THE CONSTRUCTION OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FOR
PUBLISHING ENTERPRISES
A Business Ecosystem Perspective
Ling Yang
1,2
and Runtong Zhang
1
1
School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, P.R. China
2
Publishing Hourse, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, P.R. China
Wei Chen
School of Information Management, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, P.R. China
Keywords: Business ecosystem, Dynamic capabilities, Publishing enterprises.
Abstract: Nowadays, many scholars and mangers focus on dynamic capability, which is defined as “the firm’s ability
to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing
environments”. Although there are many research results, they pay little close attention to publishing
enterprises. Considering of the particularity of the publishing enterprises, in this paper, we discuss its
identification and construction from the perspective of business ecosystem.
1 INTRODUCTION
With the development of the economic globalization
and technology, there are fundamentally changes for
enterprises’ competitive environment, competitive
mode and organizational form. On the one hand,
enterprises’ competitive environment presents
dynamic and complexity trend, because rapid
developing technology and ever-changing customer
demands. On the other hand, applications of the
information and network technology change the
foundation of enterprise competing capability, and
the cooperation model based on the division of
labour can make enterprises satisfy the ever-
changing customer demands by alliance and
cooperation. Therefore, dynamic competence theory
and business ecosystem theory put forward the
problem that how to get the enterprise competitive
advantage from different perspectives. The main
contributions of this paper are: (1) we extend the
framework of the dynamic capability to the scenario
of the business ecosystem, and propose the
conceptual model of the Enterprise Dynamic
Capability (EDC) based on the business ecosystem
theory. (2) We discuss the homogeneity and
heterogeneity of the dynamic capability, and then
propose the reason of the heterogeneity is
environmental uncertainty. (3) We apply the
conceptual model of EDC to the publishing
enterprises’ business ecosystem, which will be
benefit to identify, construct and measure the
dynamic capability of the publishing enterprises.
2 THE CONCEPTUAL MODEL
OF THE ENTERPRISE
DYNAMIC CAPABILITY
2.1 Business Ecosystem Meaning and
Competitive Advantage Acquisition
Starting in the early 1990s, Moore (Moore, 1996)
originated the strategic planning concept of a
business ecosystem, now widely adopted in the high
tech community. Moore defined "business
ecosystem" as: “An economic community supported
by a foundation of interacting organizations and
individuals—the organisms of the business world.
The economic community produces goods and
services of value to customers, who are themselves
members of the ecosystem. The member organisms
636
Yang L., Zhang R. and Chen W..
THE CONSTRUCTION OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FOR PUBLISHING ENTERPRISES - A Business Ecosystem Perspective.
DOI: 10.5220/0003616706360640
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (PMSS-2011), pages 636-640
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors,
and other stakeholders. Over time, they coevolve
their capabilities and roles, and tend to align
themselves with the directions set by one or more
central companies. Those companies holding
leadership roles may change over time, but the
function of ecosystem leader is valued by the
community because it enables members to move
toward shared visions to align their investments, and
to find mutually supportive roles.” In one business
ecosystem, different ecological members can form
enterprise ecological circle by means of the resource
and ability complementary, which can better provide
the core products and services for customs. In the
business ecosystem, the creation of enterprise value
depend on not only the enterprise itself competitive
advantage, but also its relation network advantage.
The network resource of the business ecosystem can
be used by the enterprise and its partners, which
comes from learning effect, spillover effect,
cooperation effect and complementary effect among
the ecological members. In addition to the traditional
VRIN characteristics, these network resources have
sharing features. Enterprises could obtain and share
integrated knowledge by participating in business
ecosystem, and then improve enterprises innovation
performance and product competitiveness, which
make enterprises to obtain sustained relationship
rents (Dyer, 2006). To gain the competitive
advantage, ecological members can obtain scope
economy and scale economy by choosing and
constructing healthy business ecosystem. Business
ecosystem theory can solve how to realize the
synergies through the mutual correlation between
enterprises. Its limitations are rarely discussing
which resources and capability should be have by
the individual enterprise in order to realize the
effective coupling with the resource of the business
ecosystem.
2.2 Conceptual Model of Enterprise
Dynamic Capability
Dynamic capability is a kind of capability for an
enterprise to adapt the changing circumstances
though the integration, construction and reform of
the competence both inside and outside (
Teece, 1997).
The dynamic capability theory regards that, under a
dynamic condition, the enterprise which owns the
core capability only can get the competitive
advantage temporarily because the competitors will
substitute its advantage position quickly by imitation
and creation. As a result, the enterprise should renew
its capability to suit the quickly changing
circumstance and keep the sustaining competitive
advantage. At present, the research on the frame and
dimensionality of dynamic capability is widely
distributed, and different researchers discuss this
issue through the different view, such as knowledge,
technology and integration. Based on the relational
theory, dynamic capability was analysed extending
to the inter-organizational level, that is, to regard the
organization network as the analysis cell. Bakos &
Treacy proposed that dynamic capability should
include two or more organizations. The newest
research on dynamic capability also supports that the
strategy analysis should be based on the business
ecosystem concept instead of industry, and they also
proposed that dynamic capability was benefit for
enterprise to choose, breed and construct business
ecosystem (
Teece, 2006).
