Resumo

While organizational dynamic capabilities (DCs) are understood as crucial to SMEs' success, the configurations of individual-level capabilities and meta-capabilities, in the form of dynamic managerial capabilities (DMCs) and organizational change capacity (OCC), in which that outcome can be observed are not clear. Furthermore, even less is known about this relationship when considering the context in which the firm operates. Referred to as the “holy grail of management research” (Scheuer and Thaler 2022, p.1), understanding their emergence and development is of utmost importance.

We approach this research question while considering the firm's internationalization as a moderator. As such, we aim to determine which of DMCs’ and OCC’s components are necessary and which configurations are sufficient for consistently determining DCs presence. In considering internationalization as a moderator, we further investigate whether these conditions shift between internationalized and non-internationalized SMEs.

For DCs to propagate organization-wide, several emergent factors should be present, but how they interconnect is yet unclear (Schilke et al., 2018). OCC measures the firm’s capacity to adapt or change, which is constituted by organizational cohesion, change culture, and change process. DMCs are dynamic capabilities at the individual level that evaluate the company's management team's human capital, social capital, and managerial cognition. We argue that DMCs form the origin of DCs, but OCC must be present such that both should be present for sufficiency.

We use fsQCA to analyze necessity and sufficiency of data acquired through a survey by questionnaire of managers in Portuguese SMEs. Necessity determines if a single condition is consistently necessary for outcome observation. Sufficiency determines whether a configuration of conditions is sufficient for consistent outcome observation. The components of OCC and DMCs are conditions, with internationalization being a moderator, with DCs as the outcome. This moderation analysis is, on its own, quite recent in fsQCA studies, constituting an innovative methodological development (Ma et al., 2023).

No condition is necessary for the observation of DCs. However, three sufficient configurations emerge, having change culture and managerial cognition, or social capital, or both, as core conditions. Considering internationalization changes, the relative importance of these conditions is that non-internationalized firms have change processes and managerial cognitions as core conditions, with internationalized firms having organizational cohesion, change culture, and managerial cognition.

These findings firstly inform that the internationalization status of the firm is an important moderator of the sufficient antecedent conditions required for DCs' presence in SMEs. When this is considered, our set-theoretic approach through fsQCA highlighted that the studied conditions' effects are heterogeneous and contingent on each other. In all firms, managerial cognition is critical to DCs development, but it must be accompanied by the capacity to change processes. However, internationalized firms have the above-mentioned different avenues available for the consistent presence of DCs.

Ma, T., Cheng, Y., Guan, Z., Li, B., Hou, F., & Lim, E. T. K. (2023). Theorising moderation in the configurational approach: A guide for identifying and interpreting moderating influences in QCA. Information Systems Journal. Scheuer, L. J., & Thaler, J. (2022). HOW do dynamic capabilities affect performance? A systematic review of mediators. European Management Journal. Schilke, O., Hu, S., & Helfat, C. E. (2018). Quo vadis, dynamic capabilities? A content-analytic review of the current state of knowledge and recommendations for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 12(1), 390–439.