Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
1
This study examines how firms exploit dynamic behavioural capabilities utilising technology-led services. A multi-case study of service firms at different stages of their evolutionary lifecycle was undertaken. We employed the Dynamic Entrepreneurial Capabilities (DEC) conceptual framework as our analytical framework finding that emphasis on insight and heuristics to be highly appropriate for understanding the behavioural realities of why our case organisations pursue and resist entrepreneurial activity.
JEL Codes: Management Track: Management of Small Business, Entrepreneurship,
Entrepreneurial Development
Links between technology investment and productivity have been widely studied (see
Dedrick et al., 2013). Within that context, specific attention has been given to technologydriven entrepreneurial behaviour (Lin et al., 2012). With a focus on developing or renewal of internal firm capabilities through the novel combination of resource in order to facilitate an extension of business activities and opportunities, literature (Sharma and Chrisman,
1999), alludes to the fact that firms can behave in entrepreneurial manner by exhibiting posture (i.e. behavioural cues), that suggest an emphasis on risk taking, innovation and proactiveness. We are concerned with entrepreneurial behaviour within the „Internet
Cultural Era‟. What makes our study of particular interest is that we explore how this era seems to be affecting dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities in sub-Saharan Africa.
What is of interest to us in this study is therefore to understand how small and medium sized firms exploit entrepreneurial behavioural capabilities in technology-led or mediated services. Studies (Ojiako et al., 2012, 2013), suggest that technology does enhance services, especially in front line and high-contact public encounters. As suggested by
Bullinger et al. (2003; p. 279), a high-contact service implies services noted for the intensity of the relationships between the firms employees and its customers. Security services may be construed as high contact. There is a need within scholarly circles to undertake such studies following a number of studies that have sought to understand the role of technology at the point of service encounter (Boretos, 2009). To achieve the study objective, the authors examine the use of technology-mediated services within the
R30billion (approximately US$3billion), private security services sector of the South
African economy. Drawing upon earlier studies (see Azumah et al., 2005; Hyytinen and
1
* Dr Udechukwu Ojiako, Faculty of Engineering & IT, British University in Dubai & Hull University Business
School, UK; email: uojiako@buid.ac.ae
** Dr Stuart Maguire, The Management School, University of Sheffield, UK: email: s.maguire@sheffield.ac.uk
*** Alasdair Marshall, Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, UK: email: a.marshall@soton.ac.uk
**** Dr Maxwell Chipulu, Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, UK: email: m.chipulu@soton.ac.uk

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Maliranta, 2013), we categorised three stages of firms exploitation entrepreneurial behavioural capabilities in relation to technology-mediated services. Firstly, we have what can be called a ½-fusion firms. These are small and medium sized firms with a minimum or cursory utilisation of technology. Technology is perceived to be an add-on rather than an integral part of their business operations and service offerings. This may include small and medium sized that have websites, and which use e-mails for internal and external communication. We also included a whole-fusion small and medium sized. Such firms are largely committed to intensive use but not exploitation of technology. They may perceive technology to be integral to their business operations, but predominantly only to gain and release capabilities in order to match market change (see Lanza and Passarelli, 2014; p.
3). Finally, our third case study firm was an „eFirm‟, these routinely use technology to enact, develop, refine, and routinize specific and substantive entrepreneurial features
(Lanza and Passarelli, 2014; p. 3).
For our conceptual framework, we will employ the Dynamic Entrepreneurial Capabilities framework (Lanza and Passarelli, 2014) a theoretical analytical framework of interest to both entrepreneurship and service operations management) research (see Teece, 2014).
The Dynamic Entrepreneurial Capabilities framework is a hybrid organisational capability framework developed specifically for analysing the impact of complex and discontinuous technology innovation on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This is largely based on the dynamic capability framework (see Winter, 2003; Ambrosini and Bowman,
2009), from which it derives its chief purpose of ascertaining how technology benefits organisations over their lifecycles (see Helfat and Peteraf, 2003). However the DEC framework improves upon its predecessor by recognising various peculiarities of SMEs seeking to benefit from technology; for example: (i) lack of prior knowledge and experience; (ii) limited availability of resources; (iii) poor teamwork and (iv) limited learning platforms. More fully, we need to articulate subtle differences between dynamic capabilities, „standard‟ entrepreneurial capabilities and DECs. For DECs in particular, the focus is on entrepreneurial attributes which facilitate “the enactment, development, refinement, and exploitation of constant change” (see Lanza and Passarelli, 2014; p. 4).
