Dynamic capabilities, operational capabilities (educational-marketing) and performance.
| Autor | Takahashi, Adriana Roseli Wunsch |
| Cargo | Texto en ingles - Ensayo |
1 Introduction
Research about organizational performance has long been published by management literature, as well as about its relationship with various categories, such as competencies, strategies and innovation, among others. Currently, in an attempt to understand what we can call 'firm reinvention theory', the concept of dynamic capabilities (DCs), originating from the concept of competencies and the resource based view (RBV), has shown promise in explaining why and how organizations change, adapt and reconfigure themselves through environmental dynamism; in short, they reinvent themselves to survive and maintain competitive advantages.
Although the concept of DCs has already been well explored theoretically, there is still a lack of studies about the organizational processes imbricated in the development and use of these capabilities. One of the gaps is precisely to understand how the relationship between DCs and performance occurs--a relationship that needs empirical studies that investigate the presence of mediators in different environmental contexts, cultural settings and fields of activity. Some studies have already been carried out, such as Wu (2007), Hung, Yang, Lien, McLean and Kuo (2010), Prange and Verdier (2011), Protogerou, Caloghirou and Lioukas (2011), Pavlou and Sawy (2011) Wilden, Gudergan, Nielsen and Lings (2013) and Giacomini (2013). Empirically, the absence of papers that deal with the relationship between capabilities and performance is noticeable. However, these studies have focused on industry sectors, which justifies and makes relevant the choice of a services sector for this research.
The sector chosen was the educational one--specifically private higher education, which is unprecedented research in consulted literature, both nationally and internationally. This sector has undergone many changes over recent years, with changes in operating logic, expansion of the number of institutions and competition in the face of strong competitive intensity. This scenario has increasingly demanded from them the ability to 'reinvent' themselves, be it through acquisitions or innovations, turning it into a relevant locus for studying DCs and performance. The results of this study provide new findings on the relationship between DCs and performance and bring contributions to field studies and to HEIs' academic management.
So, the general objective of this work is to verify how the relationship between dynamic capabilities and performance occurs, through marketing and educational technology operational capabilities applied to the private higher education sector in Brazil.
2 theoretical foundations
In this section, the concepts of dynamic capabilities, marketing and educational operational capabilities, and performance are presented and referring in order to support the hypotheses proposed for this research.
2.1 Dynamic capabilities
The concept of dynamic capabilities was initially presented by Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997, p. 516), and refers to "the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure external and internal competencies toward environmental change." Since then, other important references have been published. The work of Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) introduces a less economical and more procedural aspect to DCs, giving rise to two different lines of study, as shown by Peteraf, Stefano and Gianmario (2013). One of the discussions that emerged from these two and other subsequent studies concerns the dynamism of the environment, i.e. whether the concept of DCs is relevant only to organizations that are operating in highly dynamic environments (Teece et al., 1997), or are important for organizations operating in a moderately dynamic environment, as argued by Einsenhardt and Martin (2000). Moderately dynamic markets are those in which change occurs with certain frequency, and paths are more or less predictable and linear. Within these markets, effective DCs rely heavily on existing knowledge and routines that enable them to take advantage of opportunities (Einsenhardt & Martin, 2000). However, analyzing how this occurs empirically is a challenge that is still present (Easterby-Smith, Lyles, & Peteraf, 2009) in various contexts, and further studies are needed, regardless of the line of study adopted.
As an analytical category, the DCs concept has been understood as made up by the following capabilities: to sense (to monitor and identify opportunities), to seize (to assess existing and emerging capabilities, and possible investments) and to reconfigure (to create, extend, and modify the resource base when a company grows and the market changes), according to Teece et al. (1997) and Teece (2007). Other capabilities that have been pointed out as constituting DCs are the capability to learn, to integrate and to coordinate. Thus, according to Zahra, Sapienza and Davidsson (2006), DCs are focused on the strategic changes and the alignment of the organization with the environment, and one of the ways in which this relationship has been studied is precisely through organizational performance. In an effort to understand this relationship, authors such as Spring and Araujo (2014) investigated the mediation of indirect or operational capabilities (Protogerou et al 2011, Wilden et al, 2013), which are described below. It is worth mentioning that operational capabilities are necessary so that dynamic capabilities can exist, since they are responsible for the operationalization of the knowledge.
2.2 Operational capabilities
Operational capabilities enable organizations to carry out "an activity on an ongoing basis, using more or less the same technique on the same scale to support existing products and services for the same consumer population" (Helfat & Winter, 2011, p. 1244). It should be noted that this definition covers both industrial organizations and services, according to the authors, and highlights the possibility of studying them in both contexts. Two operational capabilities have received special attention in the literature of both capabilities and DCs: technological and marketing.
According to Takahashi (2005, p. 258), an "operational capability consists of the skills and information necessary to operationalize, maintain and repair technology, i.e. know-how." The capabilities referring to technology are those that allow for the development and production of technology, enabling response to rapid changes in the technological environment. To Takahashi (2005, p. 257), technological capability is "conceptualized as accumulated knowledge and the ability to make, understand, use and develop this knowledge to produce new technologies." In this way, as a technological capability, it concerns the field of technology for operationalization.
Marketing capabilities, on the other hand, are those that provide relationships with consumers, allowing for competition when predicting changes in their preferences, as well as for creating and sustaining long-lasting relationships (Song, Droge, Hanvanich, & Calantone, 2005).
Protogerou et al. (2011) studied the relationship between DCs and performance through marketing and technological capabilities, considering them superior technical capabilities, and validated the model that proposes that dynamic capabilities have an impact on performance, and are also mediated by marketing and technology capabilities. Giacomini (2013) studied the same relationships, but in other sectors and context, and her model revealed that dynamic capabilities have an impact on performance through the relationship between marketing capabilities and technological capabilities. To the authors of both articles, these capabilities are idiosyncratic resources that allow for gaining competitive advantages, and are positively related, although differently in each paper.
In general, DCs can explain how new businesses are created, defined, and discovered, based on the quest for opportunities in the environment, by combining strategic resources and market needs through the use of new technologies (Jiao, Alon, Koo, & Cui, 2013). Therefore, DCs involve both operational, technological and marketing capabilities. This assumption is supported by the proposition that firms with a strong innovation technology base improve the sales force by the influence of their consumers on their product-related expectations (Dutta, Narasimhan, & Rajiv, 1999). Trainor, Rapp, Beitelspacher and Schillewaert (2010) also verified that technological resources support market orientation.
In short, the relationship between the two operational capabilities--technological and marketing--has been sustained in literature since the work of Dutta et al. (1999), as well as the relationship between them and performance (Song et al., 2005; Trainor, Rapp, Beitelspacher, & Schillewaert, 2010), among others. More recently, operational capabilities have been incorporated into conceptual models of research on DCs and performance (Protogerou et al., 2011; Giacomini, 2013), a relationship which we explore in more detail in the next session.
2.3 Performance and dynamic capabilities
Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) argue that DCs are not guaranteed sources of superior performance, but their development represents a possibility, a potential. Teece (2007) states that there is a need for complementary structures, so that DCs may generate performance improvements (Wilden et al., 2013). Therefore, the relationship between DCs and performance may not be direct or even contextual and situational.
If DCs are a dynamic process and vary over time, then the relationship between process indicators and the organizational results (performance) can be analyzed at a given point in time (transversely) and over time (longitudinally). A static perspective and a dynamic perspective. Given the shortage of studies on the relationship between DCs and organizational performance, studies of both natures are relevant and may bring potential contributions...
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