Research On The Relationship Of Organizational Learning, Strategy Implementation Capability And Corporate Performance

How to improve corporate performance is not only the most attracting thing to entrepreneurs, but also a number of scholars' foothold to conduct research in business management. Under an increasing complex and dynamic environment, many scholars have explained the reasons of changing of corporate performance based on organizational learning or strategic management theories, and have made a lot of empirical research. There are a few of scholars who have combined organizational learning and strategic management theories and studied their impact on corporate performance, but the research has just started and still has relatively little empirical research. The research's main concern is the impact of organizational learning and strategy formulation (including the strategic change, strategic adjustments, etc.) on corporate performance, but little research about strategy implementation-the other important element of strategic management. A prerequisite of existing research is: a "right" strategy can be developed through organizational learning, and as long as the strategy is "right", the enterprises will achieve good performance. However, it is difficult to ensure the strategy is "right" under the double constraints of limited rationality and a dynamic and complex environment. And the "right" strategy will not necessarily be able to promote corporate performance. In many cases, the result of strategy implementation has a greater impact on corporate performance.Therefore, the inherent connection of organizational learning and strategic management in particular, strategy implementation and their effects on corporate performance still need to be extended. Based on this consideration, this study constructed the comprehensive framework integrating organizational learning, strategy implementation, and corporate performance. Combining with the main components of organizational learning and strategy implementation and using private manufacturing enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta region as a sample, this research studied the impact of organizational learning on corporate performance through strategy implementation capability theoretically and empirically along with the logic idea of "organizational learning - strategy implementation - corporate performance". To achieve these goals, this study examined the following main issues:â‘ the relationship between strategy implementation capability and corporate performance;â‘¡the relationship between organizational learning and strategy implementation capability;â‘¢the relationship between organizational learning and corporate performance;â‘£the integration relationship among organizational learning, strategy implementation capability and corporate performance.In the research topic one: strategy implementation capability has a positive direct on corporate performance. Strategy implementation capability is composed of strategic consensus, strategy synergy, organizational competency, and execution culture, each of them has a direct positive impact on corporate performance, but there are differences on the extent. Both of organizational competency and strategy synergy have a strong significant impact on corporate performance, while strategic consensus and execution culture have a weak significant impact on corporate performance. Within strategy implementation capability, there are some mutual relationships among them: strategic consensus has a positive direct impact on organizational competency, strategy synergy and execution culture and has an indirect impact on corporate performance through them; strategy synergy has a positive direct impact on organizational competency and has an indirect impact on corporate performance through it; execution culture has a positive direct impact on organizational competency and has an indirect impact on corporate performance through it.In the research topic two: organizational learning has a positive direct impact on strategy implementation capability. Organizational learning is composed of management commitment, system perspective, openness and experiment, and knowledge transfer and integration, each of them has a different impact on the components of strategy implementation capability: management commitment has a positive direct impact on strategic consensus, execution culture, and strategy synergy; system perspective has a positive direct impact on strategic consensus, and strategy synergy; openness and experiment has a positive direct impact on strategic consensus, and organizational competency; knowledge transfer and integration has a positive direct impact on strategic consensus, strategy synergy, and organizational competency. In this study, the strategy implementation capability is defined as a kind of enterprise capability which come form enterprise knowledge. Through knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge integration, organizational learning can promote strategy implementation capability. The better of the results of organizational learning, the higher of strategy implementation capability.In the research topic three: organizational learning has a positive direct impact on corporate performance, but not all of the components of organizational learning have a positive direct impact on corporate performance. The empirical results indicate that management commitment and knowledge transfer and integration have a significantly impact on corporate performance, but the impact of system perspective and openness and experiment on corporate performance are not significant.In the research topic four: having integrated the intermediate variable of strategy implementation capability, strategy implementation capability has a positive direct impact on corporate performance and organizational learning has an indirect impact on corporate performance through strategy implementation capability. Therefore, organizational learning is an indirect factor to corporate performance; strategy implementation capability is the direct factor to corporate performance and plays an intermediary role between the relationship of organizational learning and corporate performance. Strategic consensus plays an intermediary role between the relationship of management commitment, systems perspective, openness and experiment, or knowledge transfer and integration and corporate performance; strategy synergy plays an intermediary role between the relationship of management commitment, systems perspective, or knowledge transfer and integration and corporate performance; organizational competency plays an intermediary role between the relationship of openness and experiment, or knowledge transfer and integration and corporate performance; execution culture plays an intermediary role between the relationship of management commitment and corporate performance.Compared the main conclusions of this study with previous researches, the major irmovativeness of this study lies in the following: this study proposed the framework of "organizational learning - strategy implementation capability - corporate performance"; this study defined the composition of strategy implementation capability as strategic consensus, strategy synergy, organizational competency, and execution culture and measured them successfully; this study found that strategy implementation capability has a positive direct impact on corporate performance and studied its mechanism; this study found that organizational learning has a positive direct impact on strategy implementation capability and studied its mechanism.