THE JARZABKOWSKI AND SPEE (2009) TYPOLOGY MATRIX

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INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Business strategists have always argued that the pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage is the purpose of a strategy. How is it possible that this pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage is now regarded as a strategic liability for businesses operating in a networked environment? To answer this, the terms sustainable competitive advantage’ and ‘strategic liability’ require further clarification. A sustainable competitive advantage refers to anything that the business manufactures, provides, possesses or does that is difficult to imitate or improve on, and places the business in a favourable long-term position over its competitors. Coyne (1986:55) stated that there are three conditions for sustainable competitive advantage: 1) a constant perceived difference in the important attributes of offerings as seen by customers, 2) a capability gap related to the offering, between the focal business and its competitors, 3) where both the gap and difference can be expected to endure over time.
More recent work on sustainable competitive advantage suggests that businesses should configure their internal resources and capabilities to compete head-to-head with competitors. They should create value for customers by using linear value chains in definable industries while producing or manufacturing similar products or for similar markets, in some way that competitors cannot (Carpenter & Sanders, 2009:10). A strategic liability is anything that prevents the business from attaining its strategic goals. Arend (2004:1007) regards a strategic liability as any inability inherent to a business that can be regarded as a source of both competitive disadvantage and poor performance, while simultaneously detracting from and destroying the business’s ability to generate economic rents. The last decade has seen a major shift in society’s expectations from businesses (Crane, Matten & Spence, 2013:3).
Businesses are expected to make a profit and create sustainable employment, while also addressing social issues such as environmental protection and poverty. This expectation, coupled with globalisation and major technological innovation, has changed the way industries are configured (Casadesus-Masanell & Ricart, 2010:195; Moore, 1993:75; Porter & Kramer, 2011:62). The challenges businesses face because of this industry reconfiguration, in combination with an observed struggle by businesses to identify industry boundaries, are further magnified by their inability to create or extract value without becoming embedded in the wider network of stakeholders that surrounds the business, also known as the networked environment (Adner, Oxley & Silverman, 2013:ix). Networks and network ties are no stranger to academic research, Granovetter (1983) revisits his earlier work (Granovetter, 1973) on networks and the impact of weak as well as strong dyadic (network) ties on individuals and social systems. In the twenty-first century, joining networks (especially digital networks) are however no-longer optional and ties bridging networks no longer appear week, but have become an essential bridge to performance excellence (Libert, Beck & Wind, 2016:5). Baum, Shipilov & Rowley (2003:698) argue that the investigation of small world networks has long been a popular fascination.
The notions of network embeddedness and business ecosystems are not new concepts in strategic management literature either and we notice that it was reported in the Harvard Business Review by Moore in 1993. Therein, he noted that “executives must develop new ideas and tools for strategising that will enable them to co-evolve within a non-linear ecosystem » (Moore, 1993:75). Gomes-Casseres (1996) developed the concept of alliance constellations as a method to enable businesses to effectively compete against the multiple partner groups (business ecosystems) evident in the business environment at the time, and stated that a business network is a collection of alliances. Jack and Anderson (2002:467) echoed this statement and added that without becoming socially embedded, businesses, alliances, business ecosystems and alliance constellations will not be able to sustain their financial performance or create new opportunities for growth. In a post-industrial economy, the need for network embeddedness is amplified by the pace at which the global business climate is changing.
This networked environment has made the traditional theories of value-creation and extraction, which are based on linear value chains in singular industries, difficult to apply. Instead, these concepts have been replaced by the notions of shared value and business ecosystems (Gunther-McGrath, 2010:247; Moore, 1993:75, 1998:167; Porter & Kramer, 2011:62). In 1983, Henderson stated that one of the principles of competition is that all surviving competitors have a unique advantage. A unique advantage is often attributed to businesses with valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable resources (Sirmon, Hitt, Ireland & Gilbert, 2011:1300) that have a relative value and function within an equilibrium that is self-organising. Considering that competitors are now linked with each other through an interlinked ecosystem which has created multiple, similar competitors that are nearly identical, with no identifiable capability gap (Coyne, 1986:54), the current market environment is conditionally unstable (Henderson, 1983:7).