Often, such conditions result in small and medium sized firms continuously „morphing‟ into new forms as they seek to regenerate and transform their competitive advantage utilising the Internet (see Rindova and Kotha, 2001).
The study is set within the security services sector of South Africa. Various studies describe the private security industry as an essential element of the South African economy. South Africa has the largest private security industry in the world worth an estimated R30billion (approximately US$3billion), with over 9,000 registered companies employing nearly 400,000 operators juxtaposed against the South African Police Service
(SAPS) and its aligned metropolitan police services who in combination employ just under
200,000 officers (see Jaynes, 2012). The security industry is also perceived as a „high- co ntact‟ service environment (Dean, 1980). Such service environments are generally characterised by very high levels of unpredictability (Ojiako et al., 2013). In addition they are characterised by high service failure rates due to their association with a considerable amount of emotion (see Martin, 1999) and violence (Binder and Scharf, 1980) which are likely to lead to service failures (see Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993).

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Data was obtained between March 2012 and October 2013. The study was designed largely based on multiple case studies. The structure for the case study approach which is based on earlier work by Stuart et al. (2002) involved as follows. Data was obtained from a combination of participation observation (project meetings, workshops, stage reviews, examination of company documents) and a total of twelve semi-structured interviews (see
Gummesson, 2000).
Table 1: Profile of interviewees
Firm Role of interviewee Management level
A
A
A
A
B
B
B
B
B
C
C
C
Chief Executive/Owner
General Manager
Security Manager (1)
Security Manager (1)
Chief Executive Officer
Business Development Manager
Security Manager- Durban
Security Manager- Johannesburg
Finance Director
Managing Director
IT Manager
Security Section Control Manager
Executive
Executive
Non-manager
Non-manager
Executive
Senior
Middle
Middle
Senior/Executive
Executive level
Senior
Middle
In line with earlier recommendation of Handfield and Melnyk (1998: p. 324),
All three case firms (Table 2), were are privately held and registered under the Private
Security Industry Regulatory Act 56 of 2001 (South Africa), as approved service providers with the South African Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA).
Table 2: Overview of case organisations
Firm Type of Technology Firm size Technology Location of Year operations exploitation exploitation operations formed behavioural capability
A Locationbased armed and unarmed guards.
½-fusion firm;
Minimum technology utilisation.
Approximately
83 security operators plus
7 staff.
PoS used mainly as mobile payment device.
Johannesburg 2007
B Armed guarding;
Personal
Whole-fusion firm; Intensive but not
Approximately
200 security operators and
Handheld devices used mainly as secure
Durban,
Johannesburg
2006

C
Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6 protection exploitation of 11 admin staff. customerservices.
Fleet management and asset protection. technology eFirm; routinely use technology to enact, develop, refine, and routinize specific and substantive entrepreneuria l behaviour.
107 security operators; majority are armed. interfaces.
Almost all aspects of the firms operations are characterised by the integration with technology.
Pretoria,
Nationwide
2004
Organisation „A‟ was established in 2007. In 2009, Organisation „A‟ introduced Point of
Service (PoS) devices into its business operations. The main driver for their use being that the devices allows sales managers to take payments securely (by encryption) and also to be able to receive almost instantaneous payment confirmations, usually via SMS (short messaging services) at the premises or offices of clients. The firm‟s use of PoS devices has however remained traditional and confined to that of a mobile payment solution (see
Mallat et al., 2004).
