Faculty of Business and Economics

Two opposing theories have been proposed to explain competitive advantage of firms. First, the market-based view (MBV) is focused on product or market positions and competition while second, the resource-based view (RBV) aims at explaining success by inwardly looking at unique resources and capabilities of a firm. Research has been struggling to distinguish impacts of these theories for illuminating performance. Business models are seen as an important concept to systemize the business and value creation logic of firms by defining different core components. Thus, this paper tries to assess associations between these components and MBV or RBV perspectives by applying content analysis. Two of the business model components were found to have strong links with the MBV while three of them showed indications of their roots lying in the resource-based perspective. These results are discussed and theorized in a final step by suggesting frameworks of the corresponding perspectives for further explaining competitive advantage.  less

In spite of high potentials and sophisticated goals set by federal governments, municipalities are reluctant to move procurement to the Internet. This study focuses on determinants of E-Procurement adoption at the municipal level. Considering previous research as well as public and private sector differences, a research model is developed, which is further examined by collecting and analyzing data from a multiple-case study of 13 German municipalities. Based on the empirical results, practical implications and areas of future work are discussed.

Die hohen Nutzenpotentiale von Cloud Computing können nur bei einer weiten Verbreitung der Technologie realisiert werden. Ziel der Innovationsforschung ist es daher, robuste, generalisierbare und prädiktive Erklärungsansätze zu entwickeln, die Möglichkeiten bieten, in die Verbreitung von Cloud Computing zu intervenieren. In der vorliegenden Studie werden die konzeptionellen und theoretischen Grundlagen gelegt, der aktuelle Stand der Forschung analysiert und erläutert, wie zukünftige Forschung einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu leisten kann, Handlungsempfehlungen für die Verbreitung von Cloud Computing zu entwickeln.

The digitalization and the diffusion of connected mobile devices have urged media companies to deliver their content in digital formats such as apps. We evaluate differences in customers' preferences and willingness to pay between traditional and digital content services conducting an adaptive conjoint analysis. Within this analysis we compare subscriptions to a printed newspaper with subscriptions to the website, e-paper, smartphone app or tablet app of this newspaper. Our results show that customers still prefer the printed newspaper over any digital format. The acceptance of digital newspaper formats depends on device ownership but the website is most popular in general. Our findings have profound implications for multi-platform publishing strategies. Content providers have to examine carefully in in which situations their products might be used and which devices their potential customers own in order to choose the right formats and prices.

The peculiarities of the recording industry system, such as fashion cycles, the hedonic nature of music, socionetwork effects, informal heuristics in the decision-making process of recording companies, and the opaque selection process of media gatekeepers have created uncertainty about the chart potential of musical products. With respect to the on-going digital transformation and shift in power from organizations to consumers, we leverage the principles of crowdsourcing to build a prediction model for understanding chart success. Therefore, we investigate the causal relationship between crowd evaluations based on listening experience and popular music chart success. We use 150 music songs and track their live cycles with entry and peak positions in reported music charts. Additionally, we carry out about 20 evaluations by the crowd for each song resulting in a total of 2.852 observations. Our findings indicate that the crowd has predictive relevance concerning popular music chart success. However, this predictive relevance is bound to certain conditions, namely the composition of the crowd, the underlying chart and market mechanisms and the novelty of the musical material. In sum we find that crowd-based mechanisms are especially suited for predicting the performance of novel songs from unknown artists, which makes them a powerful decision support instrument in very uncertain contexts with limited historical data availability.

Die hohen Nutzenpotentiale von Cloud Computing können nur bei einer weiten Verbreitung der Technologie realisiert werden. Ziel der Innovationsforschung ist es daher, robuste, generalisierbare und prädiktive Erklärungsansätze zu entwickeln, die Möglichkeiten bieten, in die Verbreitung von Cloud Computing zu intervenieren. In der vorliegenden Studie werden die konzeptionellen und theoretischen Grundlagen gelegt, der aktuelle Stand der Forschung analysiert und erläutert, wie zukünftige Forschung einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu leisten kann, Handlungsempfehlungen für die Verbreitung von Cloud Computing zu entwickeln.

In spite of high potentials and sophisticated goals set by federal governments, municipalities are reluctant to move procurement to the Internet. This study focuses on determinants of E-Procurement adoption at the municipal level. Considering previous research as well as public and private sector differences, a research model is developed, which is further examined by collecting and analyzing data from a multiple-case study of 13 German municipalities. Based on the empirical results, practical implications and areas of future work are discussed.

The digitalization and the diffusion of connected mobile devices have urged media companies to deliver their content in digital formats such as apps. We evaluate differences in customers' preferences and willingness to pay between traditional and digital content services conducting an adaptive conjoint analysis. Within this analysis we compare subscriptions to a printed newspaper with subscriptions to the website, e-paper, smartphone app or tablet app of this newspaper. Our results show that customers still prefer the printed newspaper over any digital format. The acceptance of digital newspaper formats depends on device ownership but the website is most popular in general. Our findings have profound implications for multi-platform publishing strategies. Content providers have to examine carefully in in which situations their products might be used and which devices their potential customers own in order to choose the right formats and prices.

The main reason of this paper is summarize and understand the concept of Strategy with some specific topics such as operation effectiveness, unique and value positioning, fit and trade offs, based in the contribution from the university professor at Harvard Business School, Michael E. Porter, author of 16 books and more than 85 scientific articles that has served as an advisor on competitive strategy to many companies.