• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.25-35
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• 2018

Purpose - Although marketing networks are crucial competitive advantage in terms of firm's new information and resource acquisition ability, their impact on new product development performance remains vague, especially under environmental uncertainty. The principal objective of this research is to provide a better understanding of effects of technological uncertainty and volume uncertainty on first tier supplier's perceived performance of new product development under conditions reflecting varying levels of structural holes. Specifically, this research examines the moderating effect of structural holes on the relationship between environmental uncertainty and new product development performance. Research design, data, and methodology - To test the hypotheses, a questionnaire survey was conducted with a Korean engineering firm's major first-tier suppliers in the context of internal network entities, manufacturer-supplier-subsupplier relationships, and to verify the proposed hypotheses, structural equation modeling was established. Construct measures were based on existing measures and previous research. Results - The survey results indicate that technological uncertainty and volume uncertainty differentially affect NPD performance under conditions of high and low structural holes. Conclusions - This study offer some theoretical and practical implications among distribution channel members, especially, this study suggests that interfirm networks have critical competitive advantage in uncertain environments. The distinctiveness of engineering industry might limit the generalizability of the results. Thus, future research should consider a wider range of industries.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.41-60
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• 2015

Under the environment uncertainty, inno-biz firms are likely to enter into new market with their manager's enthusiasm, know-how, and innovative idea. Therefore, the environment uncertainty would be a new opportunity for their managers with entrepreneurship. The inno-biz firms have limitation on resources that they can utilize, but the industrial infrastructure of the regions that they are located in can be a factor overcoming the limitation of utilizing resources. Using inno-biz firms, this study presents a research model with the effects of environment uncertainty, industrial infra structure, and entrepreneurship on competitive performance. This study examined the relationship showed by the research model, and found the significant relationship by using SEM. And this study found the mediating effect of environment uncertainty, industrial infrastructure, and entrepreneurship on innovative capability. Research results, implications and limitations of this study are provided in conclusion of this study.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.253-273
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the uncertainty of competitive environments on the commitment of manufacturing firms with distribution firms, their trust and long-term orientation in Korea, the United States and Japan. This study is of great significance in that it attempted to make a comparative analysis of the uncertainty of competitive environments among the three nations by selecting subjects not only from Korea but from the United States and Japan. A survey was conducted on the selected manufacturing firms, and the data from 105 Korean firms, 103 American companies and 83 Japanese firms were gathered. A structural equation was utilized to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study were as follows: Hypothesis 1 was rejected in Korea and Japan and was accepted in the United States. Hypothesis 2 was accepted in Korea yet not in the United States and Japan. Hypothesis 3 was accepted in all the nations. Hypothesis 4 was rejected in Korea and the United States and was accepted in Japan. Hypothesis 5 was accepted in all the nations, and Hypothesis 6 was accepted in every nation as well. In the future, the commitment, trust and long-term orientation of manufacturing and distribution firms should be investigated from a mutual perspective, and additional data should be obtained by selecting more subjects. As for environmental uncertainty, the uncertainty of distribution environments as well as competitive environments should equally be investigated by making a comparative analysis.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.129-138
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• 2016

Shipping companies involved in sea transportation service are exposed to uncertainty due to its volatile business environment. It is crucial that shipping companies take effective strategies to cope with uncertain business environments and to achieve high business performance. Using Porter's generic strategy, this study investigates the relationships between environmental uncertainty and competitive strategies, and the impact of competitive strategies on firm's business performance. To test hypotheses, OLS regressions and Tobit analysis were conducted on Korea shipping companies who provide global sea transportation service. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows. First, variation of environmental uncertainty affects cost-leadership strategy and differentiation strategy. Diversity of environmental uncertainty affects differentiation strategy, but not cost-leadership strategy. Second, firms attain business performance by using the cost-leadership strategy. That is, shipping companies can achieve high business performance by reducing their operating costs in the entire process of transportation service.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-33
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• 2007

Selecting and implementing competitive strategies based on e-business is extremely important since it determines if an enterprise can continue to grow or not. Accordingly, systematic and empirical study on the implementation of e-business based on competitive strategy is required, and in-depth studies considering various e-business development stages of enterprises are also needed. The purpose of this study is to present guideline for the staff in charge and managers of enterprises to achieve competitive advantage and to increase organizational performance in e-business environments. What we have found are as follows. (1) Factors greatly influencing on competitive strategy selection through e-business were environmental uncertainty, centralization, innovative culture, technological competence, and formalization. (2) Results of the relationship between competitive strategies and e-business performance showed that each strategy had different effects on financial performance, process performance, and customer performance. and (3) Data analysis between internal and external environmental factors and competitive strategy by each e-business development stage proved that the relationships between competitive strategy and e-business performance were different based on e-business development stage. Implications of the study and guidelines for the managers are provided in the paper.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.5-20
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• 1996