The second case, Organisation „B‟ was established in 2006. The company has its headquarters in Durban (KwaZulu-Natal Province) and its main area of operations is in armed guarding and more specifically, personal protection services. Organisation B can be regarded as a whole-fusion because it perceives technology as central to its service operations. Its current use of PoS devices in its business operations has taken nontraditional forms outside serving as a mobile payment platform. For example, utilising individual card reader units, the firm has been able to employ PoS devices as a secure customer-interface terminal enabling its use in a limited number of value-add functionalities such as the creation and printing of invoices and receipts and also the creation and confirmation of orders.
The third (final) case, Organi sation „C‟ was established in 2004. The company has two main areas of operations: fleet management (tracking and monitoring) and asset protection, specifically cash transportation and protection. As an eFirm, Organisation „C‟ routinely exploits technology in the routinisation of a substantive number of its activities.
The firm utilises newer generation PoS devices which are GPS enabled not only to support various value-add functionalities at point of service such as processing payment transactions through PIN entries or swipes and the creation and printing of invoices and receipts, but also in the creation and confirmation of orders. The devices are also fully integrated with the firms Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems enabling almost instantaneous access to customer data at the point of service in addition to its use for signin‟s during guard shifts, identify and image capturing and validation, access code generation and pin-point alarm monitoring. Thus, within the private security industry,
Or ganisation C‟s use of GPS enabled PoS represents a radical departure from what has traditionally been a face-to-face dominant customer interface to a service supplier-

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6 customer interaction which is predominantly fulfilled using a technology mediatedplatform.
To present findings, we required organising themes to be supported in terms of theoretical rele vance by Lanza and Passarelli‟s (2014) DEC framework. Two qualifying themes seemed sufficient: (i) entrepreneurial insight and (ii) entrepreneurial heuristics. The following discussion will treat these as distinct yet tightly interrelated and, taken together, vital for a holistic understanding of entrepreneurial dynamism in the case organisations.
Insight
Dimov (2007) suggests that entrepreneurial opportunities only emerge following a long iterative process that involves the shaping and development of ideas based on insight.
For example, Organisation „B‟ revealed this basic insight: “our decision to begin to explore how technology may best help our organisation was determined by a realisation that due to cost, adoption of technology could not be random; for one, technology is very
(emphasis) expensive” (Interview with Organisation „B‟ Business Development Manager).
According to Kirzner (1973), insight from an entrepreneurship perspective refers to the ability of firms to recognise a previously unnoticed opportunity for profit. Entrepreneurial insight (see Finke, 1990), can either be convergent whereby the entrepreneur moves from a state of unawareness to a state of awareness that results in a logical closure, or it can be divergent, by breaking free from common-sense assumptions that have prevented change and experimentation. Convergent insights are usually responses to demanddriven factors. A good example of a simple convergent insight comes from Organisation
“C”, “technology alone cannot deliver a complete service experience to customers”
(Interview with Organisation „C‟ IT Manager). Entrepreneurial insight can also be divergent, usually in response to supply-driven factors. Here for example, the firm becomes aware of existing or emerging technology, but either lacks an immediate sense or capability, of how such technology may be incorporated into service delivery. For example organisation “A” saw itself as a market leader in providing reception and location access control and guarding. Their CEO offered the following insight, classifiably as divergent because it entails breaking free from established assumptions in order to develop a niche service. According to the firm, “we made a conscious decision earlier on when setting up this company, we were not going to get dragged into the technology thing…yes, our business is about protecting, but it‟s also about people and space…protection and guarding can‟t solely be about who has more gadgets” (Interview with Organisation „A‟ Chief Executive Officer).
Various commentators (see Corbett, 2007; Dimov, 2007; Bhagavatula et al., 2010), suggest that entrepreneurial intent is driven by two factors (i) perceived desirability and (ii) perceived feasibility. Here, within the context of this study, perceived desirability may refer to the extent to which the utilisation of PoS devices impacts upon the efficacy of entrepreneurial activity of small and medium sized firms operating in the private security industry within South Africa. In turn, perceived feasibility will refer to whether these ownermanagers believe that their firms will be successful. As Dimov (2007) suggests, differences in interpretations of similar insights are more related to the different interpretations and meanings ascribed by small firm owner-managers.

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
What we can conclude then, is that entrepreneurial insights can be evaluated with reference to how they affect perceived desirability and feasibility of entrepreneurial activity.
