Human resource (HR) flexibility emerges as the most critical source of flexibility for professional services firms (PSFs), given that the success of these companies depends on the knowledge, expertise and behaviors of their employees. Nonetheless, few empirical studies have analyzed the extent to which the characteristics of the workforce explain the results of this type of firm. This study attempts to advance in this line of research by analyzing the influence of HR resource flexibility dimensions (skill flexibility – SF and behavior flexibility – BF) on PSF performance. It also examines whether HR coordination flexibility (CF) strengthens the effect of SF and BF on performance. Matched data from 97 general managers and 291 professionals in a sample of Spanish PSFs is used to test the hypotheses through structural equation modeling methodology. The study demonstrates that employee BF has a significant effect on the development of new services in PSFs. The moderation model shows that HR CF increases the influence of BF on the development of new services. Contrary to what was expected, no significant relationship between SF and PSF performance was found.

We examine the mechanisms through which firm capabilities moderate the impact of institutional forces upon firms’ adoption of environmental management strategy (EMS). Viewing the limitations of the institutional perspective in explaining the heterogeneity in firms’ EMS, we suggest that an important source of variation is the idiosyncratic capabilities of the firm in acquiring and allocating resources. Based on the strategic response theme of institutional theory and the resource-based view, we argue that the influence of institutional forces on EMS is contingent on the presence of environmental orientation and innovation capability. Using data collected from China, we test these notions. Our empirical results suggest that both environmental orientation and innovation capability positively moderate the effect of institutional forces on firm's EMS. By demonstrating how institutional forces and firm capabilities interact with each other, we enhance our understanding of how firms succeed in developing EMS.

In this addendum we provide further information on our results and findings as well as explanations and suggestions in relation to the low R2. Table 1 provides additional information i.e., the standard error of all estimates, exact p values instead of asterisks as the significance level on the base of Table 3 in the published manuscript.

Managerial ties (MT) are important for business performance by providing firms access to valuable resources and protecting them from opportunism. Drawing on the resource-based view and the market orientation (MO) literature, we argue that (1) MT can help exporting firms to enhance export performance; and (2) MO will help strengthen the positive effect of MT as MO directs the value of MT for improvement of competitive strategy and customer experience with a market focus on generation, dissemination, and use of market intelligence concerning existing and potential customers and competitors. Using a sample of 230 Chinese exporting firms, we found that MT is linked to superior export performance, and the link is positively moderated by MO. Therefore, this study expands our understanding of how firms can not only improve their export performance through the development of MT, but also use MO to reinforce MT and export performance association.

Strong performing companies often have intents that state their ambitions for the future and this will be clearly communicated to stakeholders by the chief executive officer. The chief executive officer should lead company strategy and play the key role in establishing and communicating the strategic intent. This conceptual paper uses insights mainly from the strategy process and corporate governance literature to build better understanding of how a business can achieve a strong sense of strategic intent to inform their strategy work. Three dimensions of the strategic intent construct are identified – shared vision, resource focus and foresight. Through the development of a series of research propositions a substantial future research agenda is offered in an area where the literature is quite limited. Points of interest to the strategy practice field are also discussed.

Building on prior research on management fashion, this paper seeks to understand how management consultants respond to the boom-to-bust cycles of competing management fashion trends. Specifically, we examine how US management consulting firms offering total quality management (TQM) services responded to the rise and fall of the rival management practice, business process reengineering (BPR), with an empirical focus on the adoption of BPR services. We find that a consulting firm offering TQM services was more likely to adopt BPR services if the firm’s organizational capabilities and institutional environments were more connected to BPR’s principles than to TQM’s principles. This suggests that management fashions are not simply bandwagon phenomena, but involve resource- and identity-based decision making. We also find that the significance of organizational capabilities increased while that of network influences decreased as BPR’s boom turned to bust. The reversal of well-established institutional accounts of innovation diffusion is explained by reference to the characteristics of management fashion.

