IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/tefoso/v170y2021ics0040162521003243.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explicating the role of emerging technologies and firm capabilities towards attainment of competitive advantage in health insurance service firms

Author

Listed:
  • Nayak, Bishwajit
  • Bhattacharyya, Som Sekhar
  • Krishnamoorthy, Bala

Abstract

Competitive advantage of firms has been a dynamic notion evolving with changing business realities. Emerging technologies have entered the gamut of resources which firms need to actively forecast and manage for competitive advantage. This study explored the idea of competitive advantage in the context of health insurance firms and how emerging technologies can augment existing capabilities towards this goal. The critical nature of health insurance as a social necessity and the application of emerging technologies in healthcare justified the need to theoretically establish what competencies were required for health insurance firms for technology driven competitive advantage. A qualitative method using modified Delphi technique in sequential combination to 43 in-depth expert interviews was used to explicate the factors. Data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative content and thematic intensity analysis. Organizational people orientation and service delivery capabilities emerged as foundations of a contemporary competitive advantage framework for health insurance firms supported by technical expertise, knowledge management practices and product innovation strategies. Results indicated that management of emerging technologies exerted a gravitational effect on firm competencies to create a contemporary competitive advantage framework. This study enriched the knowledge on competitive advantage by integrating new day technological imperatives with traditional firm competencies.

Suggested Citation

  • Nayak, Bishwajit & Bhattacharyya, Som Sekhar & Krishnamoorthy, Bala, 2021. "Explicating the role of emerging technologies and firm capabilities towards attainment of competitive advantage in health insurance service firms," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:170:y:2021:i:c:s0040162521003243
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162521003243
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120892?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taghreed Abu-Salim & Okey Peter Onyia & Tina Harrison & Valerie Lindsay, 2017. "Effects of perceived cost, service quality, and customer satisfaction on health insurance service continuance," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(4), pages 173-186, December.
    2. Lin, Hsing-Er & Hsu, I-Chieh & Hsu, Audrey Wenhsin & Chung, Hsi-Mei, 2020. "Creating competitive advantages: Interactions between ambidextrous diversification strategy and contextual factors from a dynamic capability perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Joseph C. Paradi & H. David Sherman & Fai Keung Tam, 2018. "Financial Services Beyond Banking: Risk Tolerance Measures for Portfolio Investors," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Data Envelopment Analysis in the Financial Services Industry, chapter 0, pages 313-325, Springer.
    4. Gibbert, Michael & Leibold, Marius & Probst, Gilbert, 2002. "Five Styles of Customer Knowledge Management, and How Smart Companies Use Them To Create Value," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 459-469, October.
    5. Herrera, Maria Elena Baltazar, 2015. "Creating competitive advantage by institutionalizing corporate social innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1468-1474.
    6. Zheng, Wei & Yang, Baiyin & McLean, Gary N., 2010. "Linking organizational culture, structure, strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(7), pages 763-771, July.
    7. Qaiyum, Sameer & Wang, Catherine L., 2018. "Understanding internal conditions driving ordinary and dynamic capabilities in Indian high-tech firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 206-214.
    8. Joseph C. Paradi & H. David Sherman & Fai Keung Tam, 2018. "Financial Services beyond Banking: Insurance," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Data Envelopment Analysis in the Financial Services Industry, chapter 0, pages 265-281, Springer.
    9. Rahul Kapoor & Thomas Klueter, 2021. "Unbundling and Managing Uncertainty Surrounding Emerging Technologies," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 62-74, March.
    10. Kindström, Daniel & Kowalkowski, Christian & Sandberg, Erik, 2013. "Enabling service innovation: A dynamic capabilities approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1063-1073.
    11. Muñoz, Pablo & Kimmitt, Jonathan, 2019. "Social mission as competitive advantage: A configurational analysis of the strategic conditions of social entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 854-861.
    12. Sonali K. Shah & Kevin G. Corley, 2006. "Building Better Theory by Bridging the Quantitative–Qualitative Divide," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(8), pages 1821-1835, December.
