Joan E. Ricart

• Universidad de Navarra

There are tremendous challenges in meeting the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of Agenda 2030. A collaborative search for solutions is needed to tackle the complex and novel problems at the crux of these challenges. This requires local governments and companies to join forces with other stakeholders. This collaboration usually takes the for...

Organizations often face challenges in incorporating the sustainable development goals (SDGs) into their strategic agendas. Despite the availability of guidelines from leading practitioners, such guidance often lacks the scientific insights provided by academia. In this study, we examine the integration of scholarly management literature into pract...

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to achieve economic, social, and environmental progress globally. However, trade-offs among these three pillars might occur, particularly in the context of cities. We argue that these trade-offs exist because the traditional factors of production for economic welfare are not always relevant to the other dim...

In order to give a more realistic view of how ESG and sustainability are developed in organisations, this paper explores the development of purpose in corporate governance and the challenges faced. The theme is analysed at the intersection between stakeholder theory and business models in two dimensions: the capability of the market to align stakeh...

Using a mixed-method approach, we assess the conditions under which digital platforms can successfully deliver their stakeholder value propositions (SVP)—declarative statements that the digital platform makes about how it adds value or solves a problem for target stakeholders—in cities. We examine the popular digital platform Airbnb in the touristi...

Although extant research has studied incumbent resistance to digital platforms, it provides little understanding about when grassroots collective action by other ecosystem stakeholders against the digital platform is likely. In this paper, we identify the scope conditions detailing when local stakeholders can initiate grassroots collective action a...

In a new world of rapid change fueled by artificial intelligence technologies, Joan Enric Ricart argues that there are plenty of opportunities for companies to create competitive advantage with business model innovation. The winners of today and tomorrow are creators and architects of novel business models. CEOs help design business models. They sh...

Since Bartlett and Ghoshal made their proposal to shift from strategy to purpose, many strategists have been won over to the idea. However, the fundamental question is not choosing between purpose and strategy but instead putting purpose at the center of strategy. While purpose should not be considered a strategy, purpose requires strategy. At the...

Recently, public–private partnerships (PPPs) have attracted renewed attention as a valuable tool to close the gap between public services and social needs. In fact, the United Nations (UN) proposed collaboration across multiple stakeholders as one of the key goals for securing global sustainable development. Yet, PPPs remain a controversial proposi...

Developed-country multinationals (DMNEs) have increasingly engaged in the practice of offshoring innovation to emerging countries. In this article, we leverage and extend the institution-based view to further our understanding of this phenomenon. Specifically, we examine the differential effects of formal and informal institutions on DMNEs’ strateg...

This paper is the Introduction to the Special Issue comprising a selection of papers submitted to the 19th IESE International Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society. The main topic of the Symposium was “Ethical Challenges in Strategic Management.” The paper presents the rationale and context of the Symposium. We begin with a brief historical ove...

In this paper, we describe how strategists must deal with balancing the dynamic tension generated by the possible intermeshing of "illusory" and "past" elements in strategic decision-making for either cooperation or competition. These possibilities weaken the collapsing alternative of searched reality. They also recall past problems which reoccur i...

The offshoring phenomenon has evolved in recent years, and can be understood from a threefold perspective: first, the evolution in the type of activity being offshored; second, the learning curve involving both the companies implementing offshoring and service providers; and third, the reasons for offshoring. This study proposes an empirical framew...

Las organizaciones que emplean a los directivos rara vez se implican en su formación más allá del proceso de contratación y, a veces, de subvencionarlos como estudiantes. Lo que sí hacen, en cambio, es tomar las riendas de su desarrollo. Esto ha dado como resultado mayor variedad y también mayor experimentación, también más practicidad y, por lo ta...

Purpose Offshoring has been studied widely in the literature on strategic management and international business. However, apart from its consideration as an administrative activity, scant attention has been paid to the offshoring of the human resource (HR) function. Research in this regard has instead focussed on outsourcing (Reichel and Lazarova,...

The article presents a framework for exploring the drivers, structure, and dynamics of open data initiatives in the city context. Drawing on a case study of the city of Barcelona complemented with other cases, it develops a stepwise framework that can serve as a practical guide for both urban and private leaders to implement open data strategies. F...

Offshoring of services (OS), commonly defined as the international relocation of service activities that companies previously performed in their home country, has emerged as a relevant phenomenon in international business (IB). Over the past two decades, OS has grown rapidly in the global economy and it has increasingly attracted IB scholars’ atten...

In this paper, we describe how strategists must deal with balancing the dynamic tension generated by the possible intermeshing of “illusory” and “past” elements in strategic decision-making for either cooperation or competition. These possibilities weaken the collapsing alternative of searched reality. They also recall past problems which reoccur i...

