Dimensions of Learning Orientation and Its Impact on Organizational Performance and Competitiveness in Smes

Abstract

There is evidence that indicate a positive relationship of learning orientation (LO) with organizational performance in SMEs of emerging economies. However, there are only few studies that investigate how each one of the dimensions of learning orientation (LO) contributes to variables of results such as competitiveness and organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to analyze the direct effects of each dimension of the construct (LO) with organizational performance and competitiveness, from a quantitative cross-sectional study implemented in 400 SMEs of Aguascalientes city, Mexico using SEM technique. The findings reveal that there is a direct and significant relationship between commitment to learning and shared vision with competitiveness; open-mindedness turned out to have a non-significant positive relationship with competitiveness. While the relationship of open-mindedness and commitment to learning have a positive and significant influence on organizational performance, not so shared vision that has a negative and significant influence on organizational performance. The originality of this paper, is that there is limited contributions of the relationship of LO with each dimension of competitiveness, and performance in SMEs worldwide. Among the implications found it is that the existing evidence may result different in other economies and large businesses.

SMEs’ Performance in Developing Countries: Suitability of Personal Wealth Measures

“…In the first instance, learning orientation positively and significantly influenced competitive advantage. This finding is similar to the findings obtained by Martinez et al (2020) in which openmindedness and commitment to learning dimensions of learning orientation positively and significantly influenced competitive advantage. The findings are also similar to the findings of Martinette & Obenchain-Leeson (2012), and Mahmood & Hanafi (2013b).…”

“…Recently, Petty et al (2019) measured performance using three items which are sales, assets, and number of employees for the past three years. Martinez et al (2020) measured performance using items such as increase in sales, level of return on investment, level of benefits, customers' satisfaction, and employees' satisfaction for the past two years. In another study, Sawaean & Ali (2020) measured performance using financial and operational measures.…”

“…Despite the use of heterogeneous performance measures, positive and significant influence of learning orientation on SMEs' performance has been found in Yeni (2015), Hussain et al (2018), Petty et al (2019), and Sawaean & Ali (2020). The work of Martinez et al (2020) investigated the individual influences of learning orientation dimensions on SMEs' performance, findings inform that open-mindedness and commitment to learning dimensions positively and significantly influenced SMEs' performance while shared vision dimension of learning orientation negatively and significantly influenced SMEs' performance. While most past studies reported positive and significant influence of learning orientation on SMEs' performance, other studies like Serna et al (2016) and Beneke et al (2016) reported insignificant influence of learning orientation on SMEs' performance.…”

Effect of Acquisition Type on Industrial Development in Emerging Markets: Evidence From China

“…There have been a variety of research results on the relationship between acquisition type and firm performance at the firm level from different angels. For intra-industry acquisition, from the perspective of resources, acquisition can exert more scale effect; from the transaction cost perspective, acquisition can reduce the opportunist risks in acquisition and integration; from the innovation perspective, it is conducive to complementarity, learning and innovation (Tehseen et al, 2021); and from the perspective of institutional theory, intra-industry acquisition has higher legitimacy and is conducive to integration after the acquisition (Graebner et al, 2017;King et al, 2004;Vega Martinez et al, 2020). In all across-border acquisition transactions, intra-industry acquisitions accounted for the majority of acquisitions (Cornaggia & Li, 2019;Harris & Ravenscraft, 1991;Humphrey-Jenner et al, 2017).…”

“…Third, from the perspective of resource theory, it is believed that intra-industry acquisition has a greater "integration effect" than cross-industry acquisition does (Vega Martinez et al, 2020). For cross-industry acquisitions, the original industry of the firm will inevitably be affected because resources are scattered into other industries.…”