Abstract
1. Introduction: the connection between market work and market change
2. Methodological considerations
3. Specification of the elements of market change
4. Specification of indicators of the elements of market change
5. Reliability and validity assessments
6. Validating the market change index
7. Discussion
Appendix A
Appendix B
References
Abstract
We define market work as purposeful efforts by a focal actor to perform and transform markets and focus on the connection between market work and market change. To enable an evaluation of the effectiveness of market work, we delineate the domain of market change and provide an operational definition of its elements and develop a composite index of market change. Our research process consisted of four steps: (1) Specification of the elements of market change; (2) Specification of indicators for the identified elements; (3) Reliability and validity assessments; and (4) Validating the market change index. We identified six elements of market change. Markets can be changed by changes in Products & Price, Customers & Use, Channels, Supply-side Network, Representations and Norms. In the qualitative phase of the study we identified at total of 22 facets of these elements, which were later developed into 25 indicators. The overall model was operationalized as a formative first-order, formative second-order model, where first-order elements are formatively measured latent constructs that form a more abstract general (second-order) latent construct – market change. The research process involved testing the reliability and validity of the model and the final market change index.
Introduction: the connection between market work and market change
Recent research in strategic management and entrepreneurship suggest that markets should not be viewed as a given and deterministic context, exogenous to the firm (Priem, Butler, & Li, 2013). Instead, firms are increasingly conceptualized as active creators of market opportunities (Alvarez & Barney, 2007; Sarasvathy, 2008). Some authors even suggest that firms can reap so-called influence-rents, “extra profits earned by an economic actor because the rules of the game of business are designed or changed to suit an economic actor or a group of economic actors” (Ahuja & Yayavaram, 2011, p. 1631). The outcome from a managerial point of view is that markets (and opportunities) are not precursors of strategy, but rather outcomes of deliberate and designed actions, thus inviting firms to engage in activities aimed at shaping markets (Kindström, Ottosson, & Carlborg, 2017) to generate market innovations (Kjellberg, Azimont, & Reid, 2015) that support value creation, growth and profitability. Such actions can, based on the ‘turn to work’ literature in management and strategic organization (Phillips & Lawrence, 2012), be labelled “market work”, which we define as purposeful efforts by a focal actor to perform and transform markets. Market work fulfills the characteristics of “work” identified by Phillips and Lawrence (2012), namely it involves actors engaged in a purposeful effort to manipulate some aspect of their context, and it highlights that actors engage in constructing elements that were previously seen as beyond the control of individual actors.