On July 2, 2014, Josep Ramon Ferrer, director of ICT and smart city strategy at Barcelona City Council, finished the second round of meetings with the companies selected to participate in the competitive dialogue to create the City OS, Barcelona's operating system. The City OS was one of the key milestones in Barcelona's smart city strategy. The Ci...

The study of business models involves exploring how firms do business at the system level. It lies at the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship research and is, therefore, a topic of interest for scholars of strategic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this special issue is to publish work that develops theory on business models, or empirical...

Western companies have increasingly relocated parts of their value chain to offshore locations in the recent past. Extant research documents that offshoring exposes firms to challenges associated with coordinating geographically dispersed work. In this paper, we argue that vertical integration mitigates the negative effect of coordination difficult...

The tasks of the CEO are experiencing fast changes and so are the necessary competencies to deal with them. The world is changing fast, perhaps something that has always been true in general but of course different in the specifics. Technology, demographics, globalization, regulatory and politics are key drivers of change, and change comes with opp...

Business model innovation is receiving increased attention in corporate practice and research alike. We propose in this article a role-based approach to categorize the literature and argue that the respective roles of explaining the business, running the business, and developing the business can serve as three interrelated perspectives to present a...

Ethics has recently gained importance in the debate over social capital creation. The goal of this study is to empirically examine the ethical work context of the firm as an antecedent of the firm’s internal social capital. We build on person-situation interactionist theory to argue that individuals can learn standards of appropriate behavior induc...

Business process offshoring, intended as the firm-level choice of relocating service and higher-skilled activities abroad, predominantly to lower-cost countries, has decidedly grown in the last decade and it is today envisaged as a crucial aspect in the reconfiguration of modern multinationals. International management scholars have increasingly in...

There is an agreement in the literature that an effective business model is a competitive weapon for multinationals. We extend this strategic framework to the offshoring arena by analyzing a change in the business model as a means for coping with the inefficiency trap and reducing complexity management. Most companies start by offshoring simpler ta...

Professor of Management Studies Las organizaciones que emplean a los directivos rara vez se implican en su formación más allá del proceso de contratación y, a veces, de subvencionarlos como estudiantes. Lo que sí hacen, en cambio, es tomar las riendas de su desarrollo. Esto ha dado como resultado mayor variedad y también mayor experimentación, tamb...

This book of the collection this time dedicated to what is learned in the best MBA programs worldwide and the contributions of academics of the major schools of Europe, the US and the world, totally new material and adapted to changing current scenario. The chosen group includes academics representing reputed MBA and graduate programs, from Harvard...

In this paper, we explore the application of the construct exploitation and exploration at the level of the corporate strategy of the firm. For that purpose, we operationalized and formalized the analysis through the development of a set of agent‐based simulations which capture and describe the evolution of firms led by exploitative and explorative...

We explore different business ventures in low-income markets in order to understand the factors influencing business model innovation in this context. Grounded in the rich data obtained from multiple case study analyses and in the received theory in strategy in low-income markets and business models, we identified a set of contingency factors that...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on competitiveness by using the business model concept and to understand the need to adapt business models to changes in the environment. Design/methodology/approach Using Catalonia as a context, the paper derives recommendations by presenting and analyzing examples of companies, referred to as “new...

This paper explores local and global dynamics underlying the development of knowledge services clusters, which we define as new geographic concentrations of technical talent and service providers offering upstream technical and knowledge-intensive business services to regional and global clients. Taking a co-evolutionary perspective on the developm...

Strategy scholars have used the notion of the Business Model to refer to the ‘logic of the firm’ – how it operates and creates value for its stakeholders. On the surface, this notion appears to be similar to that of strategy. We present a conceptual framework to separate and relate the concepts of strategy and business model: a business model, we a...

There is a need for further research to understand how social capital in the workplace can be promoted. This article studies the generation of social capital from a comprehensive perspective that integrates ethics and general management. We propose the concept of “ethical work context” as an influential antecedent of the social capital in the firm....

The competitiveness of a country is the result of the competitiveness of its firms. The competitiveness of firms is partly determined by how their business models interact with the environment to produce offerings with added value. This chapter contributes to the reflection on Catalonia's competitiveness by using the business model concept to highl...

The competitiveness of a country is the result of the competitiveness of its firms. The competitiveness of firms is partly determined by how their business models interact with the environment to produce offerings with added value. This chapter contributes to the reflection on Catalonia's competitiveness by using the business model concept to highl...

Much attention has been paid to the sharp fall in world trade associated with the economic crisis during the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Alarming forecasts have been published for the whole year of 2009 and several explanations have been offered. In particular, beyond the credit crunch and the global drop in demand, it has b...

Offshoring has received wide attention lately. Its potential effects, mainly to be materialized in employment and productivity dislocations, are yet to be fully assessed. However, some consensus has been attained as to how to proxy its theoretical definition at an aggregate level. Here we review the most conventional indices the economic literature...