    13. Akter, Shahriar & Gunasekaran, Angappa & Wamba, Samuel Fosso & Babu, Mujahid Mohiuddin & Hani, Umme, 2020. "Reshaping competitive advantages with analytics capabilities in service systems," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    14. Marinos Themistocleous & Nikolaos Basias & Vincenzo Morabito, 2015. "A Framework for Service-oriented Architecture Adoption in e-Banking: the Case of Banks from a Transition and a Developed Economy," Information Technology for Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 460-479, July.
    15. Hsiao, Yung-Chang & Hsu, Zheng-Xin, 2018. "Firm-specific advantages-product innovation capability complementarities and innovation success: A core competency approach," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 78-84.
    16. Richard L. Baskerville & Marco Cavallari & Kristian Hjort-Madsen & Jan Pries-Heje & Maddalena Sorrentino & Francesco Virili, 2010. "The strategic value of SOA: a comparative case study in the banking sector," International Journal of Information Technology and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1), pages 30-53.
    17. Singh, Shiwangi & Dhir, Sanjay & Das, V. Mukunda & Sharma, Anuj, 2020. "Bibliometric overview of the Technological Forecasting and Social Change journal: Analysis from 1970 to 2018," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    18. Birger Wernerfelt, 1995. "The resource‐based view of the firm: Ten years after," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 171-174.
    19. Nastjuk, Ilja & Herrenkind, Bernd & Marrone, Mauricio & Brendel, Alfred Benedikt & Kolbe, Lutz M., 2020. "What drives the acceptance of autonomous driving? An investigation of acceptance factors from an end-user's perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    20. Lisha Ye & Huiqin Yang, 2020. "From Digital Divide to Social Inclusion: A Tale of Mobile Platform Empowerment in Rural Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-16, March.
    21. Gnatzy, Tobias & Moser, Roger, 2012. "Scenario development for an evolving health insurance industry in rural India: INPUT for business model innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 79(4), pages 688-699.
    22. Jang, Sung Hee & Kim, Rachel H. & Lee, Chang Won, 2016. "Effect of u-healthcare service quality on usage intention in a healthcare service," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 113(PB), pages 396-403.
    23. Gautam Ray & Jay B. Barney & Waleed A. Muhanna, 2004. "Capabilities, business processes, and competitive advantage: choosing the dependent variable in empirical tests of the resource‐based view," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 23-37, January.
    24. Guimarães, Julio Cesar Ferro de & Severo, Eliana Andrea & Dorion, Eric Charles Henri & Coallier, François & Olea, Pelayo Munhoz, 2016. "The use of organisational resources for product innovation and organisational performance: A survey of the Brazilian furniture industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 135-147.
    25. Nathan Kettlewell, 2019. "Utilization and Selection in an Ancillaries Health Insurance Market," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 86(4), pages 989-1017, December.
    26. Teixeira, Eduardo de Oliveira & Werther, William B., 2013. "Resilience: Continuous renewal of competitive advantages," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 333-342.
    27. Maury, Benjamin, 2018. "Sustainable competitive advantage and profitability persistence: Sources versus outcomes for assessing advantage," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 100-113.
    28. Yin, Jason Dean-Chen & He, Alex Jingwei, 2018. "Health insurance reforms in Singapore and Hong Kong: How the two ageing asian tigers respond to health financing challenges?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(7), pages 693-697.
    29. Joseph C. Paradi & H. David Sherman & Fai Keung Tam, 2018. "Financial Services Beyond Banking: Corporate Failure Prediction," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Data Envelopment Analysis in the Financial Services Industry, chapter 0, pages 283-311, Springer.
    30. Zhang, Yi & Robinson, Douglas K.R. & Porter, Alan L. & Zhu, Donghua & Zhang, Guangquan & Lu, Jie, 2016. "Technology roadmapping for competitive technical intelligence," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 175-186.
