The literature on dynamic capabilities has long faced the challenge of empirically investigating a concept that is inherently intangible, complex, and organization-specific. Empirical clarity is crucial because dynamic capabilities are argued to be essential for achieving sustainable competitive advantage in changing environments, and only empirical research can validate this claim. Despite significant advancements, issues related to measurement, methodologies, and the robustness of findings persist. This article addresses these concerns by offering key recommendations for empirical research in this domain. First, we underscore the importance of construct validity and the need for clear definitions and focused dimensions of dynamic capabilities. Second, we recommend empirical designs with time lags between the measurement of dynamic capabilities and their antecedents or outcomes, and sector-specific studies to capture the temporal dynamics and contextual nuances. Third, we encourage leveraging established survey measures, close proxies in archival research, and innovative experiments and qualitative methods. Finally, we highlight the potential of multimethod approaches to triangulate findings and enhance theoretical insight. Our hope is to help future researchers address the unique challenges of studying dynamic capabilities empirically, paving the way for continued progress in this significant field of strategic management.

Research suggests that multibusiness firms often misallocate financial resources. However, research also suggests that firms differ in how effectively they allocate a range of resources. We argue that some firms have a resource allocation capability that enables them to more effectively determine the allocation of resources than often portrayed in the literature. We identify key search and selection routines that form the building blocks of a resource allocation capability and explain how these routines facilitate critical activities at different levels of the management hierarchy that are involved in the determination of resource allocations, including for related and vertically linked businesses. We further explain how a resource allocation capability, and the routines that make up the capability, help firms allocate resources effectively to meet their strategic and financial objectives. Part of the improved effectiveness of resource allocation arises because the routines help to mitigate the factors that prior research has identified as leading to resource misallocation, namely information asymmetry and distortion, internal politics, and cognitive biases and backward-looking aspirations. Finally, we move beyond research on whether firms effectively allocate resources to explain why resource allocation capabilities are likely be heterogeneous among firms due to differences in their routines and the ways that firms structure their use of routines. This heterogeneity stems in part from tradeoffs that firms face when choosing among resource allocation routines. As a result, firms are likely to vary in how effectively they allocate resources, leading to heterogeneity in firm adaptation and change and ultimately in firm performance.

Experience is a pervasive concept used in a variety of fields as well as laymen’s conversations. In the management field, the meaning has not only relied on individuals’ work experience but also grown beyond individuals to produce constructs such as teams’ shared experience and organizational-level experience. The richness in the use of experience has led to a variety of meanings, values, and applications for a concept that many scholars and readers might take for granted. Because experience work has spanned research traditions and levels of analysis, scholarly studies can simultaneously build upon one another, exist beside each other, or contradict each other. Therefore, the purpose of this panel symposium is to engage accomplished scholars who have significantly advanced the fields’ view of individual, shared, and/or organizational experience through their research to reflect on their use of experience in research as well as on the assumptions that underlie their research at the individual and/or organizational levels. This reflection and the subsequent moderated discussion aim to uncover the variation in measurement, value, and implications of experience in individuals, teams, and organizations and to better our collective understanding of both the diversity of experience research and its value overall for management scholars. Finally, the panelists will suggest avenues for future research and engage with the audience about promising areas for their work.

The resource-based view is an enduring and impactful mainstay of research within strategic management and beyond. This editors' introduction to the special issue on "new directions for the resource-based view" accomplishes two main tasks. First, we describe the contributions offered by the seven articles contained in the special issue. Second, we explain the potential value to research of incorporating into resource-based inquiry new contexts (artificial intelligence and digitization, distributed organizations, and stakeholders and sustainability); new concepts (resource redeployment, market shaping through resources and capabilities); and new methods (text analysis and machine learning, formal models, policy capturing). The overall aim of this introduction is to help invigorate the resource-based view by spotlighting a series of promising new directions.