Offshoring has received wide attention lately. Its potential effects, mainly to be materialized in employment and productivity dislocations, are yet to be fully assessed. However, some consensus has been attained as to how to proxy its theoretical definition at an aggregate level. Here we review the most conventional indices the economic literature...

Introductory paper to the especial issue on Business model where we present the concept, its relation to strategy and its role on firm competition. We also summarize and contextualize all articles in this number.

Artículo introductorio a este número especial sobre modelos de negocio donde se define el concepto y se elabora su relación con estrategia y con competencia en general. También se resumen y contextualizan los artículos de este número.

The notion of business model has been used by strategy scholars to refer to "the logic of the firm, the way it operates and how it creates value for its stakeholders." On the surface, this notion appears to be similar to that of strategy. We present a conceptual framework to separate business model from strategy. Business model, we argue, is a refl...

There is a prolific strand of executive literature that analyzes managers' daily activities. Nevertheless, research has remained silent about the managers' priorities that drive those numerous activities. The goal of this paper is, precisely, to gain a better understanding of which are those manager's priorities, and to discover which is the place...

In this paper we investigated the impact of organizational context and supportive managerial behaviour on the creation of the internal social capital at a business-unit level. Organizational context, defined as the set of administrative and social mechanisms of influence implemented by management to shape the behaviour and attitudes of employees, a...

The second volume of "What you learn in the best MBAs" complete learning of the main concepts, techniques and approaches developed in an MBA in Europe. Like its predecessor ("What you learn in the best MBA I"), is designed on the basis of an intense and rigorous selection of expert authors in their thematic linked to MBA programs and graduate schoo...

Often information systems (IS) are classified in three groups: (a) transactional, used mainly for co-ordination and resource allocation purposes at the operational level of a company; (b) tactical, often employed to support the resource procurement activities typical of middle management; and (c) information systems for strategic decision making, d...

Companies in high-cost developed economies are increasingly migrating white-collar activities at offshore low-wage locations. Recent researches confirm that firms are progressively sourcing abroad higher-skilled technical, engineering and scientific jobs. The purpose of this study is to investigate why and how companies currently offshore product d...

Los modelos de negocio en los mercados de renta baja brindan grandes oportunidades para desarrollar soluciones innovadoras que colaboren efectivamente con la reducción de pobreza y generen capacidades, y productos que mejoren la competitividad de la empresa. Atender a la mayoría de la población mundial requiere innovaciones radicales, tanto tecnoló...

Business models in low income markets give us big opportunities to develop innovative solutions that effectively cooperate to poverty reduction and generate capabilities, knowledge and products which improve the competitively of the company. To serve the majority of the world population requires radical technological and business models innovations...

Se intentar arrojar luz sobre cuál debe ser el rol del alto directivo hoy, ilustrando nuestras ideas con lo que nos han contado directivos excelentes sobre cómo entienden ellos la alta dirección y cuáles son sus prioridades a la hora de dirigir en el siglo XXI. Se adentra en nuestra realidad cotidiana vista desde la perspectiva de directivos españo...

In this article a business model is defined as the firm choices on policies, assets and governance structure of those policies and assets, together with their consequences, be them flexible or rigid. We also provide a way to represent such business models to highlight the dynamic loops and to facilitate understanding interaction with other business...

There is a need of further research to understand how social capital in the organization can be fostered. Existing literature focuses on the design of reciprocity norms, procedures and stability employment practices as the main levers of social capital in the workplace. Complementary to these mechanisms, this paper explores the impact of ethical ma...

Innovation from external sources has continued to grow in importance in recent years, in defiance of conventional wisdom advocating internal sourcing of core technologies. One important reason for the previous emphasis on internal sourcing of core technologies relates to concerns of horizontal and vertical appropriability. Thus, the question arises...

Cada vez son más las actividades o funciones desplazadas por las empresas lejos de sus sedes centrales. ¿Cómo está evolucionando esta tendencia? ¿Qué camino queda por recorrer?

Most approaches to innovation bear the implicit assumption that increased innovativeness leads to improved organizational performance. Thus, more attention has been focused on innovativeness than on innovation performance; on novelty than on value. However, recent empirical evidence calls into question the unqualified optimism surrounding innovatio...

In a densely filled space of professional associations EURAM emerged as a new European Challenger. Professors Marafioti and Perretti claim in their article that EURAM is at a crossroads and must decide to be either a generalist or a specialist association. They also claim that in both cases EURAM will face powerful competitors. However, in this bri...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to attempt to gain a deeper understanding on the firm's ability to integrate stakeholder insights into the process of organizational innovation from a sustainable development viewpoint. Design/methodology/approach Given the early stage of empirical research on the topic, an exploratory case study was used of...

