Furthermore, the impact of brand identification on intrinsic motivation is found to be fully mediated by community identification. Customer orientation has a positive effect on perceived openness, and both customer orientation and perceived openness positively affect customers' brand identification and community identification.Originality/valueAlthough prior studies have examined some variables relevant to voice behavior, few studies have recognized the influence of firm attributes toward the BVC on sustained voice intention. To fill this research gap, the authors propose a research model to shed light on the role of firm attributes by classifying them into brand- vs community-based firm attributes, which affect intrinsic motivation through two types of social identification, namely brand identification and community identification.

Digital for real: A multicase study on the digital transformation of companies in the embedded systems domain

AbstractWith digitalization and with technologies such as software, data, and artificial intelligence, companies in the embedded systems domain are experiencing a rapid transformation of their conventional businesses. While the physical products and associated product sales provide the core revenue, these are increasingly being complemented with service offerings, new data‐driven services, and digital products that allow for continuous value creation and delivery to customers. However, although there is significant research on digitalization and digital transformation, few studies highlight the specific needs of embedded systems companies and what it takes to transform from a traditional towards a digital company within business domains characterized by high complexity, hardware dependencies, and safety‐critical system functionality. In this paper, we capture the difference between what constitutes a traditional and a digital company and we detail the typical evolution path embedded systems companies take when transitioning towards becoming digital companies.

ВАРТІСНО-ОРІЄНТОВАНЕ УПРАВЛІННЯ У МАЛОМУ СІМЕЙНОМУ БІЗНЕСІ, ЯКИЙ ПОСТРАЖДАВ ВІД КАРАНТИНУ

The issue of Value Based Management implementation in Small Family Business suffering from guarantine has been investigated in the study.Family firms are typically vulnerable due to their autonomous, family-oriented standing and their constrained financial capital and resources, but we presume that this applies to small family businesses rather than to big ones.This requires special methods of efficient management and means of government’s support of family business affected by quarantine. We do believe that Value Based Management (VBM) is a proper concept to be implemented in order to help them to survive and create long-term value.In the study Continuous Value Creation Cycle has been further refined. Continuous Value Creation Cycle encompasses five stages. 1 Strategic planning: Setting objectives, clarifying their indices at all levels of management. 2 Value creation: Operational processes of creating value (manufacturing goods, sales, etc.). 3 Value Assessment: Assessment of the value created. 4 Value contribution: Estimation of every department’s contribution in value created. 5 Remuneration: Using effective Remuneration System according to personnel contribution to the value created.Using this Continuous Value Creation Cycle, every entrepreneur can figure out where they should start – from setting objectives in their business to organization of remuneration system on the basis of personal contribution of every employee into the value created.Besides, the most affected by quarantine /coronavirus lockdown stages have been clarified. They are: the first (because being under tough circumstances of reducing demand, small businesses should set their objectives in a different way); the second (usual operational processes may well need deep analysis and diversification), and the forth stage (may be changed in case of diversification, because some new business units producing value may appear).The results obtained in the study can be used in further research in this realm, in further clarification of value drivers for a particular small family firm.

Learning to create sustainable value in turbulent operational contexts: the role of leadership practices