Arguably, the healthiest situation we can expect to find in an small and medium sized firms is a set of entrepreneurial insights which combine with other insights and heuristics to ensure an excess of neither conservatism nor radical change
– but rather that sufficient consideration is given to the desirability and feasibility of entrepreneurial activity from critical perspectives both pro and contra change. The reason why such academic evaluations matter is clear: our case organisations have offered very astute cautionary insights which, when taken to excess and not counterbalanced by more optimistic ones, might conceivably restrict the development of technologically driven entrepreneurship in a business context already plagued by concerns of economic recession and extreme competition. This leads us to the second concept.
Heuristics
The notion of entrepreneurial heuristics emerged from well-developed theoretical frameworks put forward by Tversky and Kahneman (1973, 1974) emphasising widespread reliance on decision shortcuts where conditions for rational choice go unmet. Such decision-shortcuts may or may not be articulated by those who use them, although they typically involve recourse to some combination of trust, affect, and intuition when selecting between decision options where outcomes are uncertain (see Greenberg et al. 2012).
Often, these shortcuts involve managerial complexity reduction and sense-making by mapping complex problems to more familiar and less complex scenarios.
The importance of entrepreneurial heuristics, particularly those relating to the closely interrelated themes of trust, intuition and experience, was strongly emphasised by the three case organisations. Given that the South African security industry is a place where
“one mistake and you are out of business” (Interview with Organisation „C‟ Managing
Director), it is quite understandable that the respondents displayed the keen interest in behavioural decision-making that they did The affective aspects of heuristics were emphasised at one point by Organisation „C‟: “we often rely on our instinct to make decisions, often without much consideration for the immediate outcome” (Interview with
Organisation „C‟ Security Section Control Manager). Clearly, reliance on „instinct‟ in a high risk environment is bound to provoke interest in exactly what „instincts‟ are likely to work well.
The approach taken by some academic commentators (e.g. Dew et al., 2004; Corbett,
2007) is to emphasise that the effectiveness of such decisions are impacted by differences in the expertise, experience and knowledge base individual entrepreneurs.
Correspondingly, the Managing Director of Organisation „C” pointed out that heuristics that operate through trust and intuition. Specifically, he emphasised the need for private security small and medium sized firms to be led by “people with prior experience in the industry; prior experience in the armed forces is welcomed, however we are in a completely different industry and deal constantly with both customers and employees who
2 are very different from for example the people I engaged with when serving with the MK in the late 1980‟s”. Furthermore, “my experience in the IT industry has led me to believe that in terms of their use by private security companies in South Africa, these devices are likely to be game changers; I anticipate that their use will lead to a situation in the future when the need for head-office mediation in service design will be reduced or in fact, cease to exist….think about a situation where the role of control and dispatch centres is being
2
Umkhonto we Sizwe , abbreviated as „MK‟, is the now defunct armed wing of the African National Congress

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6 decentralised” (Interview with Organisation „C‟ Managing Director). This view could have been categorised in the previous section as an „insight‟, but we mention it here to illustrate how insights, which can come from anywhere, can sometimes reflect underlying entrepreneurial heuristics emphasising the role of relevant professional experience as a basis for good judgment.
Heuristics also appears to have played a major part in Organisation „A‟s apparent decision to continue to operate as a ½-fusion firms. Here what we find is a simple affective orientation which makes the increasingly complex market for security services easier to understand for management decision-making purposes. According to their CEO, investing excessively in technology may bring about benefits, “but the reality is that the private security business is a cut-throat industry; especially with PSIRA continuing to issue licenses to new operators on a daily basis” (Interview with Organisation „A‟ Chief Executive
Officer). In effect, this represents a simplified way of thinking about the complex problem of whether to aspire to be first mover in new technology to carve out market share
– a problem which some academics (e.g. Nicholas et al., 2013; Scheiner et al., 2014) discuss as „technology fog‟. As with all heuristics, this simple affective threat orientation has implications for decision choices. Consider for example the statement that “we are increasingly facing the dilemma of deciding whether to increase our investment in technology in order to enhance our operations and hopefully improve our profit margins as against exploiting what we believe are our major capabilities, that is our personal touch and hope that by also emphasising on the human side of things, we will be able to improve our current financial situation” (Interview with Organisation „B‟ Business
Development Manager). Notably, this view seems to proceed from the same simple affective threat orientation as we have just mentioned. Thinking within a social threat frame, it makes sense to seek to relieve anxiety through relationship-building – and an interesting question is whether this heuristic thought process might inhibit technology investment.