In the 3P (process Positions Paths) frame
model of dynamic capability, the competitive
advantage of enterprise derives from the
competitiveness and capability of organizational
process, while the organizational process was shaped
by the asset advantage (especially the appropriative
asset and complementary assets) and evolution paths
of enterprise. In this paper, we propose that the
limitation of 3P frame is to treat the appropriative
asset and complementary assets in a static state
without considering the dynamic co evolution of the
enterprise and business ecosystem. The dynamic co
evolution means that the enterprise capability and
knowledge is embedded not only the inside
operation process in enterprise but also the
interactive process with business ecosystem and
conditions. As a result, in the view of business
ecosystem, dynamic capability is a kind of capability
for an enterprise to adapt the changing
circumstances through the integration, construction,
reform and matching of the resources both inside
and outside the enterprise. The embedding of
enterprise to the business ecosystem has a feature of
path dependence, and its main dimensionalities are
identification ability, network ability, resource
operation ability, open innovation ability and
advantage protection ability. The concept model is
showed as figure 1.
The strategic logic of conceptual model of the
enterprise dynamic capability based on the business
ecosystem theory is to seize the creative opportunity
of the enterprise, decide the vision of business
ecosystem and choose the suitable strategy through
the search and filter of information space. According
to the chosen strategy, the enterprise fixes the
resource demand, chooses the cooperation partner,
constructs value network to gain the complementary
THE CONSTRUCTION OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FOR PUBLISHING ENTERPRISES - A Business Ecosystem
Perspective
637
resources, deploys and shares the knowledge and
resource both inside and outside and protects the
resource advantage, as well as gains the new
competitive advantage. When the business
ecosystem turns into the phase of decline, the
enterprise renews to search the new creative
opportunity and cooperation, and gain the
continuous development under the hypercompetitive
environment though the health business ecosystem
and constant creation.
Figure 1: Conceptual model of the enterprise dynamic
capability based on the business ecosystem theory.
3 IDENTIFICATION AND
MEASUREMENT OF
PUBLISHING ENTERPRISES’
DYNAMIC CAPABILITY
3.1 Homogeneity and Heterogeneous of
Enterprises’ Dynamic Capability
Dynamic capability theory is difficult to operate and
measure during the process to instruct the enterprise
practice, thus the application of this theory has also
be affected. To solve this problem, firstly we should
probe whether the dynamic capability in different
enterprises has the homogeneity. Teece proposed
that the dynamic capability is heterogeneous because
of the individual heterogeneity and the specific paths
dependence. Eisenhardt &Martin proposed that the
dynamic capability has the overall character in the
key points, but it showed the different forms under
the different market conditions and it was probably
heterogenous in the specific establishment and type
of rearing as the enterprises were different, such as
the products development programme of Honda,
resources deploy process of Intel, the merger and
integration process of HP, and so on. In this paper,
we propose that dynamic capability is not the single
capability but a group of capability bundle and it is
multidimensional and multi-hiberarchy which shows
the different shape under the different situation and
field. Thus, dynamic capability should be effective
identified when applying it to the practice of
enterprise.
3.2 Business Ecosystem Characteristics
of the Publishing Enterprises in the
Digital Environment
Print means the broadcast activities from private
space to the public area with style of publication
through the edit and publish of literature works. The
core of print is the materialization and broadcast of
knowledge, so it has the characters of economical
and culture efficiency which endows the print
activity and print competition specialization
character. In the traditional print industry chain
which mainly depends on the papery books, the
information broadcast mode is in line shape and the
print enterprise located on the core position of
industry chain.
Development of computer communication and
network technology brings the change of
information broadcast and copy mode which
changes the medium zoology and copyright zoology.
Thus, it has the revolutionary effects on the print
industry. Along with the change of obtain style of
knowledge and information, as well as readers
peruse habit, and fading of traditional print concept,
the print industry, media industry and
communication industry compromises gradually and
hyper-media print business ecosystem comes into
being gradually. The media ecosystem is consisting
of print ecosystem, newspaper ecosystem, journal
ecosystem, broadcast ecosystem and television
ecosystem. In simulation technique era, print and
newspaper population occupies the vision by word
information; broadcast population occupies the
hearing by voice information; and television
population occupies the audiovisual by voice and
video. Digital copy and broadcast technology
changes the separate state of the above-mentioned
populations and makes them across. The aggravate
competition of different populations urges the
emerging of a new print business ecosystem, that is
hyper-media print business ecosystem. Comparing
with the traditional print industry chain, members of
hyper-media print business ecosystem turns more
complex and diverse. It contains not only members
of traditional industry chain, but also the digital print
enterprises, plat-form enterprises, digital technology
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
638
facilitator and terminal reading suppliers. The core
position of the traditional print enterprise declines,
but the position of plat-form enterprise and
facilitator who own the technology rises gradually.
The two parts realize the complementary advantage
based on the resource owning.
