Baan Company’s Corporate Web Strategy – An Effort To Reach Main Street

During the 1990s Baan Company became a market leader in the enterprise applications industry. Its mission was to become an independent software manufacturer, serving a global market. To speed up growth, Baan developed its Baan Web strategy which implied a far-reaching renewal of its corporate strategy. Burgelman and Grove (1996) define the moment of choosing a new strategy as a strategic inflection point. Their framework named “Dynamic Forces in Firm Evolution” explains that ssuccessful development and implementation of a new corporate strategy is a process of aligning five dynamic forces. The focus of this study is on the vital role of the internal selection environment. This force regulates the allocation of the company’s scarce resources – cash, competences/capabilities and senior management attention – to strategic action. It is the crucial force in the continuing alignment processes that have to take place. Every company has a unique combination of distinctive competences (Burgelman) or dynamic capabilities (Teece). The study explains that to execute a new strategy successfully new competences/capabilities have to be developed based on existent ones. The development of Baan’s corporate strategy is analyzed and discussed with reference to the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (Moore). The study concludes with the management implications of a strategic inflection point

De betekenis van marktstructuren voor de scope van de onderneming

Different market structures and value systems give insight into the changing environment in which companies operate. In this inaugural address the central question is: What is the influence of market structures on the scope of the firm?The objective is to give meaningful contributions to the clear understanding of market structures that are of specific importance at the meso level. To gain more insights into the scope of the firm a framework is constructed based on the three dimensions: product/market, vertical integration and geography. In the framework a tentative expansion in the form of a fourth dimension is suggested: total solutions capability. This framework is relevant because of a relative fixation of dimensions. This means that a change in one of the four dimensions influences the other. So if a company reduces its number of product/market combinations it should go hand-in-hand with geographic expansion. Also the move from stand-alone components, modules, products and services to total solutions should be combined with a reduction of vertical integration. With this framework one can explain the limits of the scope of the firm. The challenge of the scope of the firm is determined by a dynamic balance of both the strategic core of a company and the access to the right strategic networks, which are embedded in more or less open market structures. Companies are supposed to act upon those opportunities, by themselves or in cooperation with others, in which they can achieve economies of scale, scope, span and speed. Harry Commandeur is a professor of Industrial Economics and Business at the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests include the relationship of market structure, corporate strategy and firm performance. In his inaugural address he focuses on the relationship of market structures and the scope of the firm. Harry Commandeur publishes in Journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Business Logistics.Verschillende marktstructuren en typen waardensystemen geven een indicatie in welk veranderend krachtenveld bedrijfshuishoudingen tegenwoordig opereren. In deze rede wordt de volgende vraag gesteld: Wat is de betekenis van marktstructuren (en waardensystemen) voor de ondernemingsscope?De insteek is om zinvolle bijdragen te leveren aan het scherp op het netvlies krijgen van het "vliegwiel van vernieuwingen" dat juist op het meso-niveau manifest wordt. Om meer inzicht te krijgen in de ondernemingsscope wordt een raamwerk geconstrueerd naar drie dimensies: product/markt, verticale integratie en geografie. Het raamwerk kent ook een tentatieve uitbreiding met een vierde dimensie: totaalprobleemoplossend vermogen. Binnen het raamwerk wordt een relatieve dimensiefixatie ondertekend. Dit geeft aan dat een wijziging in een van de vier dimensies niet los kan worden gezien van de overige dimensies. Zo gaat een inkrimping van het aantal product/marktcombinaties idealiter samen met een geografische uitbreiding en het streven om van stand-alone componenten, modulen, producten en diensten naar een integrale probleemoplossing te gera

Caring for relations and organizational success—conceptualization of an Augustinian leadership scale

While making great strides in recent decades to connect leadership and human flourishing, the positive leadership literature has yet to focus on the aspect of the communal. Based on a close reading of Augustine’s works, this paper examines Augustinian leadership and emphasizes the importance of a view on leadership that aims at community building and contains an ethical framework characterized by veracity. This leadership style is founded on caritas (Gr.: agape, Eng.: love) as the main motive for leaders. Based on Augustine’s thinking, this kind of love is defined as a way to attain knowledge. We identify four subconstructs to constitute an Augustinian leadership scale: Centrality of the community, Veracity, Empathy and Success (through temperance). We provide theoretical grounds for the distinctiveness of this leadership construct as compared with neighboring constructs. Finally, we propose a testable framework of Augustinian leadership with a direct effect on affective commitment as well as a mediated effect, and with a sense of belonging as the mediating variable. We provide ideas for future research and present practical implications of the theoretical insights on Augustinian leadership

Value Creation and Value Claiming in Make-Or-Buy Decisions

Transaction value analysis (TVA) integrates the concepts of resource heterogeneity and transaction cost economics into a single framework, which emphasizes both value creation and value claiming in firms' vertical integration decisions. Using a TVA perspective, we develop hypotheses to explain the firm's intent to outsource application services. A sample of 178 firms in the publishing and printing industry in The Netherlands is used to test the hypotheses. This paper finds that firms take both value-creation and value-claiming motivations into consideration, with value creation having on average a dominating impact, thus substantiating the TVA framework. However, we also find that if the risks of opportunism in outsourcing contracting are high, value creation becomes the less important factor in make-or-buy decisions. Furthermore, the paper shows that the need for flexibility is a major driver of governance choice for value-creation as well as for value-claiming motivations. Implications and future research directions are discussed

The Effects of Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms on Firm Performance

This study empirically investigates the influence of the market-bound (i.e., interaction and network effects) on the firm-bound (i.e., scale and learning effects) self-r

A Managerial Perspective on the Logic of Increasing Returns

The focus of this study is on the challenges faced by managers in effectively dealing with the new management logic of increasing returns as the information and knowledge intensi