    31. Xie, Xuemei & Fang, Liangxiu & Zeng, Saixing & Huo, Jiage, 2016. "How does knowledge inertia affect firms product innovation?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1615-1620.
    32. Warrick, D.D., 2017. "What leaders need to know about organizational culture," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 395-404.
    33. Côrte-Real, Nadine & Oliveira, Tiago & Ruivo, Pedro, 2017. "Assessing business value of Big Data Analytics in European firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 379-390.
    34. Subramaniam, Mohan & Iyer, Bala & Venkatraman, Venkat, 2019. "Competing in digital ecosystems," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 83-94.
    35. Edmond Baranes & David Bardey, 2015. "Competition between health maintenance organizations and nonintegrated health insurance companies in health insurance markets," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, December.
    36. Johan Wiklund & DEAN Shepherd, 2003. "Knowledge‐based resources, entrepreneurial orientation, and the performance of small and medium‐sized businesses," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(13), pages 1307-1314, December.
    37. Roßmann, Bernhard & Canzaniello, Angelo & von der Gracht, Heiko & Hartmann, Evi, 2018. "The future and social impact of Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain Management: Results from a Delphi study," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 135-149.
    38. Joseph C. Paradi & H. David Sherman & Fai Keung Tam, 2018. "Financial Services Beyond Banking: Credit Unions," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Data Envelopment Analysis in the Financial Services Industry, chapter 0, pages 259-264, Springer.
    39. Castellacci, Fulvio, 2008. "Innovation and the competitiveness of industries: comparing the mainstream and the evolutionary approaches," MPRA Paper 27523, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    40. Abraham Carmeli & Asher Tishler, 2004. "Resources, capabilities, and the performance of industrial firms: A multivariate analysis," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(6-7), pages 299-315.
    41. Leemore S. Dafny, 2010. "Are Health Insurance Markets Competitive?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1399-1431, September.
    42. Kuratko, Donald F. & McMullen, Jeffery S. & Hornsby, Jeffrey S. & Jackson, Chad, 2017. "Is your organization conducive to the continuous creation of social value? Toward a social corporate entrepreneurship scale," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 271-283.
    43. Anindita Chakravarty & Rajdeep Grewal & V. Sambamurthy, 2013. "Information Technology Competencies, Organizational Agility, and Firm Performance: Enabling and Facilitating Roles," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 976-997, December.
    44. Mert Gürlek & Muharrem Tuna, 2018. "Reinforcing competitive advantage through green organizational culture and green innovation," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(7-8), pages 467-491, June.
    45. Michael O’Neill & Anthony Brabazon, 2019. "Business analytics capability, organisational value and competitive advantage," Journal of Business Analytics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(2), pages 160-173, July.
    46. P.D.D. Dominic & Kim Nee Goh & Diana Wong & Yoke Yie Chen, 2010. "The importance of service quality for competitive advantage – with special reference to industrial product," International Journal of Business Information Systems, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(3), pages 378-397.
    47. Mauksch, Stefanie & von der Gracht, Heiko A. & Gordon, Theodore J., 2020. "Who is an expert for foresight? A review of identification methods," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nayak, Bishwajit & Bhattacharyya, Som Sekhar & Krishnamoorthy, Bala, 2022. "Exploring the black box of competitive advantage – An integrated bibliometric and chronological literature review approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 964-982.
    2. Petro G. Nzowa & Felix A. Nandonde & Somo M. L. Seimu, 2022. "Moderation effects of co-operative institutions’ capabilities on the relationship between health insurance literacy and participation in health insurance among co-operative members in Tanzania," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 49(4), pages 381-394, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nayak, Bishwajit & Bhattacharyya, Som Sekhar & Krishnamoorthy, Bala, 2022. "Exploring the black box of competitive advantage – An integrated bibliometric and chronological literature review approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 964-982.
