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on Economics of Strategic Management |
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Issue of 2025–12–08
four papers chosen by João José de Matos Ferreira, Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Kim, Chang Hyun; Lee, Kyung Yul; Kwon, Youngsun |
| Abstract: | This study explores how knowledge search depth and breadth in green patenting influence environmental innovation in the mobile industry, a sector facing increasing scrutiny for its environmental impact. Using a panel of 42 mobile firms from 2001 to 2023, we find that search depth exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with green innovation, suggesting that while leveraging internal knowledge initially boosts environmental innovation, excessive reliance can hinder progress due to organizational rigidity. Conversely, search breadth demonstrates a consistently positive effect, indicating that expanding external knowledge sources enhances a firm's capacity for sustainable innovation. These findings underscore the strategic importance of balancing internal and external knowledge strategies to foster green innovation in the mobile sector. |
| Keywords: | Green Innovation, Knowledge Search, Mobile Industry, Sustainability |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:itse25:331286 |
| By: | Arrighetti, Alessandro; Landini, Fabio; Lasagni, Andrea; Lomuscio, Marco |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the strategic and organizational trajectories of worker buyouts (WBOs) during their consolidation phase, comparing them with structurally similar investor-owned firms (IOFs). While the early stages of WBO development have been widely studied, little is known about their medium-term evolution. Using a matched comparison design and survey data from firms established between 2010 and 2019, the study explores strategic orientation, investment and innovation behavior, organizational practices, human resource management, sources of competitive advantage and operational constraints of WBOs and IOFs. The findings reveal a dual dynamic of convergence and differentiation. WBOs adopt strategic and operational practices akin to those of IOFs, yet they also preserve distinctive participatory and employment-preserving features embedded in their cooperative governance model. While facing structural financial constraints, they exhibit stronger internal cohesion and greater involvement of workers in decision-making. Overall, the study reveals how WBOs balance convergence with conventional firm practices and the preservation of cooperative distinctiveness, shedding light on their capacity to remain both competitive and socially embedded. |
| Keywords: | Worker buyouts (WBOs), investor-owned firms (IOFs), matched comparison design strategy, capabilities, performance, organizational capability, personnel capability |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:333204 |
| By: | HARA, Yasushi |
| Abstract: | This study revisits the impact of customer concentration on the performance and survival of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by proposing an integrated “Quantity-Quality-Structure” framework. Utilizing a large-scale panel dataset of Japanese manufacturing SMEs, we employ rigorous empirical methods—including two-way fixed-effects models with controls for export status, Cox proportional hazards models, and dynamic event studies—to disentangle the complex effects of inter-firm relationships. While the static relationship between customer concentration (Quantity) and sales growth is found to be inconsistent across industries, our survival analysis reveals a robust and critical finding: high concentration significantly increases the risk of firm exit, supporting the vulnerability tenet of Resource Dependency Theory. Conversely, simple network connectivity (Degree Centrality) acts as a powerful buffer, significantly reducing exit risk and functioning as “structural insurance, ” whereas network brokerage (Betweenness Centrality) can exacerbate risks in certain assembly industries. Furthermore, dynamic analyses of strategic change reveal that firms “decoupling” from major customers face a multiyear “danger zone” of increased vulnerability before achieving diversification. Successful growth strategies are shown to be driven not by expanding existing B2B ties, but by a strategic pivot to new market types, specifically direct-to-consumer (B2C) segments. These findings reframe the debate on customer concentration from one of performance optimization to one of existential risk management and dynamic adaptation. |
| Keywords: | Customer Concentration, Firm Survival, Inter-firm Networks, Strategic Adaptation, SMEs |
| JEL: | L14 L25 M10 C23 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:tdbcdp:e-2025-02 |
| By: | Jaehan Cho (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade); Danbee Song (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trad); Sangwon Lee (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trad); Mincheol Choi (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trad); Song-hong Min (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trad) |
| Abstract: | Amid rapid changes in the domestic and global industrial environment, there is a pressing need to assess the current state of the South Korean economy and to formulate industrial policies that strengthen its responsiveness. Korean industry is confronting three simultaneous crises: declining industrial competitiveness and a weakened growth foundation, declining innovation capacity across the economy, and a rapidly changing external environment. Korea’s declining industrial competitiveness is evident in structural low growth and slowing productivity, weakening global market competitiveness, the maturation of flagship industries alongside stagnation in the creation of new ones, and a decline in dynamism across the broader industrial landscape.<p> At the same time, inherent structural problems are eroding innovation capacity in each industrial sector. These include an increase in marginal firms (i.e., zombie firms) and inefficient resource allocation, intensifying regulatory burdens, insufficient adoption of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and a lack of tangible market outcomes from such adoption, and a persistent quantitative and qualitative decline in the overall labor supply. External conditions are also becoming more challenging, as Korea faces a global industrial paradigm shift accompanied by intensifying industrial policy competition among major countries, as well as growing challenges and uncertainties associated with the green transition. Based on an objective assessment of these intertwined challenges, it is vital to establish strategic directions for future industrial policy, supported by the detailed formulation and systematic implementation of concrete policy tasks.<p> This report is the first in a series of KIET studies that seek to determine the best course of Korean industrial policy going forward. |
| Keywords: | industrial policy; South Korea; industrial crisis; innovation; global trade; protectionism; zombie firms; marginal enterprises; green transition; climate change |
| JEL: | L52 |
| Date: | 2025–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kietia:021812 |