3.3 Environmental Uncertainty of the
Publishing Enterprises
Researchers find that the effective dynamic
capability shows the different shape under the
different market conditions. Most papers regard the
dynamic of circumstance is a regulated variable
between dynamic capability and performance and
the logic of this theory is atomistic view. In view of
business ecosystem theory, the performance of
enterprise consist in the business ecosystem network,
and the relationship between enterprise and
circumstance is not the action and reaction, but the
interaction and cooperation. Thus, we should
consider the circumstance as the predictor variable
of affecting the dynamic capability.
The uncertainty of circumstance means the
unpredictability of changing of marketing
transaction circumstance, and it reflects the
complication, unknown and turbulence of enterprise
circumstance which is normally measured by market
turbulence, technology turbulence and competitive
intensity. The print activity has not only the
character of economical efficiency, but also the
character of special politics efficiency and culture
efficiency. As a result, when we evaluate the print
enterprise circumstance, we should consider not only
the marketing factor, but also the non-marketing
factor.
Due to the high uncertainty of circumstance of
print enterprise, the renew and regenerate dynamic
capability are the expression of the dynamic
capability of print enterprise and the importance is
the renewal of resource and capability.
4 IDENTIFICATION OF THE
DYNAMIC CAPABILITY FOR
THE PUBLISHING PRESS
Heterogeneity of the dynamic capability is related
not only with methods of updating resource and
ability, but also with adoption of effective activities.
According to proposed the conception model of the
dynamic capability, we interviewed with 20
executives of publishing business, and then obtain
some factors of the publishing enterprises’ dynamic
abilities in the view of business ecosystem as shown
in Figure 2. Moreover, some factors and measures of
dynamic abilities for publishing enterprise are also
listed in Table 1.
Figure 2: Factors of the publishing enterprises’ dynamic
abilities in the view of business ecosystem.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Hyper-medium business ecosystem provides all-
round service and experience for reader through
medium complementary effect and network
resources effect. So, it has the incomparable
competitive advantage compared to traditional
publishing industry chain and changes the
competitive situation and mode of the whole media
ecology. Traditional publishing enterprises must join
in one or several business ecosystem to survive and
develop. By resources complementary, knowledge
sharing and synergies, they will hold the core
position gradually and establish their own leadership
position. Therefore, construction and breeding of the
dynamic capability are very important for traditional
publishing enterprises to facing threat and gain
sustainable competitive advantage.
REFERENCES
Moore, J. F. 1996. The Death of Competition: Leadership
and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems, New
York: Harper Business.
Dyer, J. H., Hatch, N.W., 2006. Relation-specific
capabilities and barriers to knowledge transfer:
creating advantage through network relationships.
Strategic Management Journal, 27: 701-719.
Teece, D. J., Pisano, G, Shuen, A, 1997. Dynamic
capabilities and strategic management. Strategic
Management Journal, 18(7):509-533.
Teece, D. J.2006, Reflections on profiting from innovation.
Research policy,35(8):1131-1146.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES FOR PUBLISHING ENTERPRISES - A Business Ecosystem
Perspective
639
Table 1: Factors and measures of dynamic abilities for publishing enterprise.
Dynamic capability indexes and
meaning
Dynamic
competence
factors
Dynamic
capability
attributes
Measured variable
Identification
ability
Identify technology
and market
changes, investigate
the health condition
of the business
ecosystem
Market
oriented
ability;
Entrepreneurs
ability
Learning Collection and feedback of readers;
Acquaintance of innovation process
of the suppliers and distributors,
technology business, other press;
Information transmission efficiency
in internal departments;
Reaction efficiency for the outside
changes by the senior management
Networking
capability
Selection of the
core resource,
confirmation of the
cooperative partners
and complementary
resources
Flexible
alliance
ability
Learning;
Coordination;
Update.
Timeliness of cooperation
investment decisions;
Cooperate with many partners
(platforms, technology provider,
operators, counterparts );
Cooperation method is flexible;
Put forward a constructive solutions
during the conflict with partners;
Enterprises determine quantity of
printing and circulation.
Operating
ability
resources
allocation
complementary
resources
resources sharing
resources
integration
Resources
integration
ability
Integration;
Leaning.
Technology resources and channel
resources are obtained through
cooperation;
Subjects are selected with authors
and business partners;
Marketing program is implemented
with technology developers and
channels;
Management, planner and
marketing staff should often learn
and communicate with the outside
world.
Open
innovation
ability
Develop core
product with
ecological
members, and
provides total
solutions for
customs
Collaborative
product
innovation
ability
Update The innovation of the new product
content;
Diversity and standardization of the
product content;
Digitization and conformability of
the product and service;
Realization of the digital publishing
and publishing on demand.
Advantage
protection
ability
Protection of the
core resources and
knowledge
Ability of
intellectual
property
protection
Coordination
Right of Product information
network transmission;
Right of read and copy;
Internet copyright of enterprise;
Control of digital copyright
protection technology ;
Creative personnel outflow
phenomenon.
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
640