    2. Azeem, Muhammad & Ahmed, Munir & Haider, Sajid & Sajjad, Muhammad, 2021. "Expanding competitive advantage through organizational culture, knowledge sharing and organizational innovation," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    3. Karim, Mohammed Shamsul & Nahar, Sharmin & Demirbag, Mehmet, 2022. "Resource-Based Perspective on ICT Use and Firm Performance: A Meta-analysis Investigating the Moderating Role of Cross-Country ICT Development Status," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    4. Ghazal Rezaei & Seyed Mohammad Hassan Hosseini & Shib Sankar Sana, 2022. "Exploring the Relationship between Data Analytics Capability and Competitive Advantage: The Mediating Roles of Supply Chain Resilience and Organization Flexibility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-23, August.
    5. Munjal, Surender & Requejo, Ignacio & Kundu, Sumit K., 2019. "Offshore outsourcing and firm performance: Moderating effects of size, growth and slack resources," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 484-494.
    6. Gonçalo Rodrigues Brás & Miguel Torres Preto, 2021. "The consequences of intrapreneurship in exporting firms: a structural-model approach," CeBER Working Papers 2021-06, Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra.
    7. Di Zio, Simone & Bolzan, Mario & Marozzi, Marco, 2021. "Classification of Delphi outputs through robust ranking and fuzzy clustering for Delphi-based scenarios," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    8. Zhiwei Yan & Xuerong Peng & Seoki Lee & Leibao Zhang, 2023. "How do multiple cognitions shape corporate proactive environmental strategies? The joint effects of environmental awareness and entrepreneurial orientation," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(4), pages 1592-1617, September.
    9. Oesterreich, Thuy Duong & Anton, Eduard & Teuteberg, Frank & Dwivedi, Yogesh K, 2022. "The role of the social and technical factors in creating business value from big data analytics: A meta-analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 128-149.
    10. John Mugambwa Serumaga-Zake & John Andrew van der Poll, 2021. "Addressing the Impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution on South African Manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-31, October.
    11. Ciampi, Francesco & Faraoni, Monica & Ballerini, Jacopo & Meli, Francesco, 2022. "The co-evolutionary relationship between digitalization and organizational agility: Ongoing debates, theoretical developments and future research perspectives," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    12. Morimura, Fumikazu & Sakagawa, Yuji, 2023. "The intermediating role of big data analytics capability between responsive and proactive market orientations and firm performance in the retail industry," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Frevel, Nicolas & Beiderbeck, Daniel & Schmidt, Sascha L., 2022. "The impact of technology on sports – A prospective study," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    14. Balan Sundarakani & Okey Peter Onyia, 2021. "Fast, furious and focused approach to Covid-19 response: an examination of the financial and business resilience of the UAE logistics industry," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(4), pages 237-258, December.
    15. Andersén, Jim, 2021. "A relational natural-resource-based view on product innovation: The influence of green product innovation and green suppliers on differentiation advantage in small manufacturing firms," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    16. Ashrafi, Amir & Zare Ravasan, Ahad & Trkman, Peter & Afshari, Samira, 2019. "The role of business analytics capabilities in bolstering firms’ agility and performance," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-15.
    17. Asterios Stroumpoulis & Evangelia Kopanaki, 2022. "Theoretical Perspectives on Sustainable Supply Chain Management and Digital Transformation: A Literature Review and a Conceptual Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-30, April.
    18. Yang, Ching-Chiao & Marlow, Peter B. & Lu, Chin-Shan, 2009. "Assessing resources, logistics service capabilities, innovation capabilities and the performance of container shipping services in Taiwan," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 4-20, November.
    19. Singh, Shiwangi & Sharma, Meenakshi & Dhir, Sanjay, 2021. "Modeling the effects of digital transformation in Indian manufacturing industry," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    20. Nor Asiah Omar & Muhamad Azrin Nazri & Syed Shah Alam & Azhar Ahmad, 2016. "Assessing the Factors Influencing Service Innovation Capabilities and Performance," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 8(4), pages 52-63.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:170:y:2021:i:c:s0040162521003243. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401625 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.