This paper analyzes the evolution during the period 1986-2002 of the corporate strategy of Lujan, a highly successful car components manufacturer headquartered in Spain, as a way to explore how the corporate level influences the successful evolution of a company exposed to a "turbulent" environment over a long period. We find that the corporate lev...

The notion of "parenting styles", introduced by Goold, Campbell and Alexander, has been widely acknowledged by the Corporate Strategy literature as a good broad description of the different ways in which corporate managers choose to manage and organize multibusiness firms. The purpose of this paper is to present a formal test of the relationship be...

La base de la pirámide, compuesta por dos terceras partes de la población mundial, presenta excelentes oportunidades de crecimiento para las empresas. Los autores muestran algunos ejemplos de empresas que han sabido introducirse en la base de la pirámide, vender sus productos y satisfacer necesidades reales de los desfavorecidos, y, además, obtener...

This paper attempts to gain a deeper understanding of the firm's ability to integrate stakeholder insights into the process of organisational innovation within the context of sustainable development. Given the early stage of empirical research on the topic, we used an exploratory case study of two Spanish companies that have successfully learned fr...

The case details how AirAsia, a Malaysian airline, was transformed into a successful low–cost airline through its well–defined business model. The emergence of low–cost airlines in Asia led to increasingly intense competition in the industry. By forming joint ventures across Asia, AirAsia is trying to gain advantages with its Pan–Asia plan. With su...

Low-income markets represent a new but emerging field of research in international strategy. Because these markets remain mostly unexplored and most companies are unaware of them, it is argued that the development of embedded ties and alliances with traditional and non-traditional partners is critical in order to better understand customer needs an...

Low-income markets represent a new but emerging field of research in international strategy. Because these markets remain mostly unexplored and most companies are unaware of them, it is argued that the development of embedded ties and alliances with traditional and non-traditional partners is critical in order to better understand customer needs an...

Purpose – Although an extensive body of research treats the fields of corporate governance and sustainable development separately, less attention has been paid to the interaction between both fields. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by examining how corporate governance systems are evolving in order to integrate sustainable development thinki...

Strategy in low-income markets is a new but emerging field of international strategy research. Because low-income markets remain largely unexplored and unknown to most companies, it has been argued that developing embedded ties and alliances with traditional and non-traditional partners is critical in order to better understand customer needs and m...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of consultants, professional service firms or knowledge intermediaries in articulating the collective action of shareholders. The regulatory background is the current proposals for the reform of General Meetings of Shareholders in Spain. General Meetings are particularly revealing of shareholder acti...

In recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of interest in corporate governance. Corporate scandals and the need to protect minority shareholders' interests, for example, are some of the reasons behind the development of corporate governance codes in numerous countries and corporations. At the same time, the concepts of "sustainable develop...

This paper studies a new frontier in the understanding of International Strategy (IS). To explore it, we propose the analogy of the ecology of firms and places as a way to emphasize that the real problem is the colocation of different places with different types of firms. Locations are in fact the distinctive content of International Business Strat...

This paper is based on a panel we organized at the "First Annual Conference on Emerging Research Frontiers in International Business Studies", organized by the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), to discuss several new lines of research in international strategy. Four lines of research are developed: The strategic implications of semi...

We live in a world of change. Companies have to renew to cope with the changes in an increasingly interconnected world and with the impact of increasing levels of competition (Hitt, Ricart and Nixon 1998). This increasingly interconnected world, bred by the development of technological innovations (Bettis and Hitt 1995), and also by the lowering of...

After many years of abundant research in corporate strategy, the issue of whether and how the corporate level contributes to competitive advantage still raises strong controversies. An important stream of work aims at identifying the sources of corporate performance by isolating company, industry and corporate effects on this variable (Schmalensee...

This book focuses on value creation through international strategy. This is a complex topic that requires us to delve into the interaction between places and firms, in order to try to understand the differences across locations and the logic whereby some firms are able to overcome or exploit such differences in order to create value (Ricart et al....

Stage (4) of the value chain deals (see Figure 1.3, p. 11) with the firms who build the computer devices that end-users employ to access the Internet. The devices run software that allows them to make requests of servers over an Internet protocol (IP) network. Hardware devices have become much more diverse than just desktop and portable PCs. Fresh...

Only someone recently roused from a 25-year sleep can be unaware of the ways that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have reshaped our daily routines. To be sure, in the early 1980s there were telephones, television, newspapers, facsimile machines and even computers capable of calculating pi to hundreds of digits past the decimal poi...

So far, we have concentrated on a linear information value-chain scenario mainly centred on the Internet and on media content. In this chapter we would like to give a broader perspective of what sources of information are available that may be subject to an information value-chain analysis. We also would like to show some of the limitations of the...