A large stream of theoretical and empirical research has developed on the topic of dynamic capabilities. However, research on the mechanisms through which dynamic capabilities affect outcomes for firms has often focused on alterations to firms’ resource bases (their resources and capabilities), with less attention to the effects of dynamic capabilities on the external environment. I introduce the concept of external-facing dynamic capabilities and explain how these capabilities may have direct effects on the external environment, in addition to helping firms alter their resource bases. These effects in turn can help firms adapt to and even shape their external environments.

Transferring individuals who possess relevant knowledge from one organizational unit to another-a form of resource redeployment-may help to overcome impediments to knowledge transfer. Despite the promise of this mechanism, which often occurs through intrafirm geographic mobility, relatively little research has examined how the knowledge and expertise of individuals interacts with the organizational resources of the units to which individuals move. This study examines whether intrafirm geographic mobility improves organizational performance by providing a conduit for the transfer of knowledge while accounting for the interaction between individual knowledge and factors at the organization-unit level of analysis. We analyze the performance effects of the transfer of engineers who have expertise in innovative process technologies. The results from a large multinational company show that the innovative process technology-related expertise of an individual engineer who moves to a new organizational unit is positively associated with the performance of that unit, suggesting that intrafirm geographic mobility improves organizational performance by providing a conduit for the transfer of knowledge. The results also show that the technology-related knowledge of engineers is a substitute for organization-level factors when a unit uses only technologies with which it is already familiar, whereas the technology-related knowledge of engineers is a complement to organization-level factors when units introduce new technologies. Thus, individuals who bring novel expertise to their organizational units through intrafirm mobility may be important vehicles for organizational learning and building new competences, helping to diffuse best practices.

This symposium aims to move dynamic capabilities research forward by highlighting the nascent yet growing body of research on termination capability. Dynamic capabilities is one of the most influential streams of research in the field of strategic management in the past three decades. The growing but diffuse body of work on termination capabilities spans disparate titles such as exits, divestitures, failures, redeployment, terminations, and abandonments. We bring together five researchers whose work highlights (1) antecedents of firm termination capabilities and (2) their importance to firm performance (3) in a variety of theoretical empirical contexts, spanning VC investments, acquisition (dis)synergies, private equity firms in markets for corporate assets, and managerial prosocial preferences that impede layoffs.

An emerging stream of behavioral strategy research has examined how firms can engage in shaping strategies to alter the competitive landscape of a market such as by altering the market (Pontikes & Rindova, 2020) or payoff structure (Gavetti, Helfat, & Marengo, 2017). This stream of work has shown that firms often shape the competitive landscape by introducing new products, building ecosystems, and sculpting consumer preferences. Despite the pervasiveness of firms’ shaping strategies, empirical answers to when and how firms engage in shaping and what capabilities lead to successful shaping remain rare. We contend that this gap arises from both theoretical and empirical challenges to delineate shaping from adapting, shaping intentions from shaping outcomes, and the specific role of different stakeholders. Given these fundamental challenges, this symposium seeks to bring together a group of scholars from diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds to share their expertise on market shaping to facilitate future research on this important yet understudied topic. Specifically, this symposium will shed light on ways to: (i) differentiate between adaptive and shaping strategies, (ii) examine the capability antecedents of shaping firms, (iii) identify the role of various stakeholders in determining the success of focal firms’ shaping strategies, and (iv) understand how new markets and ecosystems emerge from the dynamics of shaping processes.

The purpose of our panel symposium is to stimulate the emergent research on endogenous shaping of business environments. Distinguished scholars who have studied this subject from different perspectives will provide their insights on the ‘who,’ ‘when,’ and ‘how’ of shaping, as strategic actors seek to construct and alter their future business environment. Bringing these different perspectives together creates the opportunity to move the field forward in a systematic way. In addition, the discussion would highlight future avenues for theorization and empirical research that will take our understanding of shaping of the business environment a step further.

This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of the shaping of a market by a firm or set of firms competing in that market. The analysis draws on evolutionary economics and incorporates insights from prior research on shaping that has relied on a socio-cognitive perspective. The approach taken here can provide a means to more clearly distinguish shaping from adaptation and search and has implications for organization–environment coevolution and the evolution of competitive advantage.