Inevitably, ½fusion firms such as Organisation „A‟ have become particularly challenged in relation to the need to balance risks associated with investing in disruptive technology when the business environment is either unknown or constantly changes as against the possible loss of competitiveness due to non-investment in technology. Within this emerging scenario, timing becomes critical and entrepreneurial heuristics can once more play a role by influencing decisions concerning when to take action. Increasingly, technology changes will be more rapid, demanding almost instantaneous assessment and adoption if attributed competitive benefits will be accrued. Clearly, as firms will increasingly have less time to undertake very comprehensive assessments of technology, greater emphasis will be placed on using trust, affect and intuition when making decisions relating to technology adoption.
Generally speaking, the term „capabilities‟ implies organisational capacity to deploy a range of resources to achieve desired objectives (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities (DECs) are perhaps best understood as what Lanza and
Passarelli call “higher order capabilities” that underlie these. Like organisational capabilities on general, DECs are usually theorised with reference to some resourcebased view of the firm (Bowman and Ambrosini, 2003). According to comprehensive reviews of dynamic capabilities literature (see Ambrosini and Bowman, 2009; Vogel and

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Güttel, 2013), the DEC concept also seeks to encapsulate knowledge drawn from a number of further strategic management concepts including core competence (see
Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Crucially, the DEC concept recognises that the creation of agile organisational resources for changing/dynamic business environments is dependent on prior distinct capabilities that enable it to create, manage and exploit resources which are valuable and rare in addition to inimitable and non-substitutable. More specifically,
Ambrosini and Bowman (2009) proposed that dynamic capabilities represent embedded organizational processes that primarily focus on managing the resource base of a firm. It thus represents a conceptual tool offering scholars a structured means of assessing change processes (which modify such resources) within different stages of the lifecycles of organisations. However, although mainly applied to larger and more mature organisations, the DEC framework concept has also been more recently utilised to study small and medium sized firms (see O‟Reilly and Tushman, 2008; Newey and Zahra,
2009). Its limited application to SME studies appears to be related to a common misperception in entrepreneurship scholarship (see Lanza and Passarelli, 2014), that such distinct and dynamic capabilities equate to personal cognitive traits of individual entrepreneurs when in fact they are best understood as organisational attributes. In effect, its limited application to SME studies appears to be related to a common misconception in entrepreneurship scholarship (see Lanza and Passarelli, 2014), that such distinct and dynamic capabilities equate to personal cognitive traits of individual entrepreneurs when in fact they are best understood as organisational attributes. As already mentioned Lanza and Passarelli (2014) list the main three substantive DECs as „distributed entrepreneurial insight, entrepreneurial heuristics and entrepreneurial flexibility. It is worth stressing again that our study explores the first two of these, which proved highly relevant in the interview discussions with our case study firms.
In conclusion, this paper sets out the outline of a wider study seeking to examine not only how discontinuous technology impacts upon the efficacy of small firm activity, but also how such firms are able to exploit entrepreneurial capabilities in order to innovate, or indeed resist innovation, in their delivery of technology-mediated services. The outline findings suggest that they may be certain common characteristics across ½-fusion, wholefusion and eFirms. There may be some overlaps within their strategies and their exploitation of technology. It may be safe to suggest that exploitation of technology is more of less driven by not only acquiring the requisite technology but also by consideration of the dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities of each of the firms with particular reference to the effects entrepreneurial insights and entrepreneurial heuristics may be having on levels of entrepreneurial activity.
Our study is intended to reside at the nexus of service operations and entrepreneurship research. According to Ireland and Webb (2007) and Kickul et al. (2011), such studies are scarce, but invaluable to the generation of new and valuable knowledge for the firm.
