An exploratory study of capability building among African multinational enterprises

This study explored the fundamental question of the capabilities that African multinational enterprises build, especially before undertaking cross-border asset seeking endeavours and how the MNEs build such capabilities. Using multiple case study design, I obtained the data for the study from a combination of archival and interview data obtained from eight African MNEs which originate from four African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Togo, and Zimbabwe. The informants were 48 senior executives, including corporate executives, regional managers, and the Chairmen, of the selected MNEs. The data was analysed using the recommended guideline for building theory from cases study approach, covering within and cross case analysis processes. The findings reveal that African MNEs develop scalable advantages in the areas of product, people, and processes (PPP). In addition to uncovering the capabilities that the MNEs build, my most fundamental contribution is a process theory of how African MNEs enhance their scalable advantages by undertaking three interrelated activities, namely skilling, transcending, and consolidating. Also, another central contribution of the study is a framework of how African MNEs integrate internally developed and externally acquired capabilities through a combination of transcending and spanning processes. Based on the foregoing findings, I propose that emerging markets firms that develop scalable (product, process, and people) advantages would be able to engage in cross-border value creation by combining internal and external capabilities. The study contributes to the growing literature on emerging markets multinational enterprises (EM MNEs’) capability development. More specifically, the study contributes to EM MNEs-focused frameworks, notably Mathews’ LLL framework, by explaining the capabilities that EM MNEs possess prior to engaging in linkage, leverage and learning activities. Also, within the wider IB literature, the study contributes to the categorization of the O sub-paradigm of Dunning’s OLI paradigm, by showing the link between static and dynamic advantages. Finally, the implications of the present study to research, practice and policy were discussed

Customer relationship management for brand commitment and brand loyalty

This article examined the impact of customer relationship management strategy on customers brand commitment and brand loyalty in the Nigeria financial sector. Methodology: the positivist quantitative survey approach was used to collect primary for this research. Simple random sampling was used to select 250 customers of Nigerian deposit accepting banks. Findings: the study found that CRM strategy impacts positively on banks’customers brand commitment and loyalty behaviours. However, continuance loyalty weighted highly positive on customer advocacy behaviour than affective loyalty. Conclusions: the study concluded that customer relationship management strategy helps in winning customers brand commitment and loyalty. Thus, continuance factors are suitable for predicting advocacy intentions of customers of Nigerian banks. Recommendations: the study recommended for strategic policy makers in the Nigeria financial sector to improve on their firms’ CRM infrastructure in order to continually meet customers’ expectations. KEYWORDS: Customer relationship management, customer advocacy, brand commitment, loyalt

A quantitative study on the influence of breadth of open innovation, on SME's product-service performance: the moderating effect of type of innovation

The study investigates the influence of breadth of open innovation strategy on product and service performance of UK SMEs and how the relationship is affected by the type of innovation. The respondents were 72 senior employees randomly sampled from SMEs in UK manufacturing sector. We collected primary data using survey questionnaire. Multiple regression technique through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 was used to analyse the data. We found that breadth of open innovation have curvilinear relationship to both incremental and radical product performance. Also, results showed that incremental as well as radical innovation moderates the influence of breadth of open innovation on the product performance. We concluded that adoption of optimum breadth of open innovation strategy supports SMEs’ product-service performance. We recommended that SMEs’ policy-makers should adopt a balanced breadth of open innovation strategy in order to foster the achievement of their product performance goals, depending on the particular type of innovation they intend to achieve