Abstract Economics-based theories in strategic management fall into two categories: (1) homegrown theories developed within the field of strategic management that rely on economic logic, and (2) theories that originated in the field of economics, but that have been applied and often developed in new directions in the field of strategic management. This chapter surveys foundational theories of both types and provides selected examples of subsequent work. The discussion then turns to emerging areas of interest and opportunities for future theoretical research to address gaps in existing theories, to improve the understanding of new phenomena, and to investigate fundamental questions not yet addressed.

Given their complex, company-specific and history-dependent nature, organizational capabilities are generally considered as the foundation of a firm’s long-term strategy and as major source of competitive advantage. While the strategic significance of capabilities is uncontested, we still have an incomplete understanding of how they emerge, develop, and change over time. It is the aim of this symposium to push the discussion and advance the theoretical understanding in this realm. Topics such as capability rigidity, capability integration, learning mechanisms, and dynamic capabilities will be covered. The symposium will bring together different capability scholars and provide a platform for a productive discussion of how to push the field forward. Sociotechnical Resource-Logics in Reconfiguring Core Capabilities Presenter: Joakim Hans Netz; Jönköping U. Integrating novel capabilities in an established organization Presenter: Kathrin Borner; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Fleur Deken; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Hans Berends; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Frans Feldberg; KIN Research, Vrije U. Amsterdam Acquisition Experience-Capability-Performance: A Triple Layer Contextual Model Presenter: Florian Bauer; U. of Innsbruck Presenter: Martin Friesl; Lancaster U. Presenter: David R. King; Florida State U. Presenter: Svante Schriber; Stockholm Business School Presenter: Qingxiong Weng; U. of Science and Technology of China Strategic Incompetence Compensation Competence Presenter: Jochen Koch; European Uni Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)

This symposium focuses on the question of how diversified firms should allocate resources among their different areas of business – a fundamental issue within strategic management research. Despite the importance of the topic, after early classic studies (e.g. Bower, 1970), there was a decline in the strategy field in research in which the topic of resource allocation was in the foreground of the studies. Instead, resource allocation played a secondary role in papers which focused on issues such as international expansion, corporate entrepreneurship initiatives, or divestment decisions (Birkinshaw, 1997; Hoskisson, Johnson, and Moesel, 1994; Tan and Vertinsky, 1996; Wright and Ferris, 1997). Recently, there has been a resurgence in research which directly focuses on the topic of resource allocation and redeployment (for overviews, see Busenbark, Wiseman, Arrfelt, & Woo, 2017; Folta, Helfat, & Karim, 2016; Sengul, Almeida Costa, & Gimeno, 2019). Results from these recent empirical studies yielded mixed findings regarding the question of how efficiently multi-business firms are able to allocate resources internally among their different business units. In order to move our understanding of this important issue forward, there is a pressing need for more theory building and empirical research in corporate strategy. In order to assist in this re-energizing of resource allocation research, it is the goal of this symposium to bring together contributions from different angles on the topic of resource allocation. Specifically, the symposium considers four diverse perspectives on resource allocation; namely regarding (i) innovation-related outcomes of different resource allocation strategies on the headquarters level, (ii) the interrelationships between different areas of business in the portfolio of a diversified firm, (iii) the management of uncertainty when discovering opportunities for resource redeployment, and (iv) a capabilities-based understanding of why some firms are more successful than others in allocating resources. This symposium therefore contributes to the broadening of our understanding about how diversified firms should allocate resources among their different areas of business. Attention to Allocation: The Linkage Between Internal Capital Markets and Innovation Presenter: Matthew Semadeni; Arizona State U. Presenter: John R. Busenbark; U. of Notre Dame Presenter: Wookyung Lee; Arizona State U. Resources Types and Variance in Portfolios of Diversified Companies Presenter: Marco S. Giarratana; IE Business School Presenter: Martina Pasquini; IE Business School Presenter: Juan Santalo; IE Business School Managing Resource Redeployment with Data Science: Discovering Uncertain Sunkenness Presenter: John S. Chen; U. of Florida Presenter: Gwendolyn Kuo-fang Lee; U. of Florida Resource Allocation Capability and the Allocation of Resources in Multi-Business Firms Presenter: Constance E. Helfat; Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Presenter: Catherine Maritan; Syracuse U.