Although studies (e.g. Woolley, 2013) highlight the role of the environment in the enactment of entrepreneurial activity, some commentators such as Reuber and Fischer
(2011) point out that entrepreneurship literature has paid limited attention to the role of the technological environment produced by the internet, despite its very significant potential to stimulate entrepreneurship. Crucially, such environments are not geographically bounded.
This means internet-related technology can become the defining feature of an organisational environment in sub-Saharan Africa, in much the same way as can occur for organisations operating within or closer to the global technology centres. Another important consideration for our study will be that according to various recent

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6 commentators (e.g. Bergek et al., 2013; De Clercq et al., 2014), small and medium sized firms reside at the centre of the relationship between radical discontinuous technology and competitive performance. This relationship according to Woolley (2013) remains one of the most critical drivers for the creation of new activity domains and the founding of new firms.
Our study is likely to contribute to literature showing that entrepreneurial insights and heuristics are relatively easy to pinpoint through interviews with entrepreneurial decisionmakers. Just one particular „academic insight‟ into the entrepreneurial insights of our case organisations has been that a simple threat-based affective heuristic invoked in response to increasingly intense competition in the South African security industry, may be driving the entrepreneurial insight which values customer relationship building as a source of competitive advantage, but which is simultaneously anti-entrepreneurial with respect to its influence upon attitudes towards technology investment. Based on this observation, we suggest that further business context specific academic studies are required in order to (i) help reveal to organisations what their entrepreneurial insights and heuristics are and (ii) help organisations map and develop these through organisational learning activities. Small and medium sized businesses in particular, stand to lose much through human resource circulation, and it makes sense for them to list, document, and thereby preserve, the heuristics and insights that best seem to explain their own organisational decision-making under uncertainty. In turbulent, disruptive business environments, behavioural decisionmaking criteria may come and go, yet organisations should remain alert to the possibility that changing organisational circumstances may be testing the mettle for some highly valuable „higher order‟ DECs, which work well across a variety of changing business circumstances. These DECs, if they manage to become alert to them, they should perhaps value especially, but never uncritically, as decision-making guides.
Ambrosini, V. and Bowman, C 2009, What are dynamic capabilities and are they a useful construct in strategic management? International Journal of Management Reviews ,
Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 29-49.
Amit, R. and Schoemaker, P 1993, Strategic assets and organizational rent, Strategic
Management Journal , Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 33 –46.
Ashforth, B. and Humphrey, R 1993, Emotional labour in service roles: the influence of identity, Academy of Management Review , Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 88
–115.
Azumah, G., Koh, S. and Maguire, S 2005, E-organisation and its future implication for
SMEs, Production Planning and Control , Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 555-562.
Baum, M., Schwens, C and Kabst, R 2013, International as opposed to domestic new venturing: The moderating role of perceived barriers to internationalization,
International Small Business Journal , Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 536-562.
Bergek, A., Berggren, C., Magnusson, T and Hobday, M 2013, Technological discontinuities and the challenge for incumbent firms: Destruction, disruption or creative accumulation? Research Policy , Vol. 42, No. 6, pp. 1210-1224.
Bhagavatula, S., Elfring, T., Tilburg, A and van de Bunt, G 2010. How social and human capital influence opportunity recognition and resource mobilization in India‟s handloom industry, Journal of Business Venturing , Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 245 –260.
Binder, A and Scharf, P 1980, The violent police-citizen encounter. Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 452, No. 1, pp. 111 –121.

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Blackburn, R. and Kovalainen, A 2009, Researching small firms and entrepreneurship:
Past, present and future, International Journal of Management Reviews , Vol. 11,
No. 2, pp. 127-148.
Boretos, G 2009, The future of the global economy, Technological Forecasting and Social
Change , Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 316-326.
Bowman, C. and Ambrosini, V 2003, How the resource-based and the dynamic capability views of the firm inform competitive and corporate level strategy, British Journal of
Management , Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 289 –303.
