The key elements of strategic leadership capabilities to the latecomer firm: the case of RT Mart’s success in the Chinese retail industry

ABSTRACT

Many international business researchers have made strenuous efforts to examine the influences of strategic leadership capabilities on organizational performance.  However, when it comes down to latecomer firms from the Asia-Pacific region, there have been very few attempts to illuminate how the strategic role and capabilities of CEOs and top management teams are crucial to achieve successful internationalization.  This, in turn, poses a substantial challenge to account for the case of RT Mart in one of the most competitive global market from the systematic framework of latecomer pathways. The main findings of the study suggest that a comprehensive perspective is needed on strategic leadership and its developmental process in explaining the success of challenger firms outperforming the incumbents.  The changing context and micro foundation of the company is critical step in organizational transformation, rooted in leadership capabilities and activities, including absorptive and adaptive capacity, social intelligence, and capacity to leverage resource.  It signifies the synergy effect of the four variables in the function of temporality and stages with the relative strength of the capacity to leverage resource by filling the gaps between the global and local dimensions, and by providing room for exploration and experimentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese retail industry
• competitive advantage
• latecomer firm
• strategic leadership capabilities

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2017S1A3A2067374). Acknowledgements are due to Robert Boyd and the late Robert Marsh for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jungwon Yoon

Jungwon Yoon, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Division of Interdisciplinary Industrial Studies, Hanyang University in South Korea.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology of Technology and Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.  Her areas of expertise are in innovation policy and strategy, international business strategy, and technology management.  Her current research focuses on the structure of national innovation systems in North Korea.  Recently she has published across these areas including “Strategy of the Latecomer Retailer from Emerging Economies for Successful Catching-up in the Chinese Retail Sector” and “Quintuple Helix Structure of Sino-Korean Research Collaboration in Science.” She is the recipient of the Best Paper Award in Korea Business Review from the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration.

Moon-Gi Suh

Moon-Gi Suh, Ph.D., is Professor of the Department of Information Sociology at Soongsil University, Korea.  He received his degrees in Sociology from Brown University and Seoul National University, and worked at the University of Oxford as a Senior Associate Member.  He is the recipient of many distinguished awards including the Korean Honor Scholar, the Incheon Memorial Fellow, and the Maekyung-Bit Fellow as well as the Best Teacher Award.  He has published Developmental Transformation in South Korea (Praeger) and his recent publications include “Determinants of Organizational Performance: Some Implications for Top Executive Leadership in Korean Firms” and “Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in Korea.”