Competition has now become more severe and the individual advantages businesses may have will correspondingly diminish. Businesses, therefore, faced a diminished individual advantage with no identifiable capability gap, a fact which had previously been seen as a condition for sustainable competitive advantage, and as a result some industries that are now considered to be without boundaries and from linear value chains moved to what can be termed as ‘value constellations’ or value networks (Das & Teng, 2002:445). The subsequent corollary is that a strategy solely focused on creating a sustainable competitive advantage will distract significantly from an business’s ability to create economic rents, and will make it difficult for a business to compete in a networked environment, thereby meeting the litmus test for a strategic liability (Arend, 2004:1007).

READ Thematisation and definition of terms in keeping with the Eusebian-Mashonaland link

TABLE OF CONTENTS :

1.1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
- 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
- 1.3 PURPOSE STATEMENT
- 1.4 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE
- 1.5 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
- 1.6 CLARIFICATION OF KEY CONCEPTS
- 1.7 IMPORTANCE/BENEFITS OF THE RESEARCH ON WHICH THIS THESIS IS BASED
- 1.8 RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH ON WHICH THIS THESIS IS BASED
- 1.9 DELIMITATIONS AND ASSUMTIONS
  - 1.9.1 Delimitations
  - 1.9.2 Assumptions
- 1.10 THEORY DEVELOPMENT
  - 1.10.1 The theory of affordances
  - 1.10.2 Complex systems theory
  - 1.10.3 Stakeholder and agency theory
  - 1.10.4 Strategy theory
- 1.11 OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
  - 1.11.1 Research paradigm
  - 1.11.2 Inquiry strategy
  - 1.11.3 Logic linking the inquiry strategy with the research objectives
  - 1.11.4 Research structure
- 1.12 NATURE AND FORM OF RESULTS
- 1.13 ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
- 1.14 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN AND ABSTRACTS
  - 1.14.1 Chapter 2: Abstract
  - 1.14.2 Chapter 3: Abstract
  - 1.14.3 Chapter 4: Abstract
  - 1.14.4 Chapter 5: Abstract
  - 1.14.5 Chapter 6: Abstract
- 1.15 CHAPTER SUMMARY
2.1 INTRODUCTION
- 2.2 MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY
- 2.3 STRATEGISING DNA
  - 2.3.1 Praxis
  - 2.3.2 Practitioners
  - 2.3.3 Practices
- 2.4 THE JARZABKOWSKI AND SPEE (2009) TYPOLOGY MATRIX
  - 2.4.1 Domain A
  - 2.4.2 Domain B
  - 2.4.3 Domain C
  - 2.4.4 Domain D
  - 2.4.5 Domain E
  - 2.4.6 Domain F
  - 2.4.7 Domain G
  - 2.4.8 Domain H
  - 2.4.9 Domain I
- 2.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
- 2.6 COMPARATIVE FINDINGS
- 2.7 DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS
- 2.8 CHAPTER SUMMARY
- 2.9 MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
- 2.10 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
- 2.11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
3.1 INTRODUCTION
- 3.2 BACKGROUND
  - 3.2.1 The networked environment
  - 3.2.2 The network (or value net)
  - 3.2.3 Clusters
- 3.3 METHODOLOGY
  - 3.3.1 Literature selection method
  - 3.3.2 Sampling
- 3.4 PROCEDURE
- 3.5 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
- 3.6 ANALYSIS
- 3.7 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- 3.8 RESEARCH PROTOCOL
- 3.9 GIBSON’S THEORY OF AFFORDANCES
- 3.10 THE THEORIES OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
  - 3.10.1 Market-based view
  - 3.10.2 Resource-based theory (RBT)
  - 3.10.3 Alignment theory (Strategic fit)
  - 3.10.4 The relational view of strategy
  - 3.10.5 Transient advantage
- 3.11 COLLABORATIVE ADVANTAGE
- 3.12 SHARED VALUE-CREATION
- 3.13 CO-OPETITION STRATEGY
- 3.14 THE PURPOSE OF STRATEGY
- 3.15 A STIPULATIVE DEFINITION
- 3.16 CHAPTER SUMMARY
- 3.17 FUTURE RESEARCH
4.1 INTRODUCTION
- 4.2 THE SHARING ECONOMY
- 4.3 THE AFFORDANCES NICHE: COLLECTIVE BENEFIT
- 4.4 THE BAIT BALL
  - 4.4.1 What is a bait ball?
