Diego Campagnolo

Configurations of business model themes and strategies in small firms: a qualitative comparative analysis (with M. Gianecchini, L. Mosca), Journal of Management and Governance, 2023, forthcoming

Abstract

Firms’ strategies and business model themes (BMTs) entail choices that create a configuration of interdependent elements that ultimately affect a firm’s performance. So far, extant studies on BMTs (i.e. novelty, efficiency, complementarity and lockin) have neglected an explorative analysis of how configurations of BMTs and the choices of a firm’s strategy (namely, the source of the competitive advantage and the market scope) are associated with a firm’s performance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We address this limitation by analysing a sample of 96 small firms using a configurational approach. We identified four equifinal configurations leading to high performance and five equifinal configurations associated with low performance. Overall, our results suggest that in small firms, it is essential to combine a differentiation strategy with either consistent pairs of BMTs or the search for new avenues of value creation and capture, while featuring too many BMTs might be detrimental to their growth. Our study contributes to the scholarly debate about the relationship between business models and strategy.

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Stay alert, save businesses. Planning for adversity among immigrant entrepreneurs (with C. Laffineur, S. Leonelli, A. Martiarena, M.. Tietz, M. Wishart), International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 2022, vol. 28, n. 7, pp. 1773-1799

Abstract

Purpose – Against the theoretical backdrop of the embeddedness and the resilience literatures, this paper investigates if and how SMEs’ planning for adversity affects firms’ performance.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops hypotheses that investigate the link between the risk management of immigrant-led and native-led SMEs and their performance and draw on novel data from a survey on 900 immigrant- and 2,416 native-led SMEs in 5 European cities to test them.

Findings – Immigrant-led SMEs are less likely to implement an adversity plan, especially when they are in an enclave sector. However, adversity planning is important to enhance the growth of immigrant-led businesses, even outside a crisis period, and it reduces the performance gap vis- a-vis native-led businesses. Inversely, the positive association between adversity planning and growth in the sample of native entrepreneurs is mainly driven by entrepreneurs who have experienced a severe crisis in the past.

Originality/value – This paper empirically uses planning for adversity as an anticipation stage of organizational resilience and tests it in the context of immigrant and native-led SMEs. Results support the theoretical reasoning that regularly scanning for threats and seeking information beyond the local community equips immigrant-led SMEs with a broader structural network which translates into new organizational capabilities. Furthermore, results contribute to the process-based view of resilience demonstrating that regularly planning for adversity builds a firm’s resilience potential, though the effect is contingent on the nationality of the leaders.

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Cross-border M&As: the impact of foreign ownership and CEO change on the performance of acquired companies (with G. Vincenti), Journal of International Management, 2022, vol. 28, n. 4, forthcoming

Abstract

This study analyzes the impact of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the performance of target firms. Based on institutional theory, we hypothesize that performance deteriorates because of a lack of legitimacy, particularly when there is friction between the two national cultures and a higher risk of clashes between organizational cultures. We test our assumptions using an original dataset to compare the performance of Italian firms involved in inward cross-border M&As with that of continuing local firms that have a similar ex-ante likelihood of being merged or acquired. We apply coarsened exact matching (CEM) to establish the control group and a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to account for the possibility that target companies produce superior results simply because foreign investors “cherry-pick” the best-performing firms. Contrary to predictions, we find that foreign ownership does not deteriorate growth but enhances the profitability of target firms compared to purely domestic companies. In addition, we illustrate that the latter result remains applicable when cultural frictions between national cultures are high and when the CEO of the target company is replaced or joined by a new CEO after the deal.

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Reaction or anticipation? Resilience in small- and medium-sized enterprises (with E. Marcazzan and M. Gianecchini), Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 2022, vol. 29, n. 5, pp. 764-788.

Abstract

Purpose – Building on the recent capability-based conceptualisation of resilience, this paper aims to explore whether the experience of a previous crisis and entrepreneur resilience are associated with Small- and medium sized enterprises (SMEs’) adoption of different anticipation strategies for adversities.

Design/methodology/approach – Using original survey data on 959 Italian and German SMEs, the research uses a multinomial logistic regression model in order to test the influence of the prior experience of a crisis and the entrepreneur resilience on the likelihood of adopting different anticipation strategies.

Findings – The paper shows that the previous experience of a crisis increases the likelihood of regularly adopting proactive but non-formalised anticipation actions while decreasing the likelihood of adopting a pure reactive strategy to adversities; in addition, entrepreneur resilience is nonlinearly associated with anticipation strategies.

Originality/value – The main originalities rely on eschewing a pure binary view in relation to the organisational choice of adopting a reactive or a proactive approach towards adversities and on considering the entrepreneur resilience as a factor with both “bright” and “dark” side effects in relation to the anticipation of adversities.

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Organizational life cycle models: a design perspective (with L. Mosca and M. Gianecchini), Journal of Organization Design, 2021, vol. 10, n. 5, pp. 3-18.

Abstract

New competitive and environmental challenges have fostered renewed attention towards organizational design. This scenario calls for a significant return to organizational design studies that embrace a holistic approach, especially those focusing on the simultaneous interaction of multiple design elements. Organizational life cycle (OLC) models provide a fitting response to this call. In this paper, we review the organizational design characteristics of five seminal OLC models. We show that according to these OLC models, growth in size—which is described as unavoidable—generates business issues that firms are forced to solve by adopting only one possible organizational configuration, here following a deterministic organizational approach. We challenge this approach and propose conceiving of OLC as an evolutionary process, which calls for a variety of equifinal organizational solutions. We conclude by proposing future research avenues.

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