Mutually Supportive or Trade-Offs: An Analysis of Competitive Priorities in the Emerging Economy of India

To refine the theories of operations strategy, we need research from all different situational contexts, including different countries—both developing and developed. There have been many studies, including some replications, done in various parts of the world to further the debate on whether competitive priorities are mutually supportive or if they present potential trade-offs, but hardly any from a rapidly growing economy, such as India. This study is a significant attempt in that direction. After a thorough review of the literature, a set of hypotheses is introduced to test whether Indian manufacturers view competitive priorities as mutually supportive or trade-offs. The data from over 150 high-ranking individuals from over 75 manufacturers in India is used to test the hypotheses by way of cluster analysis and ANOVA. The resultant taxonomy reveals patterns that uniquely represent Indian manufacturers\u27 view of the competitive priorities, namely quality, flexibility, delivery and price. The study findings have significant managerial implications, both for India and other developing as well as developed economies. The taxonomy will serve to gauge India\u27s manufacturers\u27 role in the world. From a researcher\u27s perspective, this study makes a significant contribution to theory development, furthers our understanding of the strategic role of operations, moves forward the ongoing debate on the topic of trade-offs or complementarity, and paves the way for future studies in this topical area

Size Matters for Cloud Capability and Performance

Most research on cloud computing has been conducted in large firms. However, small, and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute the majority of organizations worldwide. SMEs differ significantly from large firms and organizational size is a significant contingency variable in the organizational context. Accordingly, we examine how SMEs and large firms differ in leveraging cloud capabilities to achieve performance. We suggest that Business Scalability mediates the link between Enterprise Cloud Capability and a firm\u27s Business Performance. We further hypothesize that the positive effect of Enterprise Cloud Capability on Business Performance is stronger for SMEs as they benefit more from Business Scalability than larger firms. We collect primary matched pair survey data from 147 small and large firms in India to test our research model. Empirical analysis using partial least squares provides support for our primary thesis that SMEs and large firms derive value from Enterprise Cloud Capability through different value creation pathways

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game: Cybage & India’s IT Industry

In this teaching case, we consider the challenges and opportunities faced by Cybage, one of the many players in the Indian software and information technology (IT) services sector, as it co-evolved with India’s knowledge economy. Despite its small size and a last-mover disadvantage, since its founding in 1994, Cybage had enjoyed growth rates higher than rest of the industry. Had Cybage developed a set of capabilities that differentiated the company from its peers and enabled it to expand from a handful of IT practitioners to a company with nearly 4,000 professionals and a global footprint? Or did Cybage’s growth merely reflect the general expansion of India’s knowledge economy? In this case , we overview the Indian IT industry’s evolution and highlight the concepts of entry timing, IT capabilities, service-dominant logic, and value co-creation by considering questions regarding Cybage’s key differentiators and capabilities, avenues of future growth, and the applicability of Cybage’s current capabilities to other domains of IT service provisioning

Missing Impact of Ratings on Platform Participation in India: A Call for Research in GREAT Domains

In this study, we propose that research conducted in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) domains does not necessarily generalize to the rest of the world. Growing, rural, eastern, aspirational, transitional (GREAT) domains now account for a significant proportion of world economic output and, thereby, warrant special attention. We submit that a tolerant stance under which scholars investigate GREAT domains with an open mind that allows for theoretical plurality will likely enrich IS theories. To exemplify this stance, we consider how online ratings affect ratee decisions to participate in financial transactions on a digital platform in a GREAT economy. The production and consumption of food affects every strata of society, and, thus, we choose to investigate our research question in the context of platform-enabled food delivery. We applied decision tree induction on a population-level dataset that included restaurants, their features, online ratings, and financial participation decisions from a major food discovery and delivery platform in India. Tree induction makes no distributional assumptions and makes no a priori assumptions on the combinations of factors, which allows one to put forth the most lenient test for uncovering any impact that online ratings have on the decisions that rates make tacitly. After conducting multiple computational experiments, we consistently found that online restaurant ratings did not have a significant bearing on their decision to participate on the food-delivery platform. Our counterintuitive finding serves as an example WEIRD domain logic that does not generalize to a GREAT domain and forms a credible basis for our call for additional research in GREAT domains

How Firm Age and Size Influence Value Creation from Cloud Computing

Most studies of value creation from cloud computing have examined firms that are old in age and large in size. We theorize different value appropriation pathways from cloud computing dependent upon the age and size of a firm, such that there are different pathways for younger firms as compared to established firms, and smaller firms as compared to larger firms. We hypothesize that established firms gain more Business Performance from Enterprise Cloud Capability – a higher-order capability formed of three second-order cloud computing capabilities, through the mediation effect of Business Responsiveness, whereas younger firms gain more Business Performance directly from Enterprise Cloud Capability. We further hypothesize that smaller firms achieve higher Business Performance through the mediating effect of Business Scalability, whereas larger firms achieve more Business Performance directly from Enterprise Cloud Computing. Partial least squares analysis of matched pair survey data from 197 firms in India provides support for our theor