This commentary targets the core ideas of the composition-based view (CBV). First, we argue that the deployment of compositional capabilities (CCs) to combine ordinary resources fits the resource-based view (RBV) and that there is therefore no need for a CBV. Second, we argue that the CCs should be presented as a specific type of dynamic capability (DC). We show that even where ordinary resources are being combined, superior combinatory capabilities are needed as competitive advantage cannot otherwise be achieved. Third, we argue that Luo and Child (2015) focused too much on the emerging economy enterprises (EEEs) as the conceptual setting. We conclude with a future research agenda to prepare the ground for research on compositional capabilities within the composition-based view of the firm.

As the co-opetition strategy is frequently adopted by small and medium-sized accounting agencies, the main purpose of this study is to discuss the antecedents and impact of the adoption of the co-opetition strategy from the viewpoint of the resource-based theory. This study distributed questionnaires to CPAs (Certified Public Accountant) of small and medium-sized accounting agencies, and recovered 225 valid questionnaires for analysis. This study applied the confirmatory factor analysis to test the intrinsic quality of the measurement model, the structural equation modeling in testing the research hypotheses, and cluster analysis in distinguishing the co-opetition strategy types. The empirical results suggest that expertise heterogeneity positively affects competition strategy, and expertise complementarity positively affects the cooperation strategy. Finally, this study presents the resource and co-opetition strategy relationship matrix in order to provide small and medium-sized accounting agencies with reference for practical business operations.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study proposes two levels of resource action: shedding resources and adding resources as the main two turnaround approaches. Since firms differ in the way they manage their resources over stages of organizational development, this study further analyzes the link between the RBV and organizational life-cycle model to investigate the contingency role of life stages in the turnaround context. The study sample consists of 72 Taiwan firms had ever experienced a successful turnaround. The results indicate that cost-cutting and investment in training and R&D, which represent respectively a shedding and an adding resource action, enable firms to turn around their deteriorating performance. The results also show that R&D investment is more effective for early-stage firms, while cost-cutting is more useful to firms in the late-stage.

We review the theoretical and empirical literature on the resource-based view in the context of family businesses using a framework of intangible resources. This approach allows us to structure the present research on value-adding resources in family firms into four clearly distinct groups – organizational culture, reputation, human capital and networks – and provides us with the opportunity to examine the interactions of these intangible resources. We use these relationships to offer a future research agenda that is focused on the creation of competitive advantage through the combination and recombination of these resources.

The Darwinian logic of evolution occurring via the mechanisms of variation, selection and retention provides a possible theoretical framework from which to further develop the dynamic capabilities view. Presently, criticized for lacking a theoretical foundation and featuring a degree of confusion concerning how it aligns with the resource-based view, the dynamic capabilities view would benefit from greater clarity concerning its assumptions, theoretical base and the development of a series of testable predictions. We test elements of a potential Darwinian style framework through variation-focused hypotheses using panel data for 190 Australian service firms. Our results highlight the importance of market development as a basis for variation, however, the impact of dynamic capabilities upon a likely antecedent of selection was not clear and highlighted a nuanced relationship between capability development, market development and sales growth in an small-and-medium-sized enterprise environment. We conclude that applying a Darwinian lens to the dynamic capabilities view is challenging without longer time series data and additional measures, but such an approach remains theoretically attractive and further investigation may help clarify how we conceptualize the relationship between the dynamic capabilities view and resource-based view.

This paper investigate the degree to which environment uncertainty affects inter-organisational alliance partner selection in small to medium-sized enterprises and blends the resource-based view in a multiple-mediator model in which different dimensions of alliance motivation (cost and strategy) act as mediating mechanisms that transmit the positive effects of environment uncertainty to partner selection criteria. Four hypotheses are developed and then tested on a survey data sample of 108 firms in the Taiwanese steel industry. Our research findings show the mediating effects of alliance motivation cost and strategy and understanding how environment uncertainty impacts alliance motivation (cost and strategy) within small to medium-sized enterprises.