Purpose – This paper aims to report on case-study research that explores the role of leadership practices, in particular, in enhancing the capacity of an enterprise to learn to create new value from a diverse range of sources. The capacity to sustain value creation over time, and across turbulent environments, increasingly differentiates enterprise performance. Under the umbrella term of “dynamic capabilities”, a range of practices have been identified in the literature as contributing to an enterprise’s ability to learn to perform this task successfully. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on case studies of three enterprises whose founders have sustained the creation of new value for customers over decades. Through a series of unstructured interviews with each founder, the tacit knowledge gained from years of learning how to create, and re-create, value, is made explicit through hermeneutic analysis of the interview transcripts. Findings – The data identify four key areas of leadership practice that underpin the capacity to learn to continuously create new value over significant periods of time. The most important of these are the social practices that generate and leverage the intangible capital resources (in particular, the resource of trust) that underpin the collaborative learning on which value creation processes depend. Research limitations/implications – As interpretive research, the knowledge accessed through this research is context-dependent and cannot be readily generalised. The validity of the knowledge is high, however, as the epistemological and ontological assumptions of the interpretive research paradigm recognise the political nature of organisations and, thus, of learning and value creation. As such, the knowledge generated by the case analyses offers a rich alternative perspective on the issue under research. Practical implications – The cases illuminate the nature of learning that supports continuous value creation in enterprises. Such learning is framed by several leadership practices that enable the self-reflexivity that underpins the continuous conversion of action-generated tacit knowledge into more strategically useful explicit knowledge. At the core of these leadership practices is stakeholder collaboration and intellectual humility. Social implications – The results show that learning to create sustainable value over time and diverse contexts, has a socio-political dimension in that it depends heavily on generating and leveraging the intangible resources (such as trust, commitment, ideas) that reside within social relationships. Originality/value – The research is located within the interpretive research paradigm and thus offers an alternative view to that of conventional positivist research. Furthermore, the results indicate that learning is a strategic priority in rapidly changing environments and, thus, is a key leadership responsibility. Furthermore, the results show that value creation is a collaborative stakeholder achievement.

Encourage non-designer's design: Continuous value creation in manufacturing products and services

The advancement of ICT has enabled customer participatory design such as mass-customization. Increase of a customer's contact to design processes gives rise to (a) the subsequent clarification of requirements through product configuration by the customers themselves; (b) the real-time configuration based on the estimations of customer tastes by manufacturers; and (c) the organizational data acquisition of manufacturers of customers’ tastes for improvement of the design activities of manufacturers. This paper argues for continuous value creation by means of combining ‘designing by designers’ and ‘designing by non-designers’ for products. Tourism is studied as a typical example of design by non-designer. Indispensable requirements are obtained to encourage non-designer's design.

International Marketing Strategies in India: An Application of Mixed Method Investigation

Internationalization drives and export orientation are prominent in the organizational strategies of a number of leading Indian firms and multinationals located in India. This is a significant indicator of the growing competitiveness of firms, industries, and the nation. This paper examines the sources of competitive advantage in a few selected sectors and firms and explores the internationalization possibilities and potential. International marketing strategies are complex and tend to vary widely across nations, industries, and firms. The elements that form the ingredients of international strategies are numerous and their importance is tightly interwoven to contexts. With a view to enrich the existing body of international marketing theory, the authors investigate the international marketing strategies adopted in 12 different business sectors in India in an attempt to explore and explain the similarities and differences found in this varied set of industries. The examples span the old economy industries such as the assembly and manufacturing enterprises that are both skill-and capital-intensive and also the new economy sectors that are information-intensive. This study is exploratory in nature and offers a classification scheme using case research methodology, grounded theory approach, and modeling techniques. The five-cluster classification (visual map) may prove to be useful in many strategic and tactical ways. This classification scheme or typology can influence both the design and the execution of international marketing strategies. This schema may also offer empirical support to strategic management theories that focus on diversification into related businesses downstream. Another key contribution of the paper is the application of a combination of methodologies that yields new insights. A third contribution is the formulation of a link to quantification and modeling to enable qualitative researchers to lend analytical rigour in their attempts at theory generation. On the practical front, marketers can leverage the understanding gained from using the classification scheme contained in this study in designing and implementing international marketing strategies by paying appropriate attention to important dimensions in order to achieve desired outcomes. A few managerial implications of the study are as follows: International marketing requires a multi-faceted strategic approach. Continuous value creation and delivery should be the focus of strategies. Flexibility is as important as commitment. The 12 variables identified in the study should be examined to look for harmonious balance and their ability to continue to provide competitive edge. Thinking in terms of the 12 variables and/or their underlying dimensions individually and collectively while formulating and implementing international marketing strategies can help managers uncover the similarities and differences across business sectors. The suggested typology helps in revealing connections that bind businesses across disparate sectors using a holistic approach that encompasses different aspects of international marketing strategies.