Bullinger, H.-J., Fahnrich, K. and Meiren, T 2003. Service engineering – methodical development of new service products, International Journal of Production
Economics , Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 275-87.
Corbett, A 2007. Learning asymmetries and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities,
Journal of Business Venturing , Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 97
–118.
Davidson, A. and Simonetto, M 2005, Pricing strategy and execution: an overlooked way to increase revenues and profits, Strategy and Leadership , Vol. 33, No. 6, pp. 25 –
33.
Dean, D 1980, Citizen ratings of the police, Law and Policy, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 445
–471.
De Clercq, D., Thongpapanl, N and Dimov, D 2014, Contextual ambidexterity in SMEs: the roles of internal and external rivalry, Small Business Economics , Vol. 42, No. 1, pp.
191-205.
Dedrick, J., Kraemer, K and Shih, E 2013, Information Technology and Productivity in
Developed and Developing Countries. Journal of Management Information Systems ,
Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 97-122.
Dew, N., Velamuri, S. and Venkataraman, S 2004, Dispersed knowledge and an entrepreneurial theory of the firm, Journal of Business Venturing , Vol. 19, No. 5, pp.
659
–679.
Dimov, D 2007, From opportunity insight to opportunity intention: The importance of person-situation learning match, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice , Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 561-583.
Feeny, D. and Willcocks, L 1998, Core IS capabilities for exploiting information technology, Sloan Management Review , Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 9-21.
Finke, R 1990, Creative imagery: Discoveries and inventions in visualization. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum Press.
Greenberg, M., Haas, C., Cox, A., Lowrie, K., McComan, K and North, W 2012. Ten Most
Important Accomplishments in Risk Analysis, 1980-2010, Risk Analysis: An
International Journal , Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 771-781.
Gummesson, E 2000, Qualitative Methods in Management Research, Sage, Thousand
Oaks, CA.
Handfield, R and Melnyk, S 1998, The scientific theory-building process: a primer using
the case of TQM, Journal of Operations Management , Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 321-339.
Helfat, C. and Peteraf, M 2003, The Dynamic Resource Based View: Capability Lifecycles,
Strategic Management Journal , Vol. 24, No. 10, pp. 997
–1010.
Huang, H 2010 What is good action research? why the resurgent interest? Action
Research , Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 93
–109.
Hyytinen, A and Maliranta, M 2013, Firm lifecycles and evolution of industry productivity.
Research Policy , Vol. 42, No. 5, pp. 1080-1098.
Ireland, R. and Webb, J 2007. A cross-disciplinary exploration of entrepreneurship research, Journal of Management , Vol. 33, No. 6, pp. 891-927.
Jaynes, N 2012. Flying Below the Radar?: The Armed Private Security Sector in South
Africa. Open Society Foundation for South Africa.

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Jensen, K. and Helles, R 2011. The internet as a cultural forum: Implications for research.
New Media & Society , Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 517-533.
Kickul, J., Griffiths, M., Jayaram, J. and Wagner, S 2011. Operations management, entrepreneurship, and value creation: Emerging opportunities in a cross-disciplinary context, Journal of Operations Management , Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 78-85.
Kim, S. and Mahoney, J 2006. Mutual commitment to support exchange: relation-specific
I.T. system as a substitute for managerial hierarchy, Strategic Management Journal ,
Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 401-423.
Kimberly, J 1975. Environmental constraints and organizational structure: A comparative analysis of rehabilitation organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly , Vol. 20 ,
No. 1, pp. 1-9.
King, J. and Kramer, K 1984, Evolution and organizational information systems: an assessment of Nolan's stage model, Communications of the ACM , Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 466-475.
Kirzner, I 1973, Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Koh, S and Maguire, S 2009. Information and Communication Technologies Management in Turbulent Business Environments, Information Science Reference Press.
Lanza, A., and Passarelli, M 2014, Technology Change and Dynamic Entrepreneurial
Capabilities”, Journal of Small Business Management , Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 427 –450.
Leiblein, M. and Madsen, T 2009, Unbundling competitive heterogeneity: incentive structures and capability influences on technological innovation, Strategic
Management Journal , Vol. 30, No. 7, pp. 711-735.
