Trying to become a different type of company: dynamic capability at Smith Corona

Abstract

Smith Corona, formerly one of the world's leading manufacturers of typewriters, was challenged to exercise dynamic capability in the face of the dissipation of its main product category. A study of the last two decades of the life of the company shows how Smith Corona tried to alter its resource base by leveraging existing resources, creating new resources, accessing external resources, and releasing resources. Using the extended case method, this study advances dynamic capability theory by confronting it with an empirical case. The Smith Corona case provides rich insights into the resource alteration processes by which dynamic capability operates, and highlights resource cognition as a missing element in dynamic capability theory.

How do Firms Adapt? A Fuzzy-Set Analysis of the Role of Cognition and Capabilities in U.S. Defense Firms’ Responses to 9/11

“…Rooted in the notion of "dynamic capability," this literature has focused on the Asset Reconfiguration → Adaptation link, and has looked at such asset reconfigurations as mergers and acquisitions (Karim & Mitchell, 2000), divestitures (Moliterno & Wiersema, 2007), and business unit reorganizations (Danneels, 2010). The profound influence of the resource-based view (Barney, 1991;Wernerfelt, 1984) on this research stream led to the working hypothesis that, by leveraging capabilities to reconfigure assets in a unique fashion, firms could perform certain tasks in superior ways and thereby gain an edge over competitors (Leiblein, 2011).…”

“…Especially in large firms consisting of several strategic business units (SBUs), even a substantial environmental shift may not require reconfigurations in every SBU (Danneels, 2010), as multi-business firms operate in several industry segments characterized by different conditions, and thus face distinct challenges and opportunities in terms of adaptation. However, most research examines adaptive strategies at the corporate level, as opposed to the finer-grained SBU level (an exception is Martin, 2011).…”

“…An alternative approach conceives of DC as a comprehensive repertoire of actions, implying that cognition should not be examined in isolation (Danneels, 2010;Kor & Mesko, 2013). If indeed DC must consist of several elements, such as the "sensing-seizing-reconfiguring" tripod (Teece, 2007), then one could reasonably argue that our cognition variables capture the first leg of the tripod, "sensing the environment" (Pavlou & El Sawy, 2011: 239), and that our asset reconfiguration variables provide a good proxy of the last leg, "reconfiguring assets and structures to maintain competitiveness" (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2011: 1501.…”

Integrated Supply Network Maturity Model: Water Scarcity Perspective

“…Recently there has been growing interest in sustainable supply network design with an emphasis on addressing social, economic, and ecological effects on the business environment. In order to adjust to this constantly changing corporate environment, firms develop dynamic capabilities that lead to long-or short-term sustainable competitive advantages [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. A number of studies in the SC sustainability literature domain have been focused on static capabilities and dynamic capabilities [16,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27].…”

Convergent Innovation in Emerging Healthcare Technology Ecosystems: Addressing Complexity and Integration

“…The risk of an innovation not being accepted by the incumbent organization is widely accepted in the literature (e.g., Danneels, 2011). To avoid resistance and mitigate organizational risk, the cases made multiple but small changes to existing routines.…”