A tale of two paths
Purpose: Based on a strategic group concept, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of resource employments on persistent performance in the pharmaceutical industry. Design/methodology/approach: In departing from previous research, this paper takes an inverted approach to mapping firms into heterogeneous groups with distinct long-term performance trajectories, given that strategic profiles and characteristics were unknown. The methodology used is latent class growth analysis, a person-centred approach focussing on the relationships among individuals. Regression models were subsequently used to examine the strategy variables-performance relationship between groups and within groups. Findings: First, firms were grouped into upper-performance and lower-performance trajectory subpopulations. Second, the effects of marketing and R&D on performance significantly differed within subpopulations and presented a U shape or an inverse U shape relation. Third, the employment of R&D resources was more effective in the lower-performance trajectory group, the average scale of which is smaller than in the upper-performance trajectory group. On the contrary, the employment of marketing resources had a greater benefited in the upper-performance trajectory group. Research limitations/implications: Intangible strategy features are ignored due to measure problem in the long period. Practical implications: Strategic competition is more significant among intragroup members than inter groups. That the U-shape or invert U-shape effects of resource employments on performance among intragroup members reminds the researchers that the law of diminishing return or increasing return should not be ignored when test the group-performance relationship in future research. Originality/value: The current study introduces an effective approach to investigate the strategic group concept.
Year of publication: |
2020
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Authors: | Liou, Fen-may |
Published in: |
Management Decision. - Emerald, ISSN 0025-1747, ZDB-ID 2023018-7. - Vol. 58.2020, 1 (13.01.), p. 1-15
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Publisher: |
Emerald |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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