Competitive Brokerage, Information Technology and Internal Resources

To thrive in the current embedded and electronic competitive environment, organizations must achieve advantageous positions within their networks of competition. We strengthen the understanding of the genesis of network structures by examining the IT-enabled capabilities and internal resource endowment that determine an advantageous position in competition networks, which we term as competitive brokerage. We propose that firms should consider their competitive brokerage position to elaborate a successful e-business strategy. We employ a two-stage Tobit regression on a longitudinal competition network that spans 13 industries and demonstrate that commercial, technical and intangible resources influence competitive brokerage. We find that IT-enabled information management capability strengthens the effects of intangible resources to attain a competitive brokerage position. Our study contributes towards the IT business value, resource base view and competitive dynamics literatures. Overall, our results demonstrate that IT plays a critical role in enabling firms to face multi-market competition in the embedded economy

Juggling Paradoxical Strategies: The Emergent Role of IT Capabilities

The simultaneous pursuit of paradoxical strategies is an emergent means of attaining competitive advantage. By nature, exploration and exploitation are fundamentally different and contradictory, thus reflecting an instance of organizational ambidexterity. We assert that IT capabilities act through different mechanisms to influence ambidexterity. To test our model, we selected to gather data from 352 manufacturing firms in high growth sectors in India – a setting that provides an exemplar for the world’s enterprises undergoing rapid changes in the 21st century. Through OLS analysis we find strong support for our assertion that an organization’s IT capabilities individually and jointly influence organizational ambidexterity, hitherto a challenging competitive possibility. We are thus also able to account for previously unexplained variance in IT payoffs in the emerging economy and small and medium enterprise contexts. Overall, through this research, we validate the emergent role of IT capabilities in juggling paradoxical strategies in the 21st century

Real Commerce in Virtual Worlds

This teaching case considers the challenges and opportunities faced by an entrepreneur in Second Life, one of the more popular virtual world environments. Second Life provides the economic and technological platform required for immersion, social interaction and the potential of private enterprise. Many entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the various business opportunities offered in Second Life and a number have earned significant real dollars through their in-world creations and services. Stuart O\u27Brian, the CEO and founder of VirtualCircle, was one of the early pioneers of virtual commerce. Over the last three years, his organization faced multiple business and technology challenges while negotiating the hypercompetitive and turbulent environment within Second Life. However, he now questions the sustainability of the ever-changing and agile business model that enabled the success of VirtualCircle. Stuart also faces questions regarding avenues of future growth and is grappling with issues concerning interoperability and the replication of his prior success in other virtual environments - and the real world

Toys Become Tools: From Virtual Worlds to Real Commerce

This teaching case considers the challenges and opportunities faced by an entrepreneur in Second Life, one of the more popular virtual world environments. Second Life provides the economic and technological platform required for immersion, social interaction, and the potential of private enterprise. Many entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the various business opportunities offered in Second Life, and a number have earned significant income through their in-world creations and services. Stuart O\u27Brian, the CEO and founder of VirtualCircle, was one of the early pioneers of virtual commerce. Over the last three years, his organization faced multiple business and technology challenges while negotiating the hypercompetitive and turbulent environment within Second Life. However, he now questions the sustainability of the ever-changing and agile business model that enabled the success of VirtualCircle. Stuart also faces questions regarding avenues of future growth and is grappling with issues concerning interoperability and the replication of his prior success in other virtual environments—and the real world

Dancing in the Tigers’ Den: MNCs versus Local Firms Leveraging IT-Enabled Strategic Flexibility

Institutional settings in emerging markets pose challenges for multinational corporations (MNCs). We argue that information technology (IT) can be used to develop strategic flexibilities to complement organizational capabilities in emerging markets. We explore how MNCs and local firms compare in leveraging IT-enabled strategic flexibilities and organizational capabilities to improve performance in emerging markets. We focus on two capabilities: marketing capability and relational capability. We theorize that IT-enabled strategic flexibility in customer services (ITCS) complements the firm’s marketing capability, and IT enabled strategic flexibility in transaction services (ITTS) complements the firm\u27s relational capability to influence firm performance. Further, we posit that the complementary effect of ITCS with marketing capability is lower for MNCs than for local firms, whereas the complementary effect of ITTS with relational capability is higher for MNCs than local firms. Our empirical analysis of primary data collected from MNCs and local firms in India broadly supports our theory