SISTEMA INTEGRADO DE JUBILACIONES Y PENSIONES.

Research taking a unitary-entities perspective on organizational routines has identified dynamic capabilities as a driver of sustained competitive advantage. Dynamic capabilities enable companies to constantly adjust inherently stable op- erating routines and adapt to changing environmental demands, thus allowing them to outperform their competitors (Teece et al., 1997; Winter, 2003; Helfat et al., 2007). Within the literature, specific organizational meta-routines (i.e., recur- ring action patterns allowing for a competitively adequate adjustment of operat- ing routines and resources of the company) are considered the basis of such ca- pabilities (Collis, 1994; Szulanski, 1996; Dosi, Nelson and Winter, 2000). While operating routines are geared towards the operational functioning of a company and thus describe the way a company operates day-to-day, dynamic capabilities focus on routines that are used to create, extend, and/or modify these routines (Winter, 2003). Today, the bulk of management research examines companies in contexts characterized by high levels of environmental dynamism (Keupp, Palmié and Gassmann, 2012), such as high-tech and IT industries, and few stud- ies evaluate different environmental circumstances (e.g., Deeds, Decarolis and Coombs, 2000; Wu, 2007; Bruni and Verona, 2009). Despite researchers’ grow- ing attention to dynamic capabilities and their influence on change in operating routines, current research lacks empirical analyses about what types of dynamic capabilities cause change in operating routines in different external and internal organizational contexts (cf. Barreto, 2010; Di Stefano, Peteraf and Verona, 2010; Parmigiani and Howard-Grenville, 2011). Failing to consider different types of dynamic capabilities within different contexts hampers our theoretical under- standing of dynamic capabilities and is unlikely to resolve some recent puzzling empirical results. For example, some researchers theorize that dynamic capabili- ties form only in rapidly changing environments (Teece et al., 1997), while oth- ers argue that dynamic capabilities “take on a different character” in moderately dynamic environments (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000: 1106). The lack of empiri- cal research exploring the connection between external and internal organization- al context and types of dynamic capabilities has hindered a reconciliation of the fundamentally different and contradictory conceptualizations of dynamic capabil-

ities in the literature (Arend and Bromiley, 2009; Barreto, 2010; Vogel and Güttel, 2013).

In the second chapter (co-authored by Indre Maurer)2, we explore how the char- acteristics of dynamic capabilities are contingent on external and internal organi- zational contexts. We use fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyze the frequency and formalization of dynamic capabilities that change the highly routinized purchasing processes of 103 small- and medium-sized enterprises in high versus low levels of environmental dynamism. Our findings reveal four dif- ferent types of dynamic capabilities that equifinally cause change in operating routines: experiential, reactive, programmed, and analytic. Additional analysis reveals that each type corresponds to organizations with similar internal contexts, such as demographic characteristics and shared process innovation mindsets. While experiential, reactive, programmed-type dynamic capabilities change op- erating routines in high-dynamic environments, we find that analytic-type dy- namic capabilities change operating routines in low-dynamic environments. A major contribution of this chapter is to advance a framework integrating different and seemingly contradictory types of dynamic capabilities based on external and internal organizational contexts. We therefore provide researchers with a more complete and accurate view of dynamic capabilities by advancing our theoretical understanding and empirical evidence of the balancing of stability and change of operating routines in present-day organizations.

The second chapter demonstrates that dynamic capabilities may take different forms depending on the external and internal organizational context. However, we do not address whether and when dynamic capabilities impact the economic performance of operating routines. While prior research studying change through dynamic capabilities found undisputed performance-enhancing effects of these meta-routines, the systematic investigation of the conditions under which dynam- ic capabilities lead to success is still in its infancy (Easterby-Smith, Lyles and Peteraf, 2009; Di Stefano et al., 2010; Vogel and Güttel, 2013). In particular, the impact of environmental dynamism on the performance effect of dynamic capa- bilities remains under-investigated (Wang and Ahmed, 2007; Barreto, 2010). Some authors find no moderating environmental effect on the potential perfor- mance implications of dynamic capabilities (Drnevich and Kriauciunas, 2011; Protogerou, Caloghirou and Lioukas, 2012), while others provide evidence for this relationship (Pavlou and El Sawy, 2006; Romme et al., 2010). Given that the

2 _{An earlier version of the second chapter was presented at the 29}th _{EGOS Colloquium 2013, Montréal.}

The second and third chapters rely on the same data set. Maren Schlömer was involved in collecting the data for chapter 2, but did not participate in developing this chapter.

progress of research on dynamic capabilities is seriously hampered by such in- consistent findings in empirical research (Barreto, 2010; Vogel and Güttel, 2013), the different contextual conditions of dynamic capabilities’ impact on op- erating-routine performance deserve investigation to resolve inconsistent re- search findings and provide guidance for practitioners.

In the third chapter (co-authored by Maren Schlömer and Indre Maurer)3, we continue investigating dynamic capabilities by hypothesizing and testing the im- pact that dynamic capabilities have on two different performance yardsticks of operating routines under high versus low levels of environmental dynamism. More specifically, we conceptualize operating-routine performance by distin- guishing between evolutionary fitness (i.e., goal achievement) and technical fit- ness (i.e., goal achievement in relation to underlying costs). We analyze data on the purchasing processes of 200 small- and medium-sized enterprises. The find- ings reveal that dynamic capabilities increase the evolutionary fitness of operat- ing routines irrespective of the level of environmental dynamism faced by the organization; however, the extent to which dynamic capabilities affect the tech- nical fitness of operating routines differs considerably depending on the level of environmental dynamism. These findings corroborate and extend prior conceptu- al arguments on the impact dynamic capabilities have on firm fitness (Teece et al., 1997; Winter, 2003; Helfat et al., 2007; Helfat and Winter, 2011).