Lin, H., Nagalingam, S., Kuik, S and Murata, T 2012, Design of a Global Decision Support
System for a manufacturing SME: Towards participating in Collaborative
Manufacturing, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol. 136, No. 1, pp.
1-12.
Lu, Y and Ramamurthy, K 2011, Understanding the Link between Information Technology
Capability and Organizational Agility: An Empirical Examination, MIS Quarterly , Vol.
35, No. 4, pp. 931-954.
Mallat, N., Rossi, M and Tuunainen, V 2004, Mobile banking services, Communications of the ACM , Vol. 47, No. 5, pp. 42-46.
Martin, S 1999, Police force or police service? Gender and emotional labor, Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 561, No. 1, pp. 111
–126.
McDermott, C and Prajogo, D 2012. Service innovation and performance in SMEs,
International Journal of Operations & Production Management , Vol. 32, No. 2, pp.
216-237.
Mishra, S., Modi, S and Animesh, A 2013, The relationship between information technology capability, inventory efficiency, and shareholder wealth: A firm-level empirical analysis, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 298-312.
Nicholas, J., Ledwith, A. and Bessant, J 2013, Reframing the Search Space for Radical
Innovation, Research-Technology Management , Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 27-35.
Ojiako, U., Chipulu, M. and Graesser, A 2012, Correlating service touch-point preferences with engagement parameters, Industrial Management and Data Systems , Vol. 112 ,
No. 5, pp. 766-785.
Ojiako, U., Maguire, S and Chipulu, M 2013, Thematic elements underlying the delivery of services in high-contact public service encounters, Production Planning & Control ,
Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 532-545.
O‟Reilly, C. and Tushman, M 2008, Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability: resolving the innovator‟s dilemma. In Staw, B.M. and Brief, A.P. (eds), Research in Organizational
Behavior, Bingley: Emerald Group, 185
–206.

Proceedings of 4th European Business Research Conference
9 - 10 April 2015, Imperial College, London, UK , ISBN: 978-1-922069-72-6
Perren, L and Ram, M 2004, Case-study method in small business and entrepreneurial research mapping boundaries and perspectives, International Small Business
Journal , Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 83-101.
Prahalad, C and Hamel, G 1990, The core competence of the corporation. Harvard
Business Review, Vol. 68, pp. 79-91.
Rindova, V and Kotha, S 2001, Continuous “morphing”: Competing through dynamic capabilities, form, and function, Academy of Management Journal , Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 1263-1280.
Reuber, A and Fischer, E 2011, International entrepreneurship in internet-enabled markets, Journal of Business Venturing , Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 660-679.
Scheiner, C., Baccarella, C., Bessant, J and Voigt, K 2014. Thinking patterns and gut feeling in technology identification and evaluation, Technological Forecasting and
Social Change , In Press.
Sharma, P and Chrisman, J 1999, Toward a reconciliation of the definitional issues in the field of Corporate Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice , Vol. 23,
No. 3, pp. 11-27.
Stuart, I., McCutcheon, D., Handfield, R., McLachlin, R and Samson, D 2002, Effective case research in operations management: a process perspective, Journal of
Operations Management , Vol. 20, No. 5, pp. 419 –433.
Teece, D 2014, A dynamic capabilities-based entrepreneurial theory of the multinational enterprise, Journal of International Business Studies , Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 8-37.
Tversky, A and Kahneman D, 1973, Availability: Heuristic for judging frequency and probability, Cognitive Psychology , Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 207 –232.
Tversky, A and Kahneman D, 1974, Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases,
Science , Vol. 185, No. 4157, pp. 1124 –1131.
Vogel, R and Guttel W 2013, The Dynamic Capability View in Strategic Management: A
Bibliometric Review, International Journal of Management Reviews , Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 426-446.
Winter, S 2003, Understanding dynamic capabilities, Strategic Management Journal , Vol.
24, No. 10, pp. 991-995.
Woolley, J 2013, The Creation and Configuration of Infrastructure for Entrepreneurship in
Emerging Domains of Activity, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, In Press.