This symposium features four papers that examine the creation and reconfiguration of the firm’s capabilities with a special focus on emerging technologies and nascent industries. Specifically, we seek to understand organizational and technological factors that shape established firms and startups investments in, and re-deployment of, resources to achieve performance advantages. The four papers use diverse theoretical frameworks, methodologies, levels of analysis, and empirical contexts. Together, they address an interesting set of questions and advance our knowledge about firm and industry evolution, with implications for firm performance, subsequent entry patterns, innovation, and entrepreneurial actions. The symposium should be of interest to scholars of strategic management, technology management, and entrepreneurship. Unbundling and Managing Uncertainty Surrounding Emerging Technologies Presenter: Rahul Kapoor; U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Thomas M. Klueter; IESE Business School Synergies and Redeployment in Related Diversification - Organizational Structure and Incentives Presenter: Arkadiy V. Sakhartov; U. of I at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Constance E. Helfat; Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Mapping Technology Evolution to Firm Capabilities: A Study of the Bionic Prosthetic Industry Presenter: Seojin Kim; U. of Maryland Presenter: Rajshree Agarwal; U. of Maryland Presenter: Brent Goldfarb; U. of Maryland Pioneering Firm Capabilities, Entry Strategies, and Survival: A Study of the Mobile Money Industry Presenter: Rajshree Agarwal; U. of Maryland Presenter: Serguey Braguinsky; U. of Maryland Presenter: Sonali Shah; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Audra Wormald; Robert H. Smith School of Business, U. of Maryland

The last few years, we have seen a rapid increase in the interest on ecosystems, digital or otherwise. Partly driven by changes in how sectors are structured, studies of ecosystems have taken off, and a number of papers have helped provide some clarity about what ecosystems are, how they compare to other streams of research, what is unique in them, and what fresh insights can be gleamed by looking at them explicitly. This symposium brings together some of the key scholars whose work has helped create and shape this field, as well as senior scholars who will help place ecosystems in the broad context of our field, as well as a practitioner and thought leader who will provide his perspective from the field, in considering what lies ahead. Panelists will share their latest ideas and suggestions on how to move research ahead, and will engage in a discussion with the audience on the next stage (2.0) of ecosystem research.

The main goal of this symposium is to promote an understanding of nonmarket strategy and its relationship with other sub-fields of competitive strategy by inviting thoughtful scholars working in the fields of market and nonmarket strategy. An opportunity to share perspectives regarding market and nonmarket strategy would be helpful in sharpening discussion on this topic and in suggesting future research directions. We believe this symposium would serve as a valuable opportunity for management and strategy scholars to come together and discuss these topics which could lead to more rigorous and interesting interdisciplinary academic research and continued interactions in subsequent forums. To increase the focus of the symposium, we have chosen to focus on the interaction between technology/innovation and nonmarket strategy. The importance of government and their regulatory and legislative decisions is critical in innovation and technology development because of the implications of such actions on rules imposed on market interactions, the level of uncertainty imposed on emerging technologies and emerging industries, and resource allocation (Bruce, de Figueiredo, and Silverman, 2018; Hegde and Sampat, 2015). The importance of the interactions between market and nonmarket strategy, especially with respect to such revolutionary innovations, calls for scholars to critically think about (1) the role of governments in promoting innovation while minimizing negative social impacts, (2) firms’ strategies to profitably develop new technology-driven market categories in light of regulatory forces and the need to ensure the categories are socially legitimate, and (3) the strategies with which market actors can productively shape regulatory constraints. Together, it is critical to think about the potential role of nonmarket strategy in technology and innovation. We hope this panel symposium will be a good starting point to review the state of nonmarket strategy, to highlight gaps in our knowledge between different fields in strategy, and to initiate more active and in-depth academic discourse to promote interesting research in these areas.