Today's firms exist and run business in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment in terms of industry, market, technology, economic conditions, and culture. To be competitive, at least to survive, firms must cope with and manage uncertainty effectively. In other words, firms should be equipped with powerful weapons to capture competitive advantage over their competitors. There are several ways for a firm to capture competitive edge over its competitors such as cost leadership, quality of the products and services, manpower, higher productivity, and technology. Among these, technology, especially information technology, could be the most effective weapon for competitive advantages since it is possible to monitor competitors' movement as well as to provide appropriate information with both planning and control phases through an information system. In this paper, a competitive weapon in action, a Process Control System which is developed by and installed at a U.S petroleum company would the described.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.43-61
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• 2015

The valuation of patents is very important, since technology competitiveness is crucial for firms to maintain global competitiveness. But, the patent valuation is difficult and challenging because of the uncertainty affecting their returns. Hence, we propose a patent valuation method by incorporating game theory into the real option model, which can not only potentially recognizes the effect of uncertainty on patent value, but also consider investment decision in a competitive market, as a game between firms. With the model, we can consider dynamic strategy involving an option of patent leveraging strategies enabling the firm to switch among compete, cooperate, or wait modes under different demand or competitive advantage condition.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.81-99
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• 2004

Manufacturing flexibility has strategic position in improving competitive advantage as a mechanism that responses environmental uncertainty. Thus this study aims at recognizing strategic meaning of manufacturing flexibility in enhancing the competitive advantage and measuring manufacturing flexibility and ultimately analyzing the effects of IT use on the manufacturing flexibility. Consequently we proved that IT use have an effect on manufacturing flexibility and manufacturing flexibility has an effect on competitive advantage in this study The results of this study are as follows. First, information acquisition and decision support by IT use has a significant effect on enhancing the manufacturing flexibility and manufacturing flexibility has a significant effect on improving the competitive advantage. Theses results are also means that IT use to support AMT usage is more important than AMT itself in the achieving manufacturing flexibility.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.11-26
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• 2022

Purpose: Manufacturers rely on interfirm governance mechanisms to reduce the risks inherent in uncertain environments; however, it is unclear which governance mechanisms are developed to manage relationships with suppliers. This study sought to enhance knowledge of how environmental uncertainty affects interfirm governance mechanisms under conditions reflecting varying levels of structural holes. To this end, the study investigated the relationships between manufacturers and major first-tier and sub-suppliers. In particular, the moderating effect of structural holes is examined. Research design, data and methodology: A questionnaire survey was conducted with a major first-tier supplier of a Korean engineering firm. Proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Results: The results show that while the relationship between environmental uncertainty and unilateral governance is positive but statistically insignificant, with bilateral governance is negative and statistically significant. The study also demonstrates that when structural holes are considered, the effects between environmental uncertainty and governance mechanisms are attenuated. Conclusions: This study suggests some theoretical and managerial contributions between exchange partners, especially, the results suggest that structural holes have a critical competitive advantage in uncertain environments. Therefore, manufacturers should carefully consider how they deal with environmental uncertainty when they make a business decision under structural holes situations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.287-295
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• 2020

Group method of data handling (GMDH) is considered one of the earliest deep learning methods. Deep learning gained additional interest in today's applications due to its capability to handle complex and high dimensional problems. In this study, multi-layer GMDH networks are used to perform uncertainty quantification (UQ) and sensitivity analysis (SA) of nuclear reactor simulations. GMDH is utilized as a surrogate/metamodel to replace high fidelity computer models with cheap-to-evaluate surrogate models, which facilitate UQ and SA tasks (e.g. variance decomposition, uncertainty propagation, etc.). GMDH performance is validated through two UQ applications in reactor simulations: (1) low dimensional input space (two-phase flow in a reactor channel), and (2) high dimensional space (8-group homogenized cross-sections). In both applications, GMDH networks show very good performance with small mean absolute and squared errors as well as high accuracy in capturing the target variance. GMDH is utilized afterward to perform UQ tasks such as variance decomposition through Sobol indices, and GMDH-based uncertainty propagation with large number of samples. GMDH performance is also compared to other surrogates including Gaussian processes and polynomial chaos expansions. The comparison shows that GMDH has competitive performance with the other methods for the low dimensional problem, and reliable performance for the high dimensional problem.