📙論文名稱：

Managing knowledge for emerging markets: The strategic configuration perspective

📙刊登處：2023 IFKAD國際學術研討會

https://www.ifkad.org/event/ifkad-2023/

📙作者姓名：Yen-Mu Chen, Yie-Fang Kao, Meng-Hsien Yen, Min-Ren Yan

 

論文摘要：

Managing knowledge applied in emerging markets is essentially different from those proposed in developed economies. By integrating western weapons and eastern mindsets, this study thus refines a configurative strategic framework for doing business successfully in emerging markets. Many scholars acknowledge that China is undergoing a significant transformation towards a more market-driven economy characterized by rapidly growing business opportunities and increased competition (Story, Boso, & Cadogan, 2015; Zhang, O’Kane, & Chen, 2020; Zheng & Mai, 2013). Since 1978, China has been transformed by incremental economic reforms and is essentially focused on facilitating knowledge creation and knowledge spillover mechanisms in the transition from that of a centrally planned economy to a hybrid free market centrally planned economy (Ramesh, 2020).

Among the world’s top 20 countries, the total amount of the United States and China was USD 39.7 trillion, accounting for 51.83% of the total USD 76.6 trillion (World Bank, 2022). Especially in the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China’s economy has developed rapidly and risen to become the second-largest economy in the world (Li, Rim, & An, 2022; Wu & Zhao, 2022). This shows that China represents a strong economy and has appealed to some Western researchers, due to its rising leadership in science and technology and the second-highest level of spending on research and development (Basu et al., 2018; Střelcová, Cai, & Shen, 2022).

On the other hand, China’s urbanization—a driver of much of China’s increased global competitiveness—is expected to rise from around 50% today to near two-thirds by 2030 (Song, Cai, Chahine, & Li, 2021). It indicated that China had a huge domestic market and has emerged as a leading aspirant market that is becoming a world technology leader to drive the economy (Bruton et al., 2021; Wang, Chen, & Scheela, 2022; Zhang, Zhang, Brown, & Yin, 2021). Also, the fast-paced economy represents the market’s perception from the perspectives of economic globalization, financial liberalization, and transaction digitization. China is advancing its strategic transformation. In the face of changes in the international financial environment at different stages, Chinese enterprises can maximize their business growth performance by adopting different competitive strategies and portfolios in China’s domestic market (Kowalski, 2021).

What kind of competitive strategies and portfolios should be adopted in a transition economy like China? As Hitt, Arregle, and Holmes (2021) noted, the complexity and uncertainty may reduce the value of single-purpose strategies. Facing the complex operational environment, prior studies have suggested that the strategic paradigm in which multiple strategies are pursued simultaneously, denoted as “hybrid strategies,” better differentiates them from the single competitive strategies (Liu, Li, & Li, 2020). Moreover, companies operating in the different institutional infrastructures of the industrial environment in a transition economy call for distinct strategy portfolios compared to doing business in developed countries. That is, strategic fit and competitive advantage frequently rest not on a single attribute but instead on the relationships and complementarities between multiple characteristics (Fiss, 2011).

Competitive strategies and portfolios vary depending on the external environment changes and internal advantages of companies and affect the performance of enterprises. Organizational hybridity, which is an integration of different strategies, logics, and structural forms to manage complex problems, may be required to manage resources and stakeholders more effectively in different environments (Hitt et al., 2021). As Chen and Miller (2010) suggested, firms should take an “ambicultural” approach which denotes incorporating different competitive and portfolio strategies that contribute to performance differences. As firms operate in emerging markets, the dynamic environment impels firms to adopt different configurations of strategies and thus attain different objectives.

Organizational strategy is a statement of basic methods to be used by an organization to achieve its goals under the limitations of environmental factors (Hofer & Schendel, 1978). Besides, organizational strategy is also the basic pattern of planned resource utilization and interaction with the environment. It suggested that to achieve the goals effectively and efficiently, organizations need to fully grasp the business scope, resource utilization, competitive advantages, and synergy of interdisciplinary resource utilization. That is, based on changes in the external environment and the internal resource endowments, a firm may need to conceive different competitive strategies and portfolio strategies.

For competitive strategies, prior studies have divided them into cost position strategy, differentiation position strategy, resource leverage strategy, and opportunity strategy (Barney & Hesterly, 2019; Bingham et al., 2011; Porter, 1980; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). Though western scholars tend to view the above strategies as independent choices, this study proposes that it is possible to integrate the four competitive strategies into different groups of “hybrid strategies.” In this way, the different compositions of the four competitive strategies may reflect firms’ perceptions of their internal and external operational environments.

For portfolio strategies, the concepts provide a way to manage asset allocation, specifically emphasizing the concept of risk diversification, and in the future the returns are uncertain. As Ansoff (1965) and Hill et.al (2020) suggested, this study extracts portfolio strategies as vertical-horizontal Integration, the equity ratio of direct investment, and the number of direct investment projects. Similar to competitive strategies, this study integrates the three portfolio strategies into different groups of asset allocation actions and demonstrates firms’ different intentions while operating in specific internal and external environments.

To conduct the study, survey research is a common method to collect data from a predefined group of respondents. By making the questionnaire for the companies operating in China, this study collects 1,038 valid samples to examine the performance implications (i.e. profit rate, return on equity, and sales growth rate) for firms adopting different configurations of competitive and portfolio strategies.

By proposing a strategy configuration perspective composed of different portfolio strategic clusters and competitive strategic clusters, this study contributes to providing theoretical and practical knowledge for companies operating in a transition economy like China. This study provides practical action suggestions for every nine types of strategic clusters and demonstrates the best practices during all possible strategy sets. This study aims to explore how firms adopt appropriate competitive strategies and investment portfolios in the face of changes in the external environment to maximize their performance.