  - 4.4.2 The bait ball and collective benefit
- 4.5 METHODOLOGY
- 4.5.1 Participant profile
- 4.6 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
- 4.7 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
- 4.8 QUANTITATIVE DATA
- 4.9 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
  - 4.9.1 Digitalising
  - 4.9.2 Competing
  - 4.9.3 Embedding sustainability
  - 4.9.4 Collaborating
  - 4.9.5 Creating a whole product
  - 4.9.6 Creating customer intimacy
- 4.10 A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK OF COLLECTIVE BENEFIT
- 4.11 THE PROPOSED OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF COLLECTIVE BENEFIT
- 4.12 CHAPTER SUMMARY
- 4.13 MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
- 4.14 FURTHER RESEARCH
5.1 INTRODUCTION
- 5.2 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION
- 5.3 METHODOLOGY AND DATA
  - 5.3.1 Methodology
  - 5.3.2 Data collected
  - 5.3.3 Level of responsibility
  - 5.3.4 Network history
  - 5.3.5 Participant demographics
  - 5.3.6 Headquarter distribution
  - 5.3.7 Framework data
  - 5.3.8 Affordance inclusion conditions
- 5.4 THE AFFORDANCE NICHE COLLECTIVE BENEFIT
- 5.5 COLLECTIVE BENEFIT VISUALISATION
- 5.6 FINDINGS
- 5.7 CHAPTER SUMMARY
- 5.8 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
6.1 INTRODUCTION
- 6.2 THE ECOSYSTEM OF SMALL BUSINESSES, THE BNI CONTEXT
- 6.3 SHARED PROSPERITY
- 6.4 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLLECTIVE BENEFIT, NETWORK CAPABILITY AND NETWORK COMPETENCE
- 6.5 ASSESSMENT OF VARIABLES
  - 6.5.1 Trusting
  - 6.5.2 Communication
  - 6.5.3 Network human capital resources
  - 6.5.4 Inter-business Collaborating
- 6.6 EMPIRICAL RESULTS
  - 6.6.1 Data collection and sample
  - 6.6.2 Testing for survey non-response bias
- 6.6.3 Operationalisation and measurement
- 6.7 MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE STUDY
  - 6.7.1 Step 1: Assessment of data quality
  - 6.7.2 Step 2: Assessment of data reliability
  - 6.7.3 Step 3: Exploratory factor analysis
  - 6.7.4 Step 4: CFA
  - 6.7.5 Step 5: Draw a confirmatory factor diagram
  - 6.7.6 Step 6: Predictive validity
  - 6.7.7 Step 7: Adding Trusting
- 6.8 DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS INCLUDING ‘TRUSTING’
- 6.9 CHAPTER SUMMARY
- 6.10 FUTURE RESEARCH AND LIMITATIONS
7.1 INTRODUCTION
- 7.2 SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS
  - 7.2.1 Phase
  - 7.2.2 Phase
  - 7.2.3 Phase
  - 7.2.4 Phase
  - 7.2.5 Phase
- 7.3 TRUSTING
- 7.4 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS
- 7.5 SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS
- 7.6 SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
- 7.7 MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS
- 7.8 SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH