Dissertation: Retailers’ strategic responses to institutional pressures varies
Alphonse Aklamanu examines in his doctoral study retailers' strategic responses to institutional pressures and performance. The study creates a better understanding of how host institutional factors and firm internal factors relate to appropriate strategic response choices and performance in the foreign market. The field of dissertation is marketing.
– One of the major significant developments in today’s business environment appears to be increase in the internationalisation of retailing. Retailing practices and structures are affected by pressures from the institutional environment, Aklamanu explains the background of his study.
The key findings of this study suggest that subsidiaries of Finnish retailers in Russia proactively employ four different strategic response choices.
– Retailers can pursue a strategy of compliance to the environment, selection of the environment or creation of the environment.
– Cooperation with the environment is a new strategic response choice, Aklamanu tells.
The results also indicate that performance of subsidiaries of Finnish retailers in Russia depends not only on host institutional factors, but also on internal organisational factors and strategic response choices.
The purpose was to examine retailers’ strategic responses to regulatory, normative, and cognitive pressures from institutional environment in an emerging market. Institutional theory and the literature on retail internationalisation are applied to form theoretical background for the study.
The study applied qualitative case study to examine the strategies of three Finnish retailers in post-market entry stage in emerging market of Russia, a country whose history, culture, and norms of retailing are quite different from Finland.
Public examination
The public examination of Alphonse Aklamanu’s doctoral dissertation “Retailers' strategic responses to institutional pressures: The case of Finnish multinational retailers in Russia” is on Friday 12th September at 13 o’clock in auditorium Kurtén (C203, Tervahovi). Professor Marin Marinov from University of Gloucestershire will act as an opponent and professor Jorma Larimo as a custos.
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