The roles of leadership in the development of dynamic capabilities in the case of Mazoni, S.A.

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Joana Cristina Rodrigues dos
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/15813
• topic: Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

This dissertation aims to answer the research question: What is the role of the leaders in the development of a company’s dynamic capabilities. In order to have a better understanding of the problem, the study is applied to a practical case – the shoe company Mazoni, S.A. Before focusing on this issue, defining the concept of dynamic capabilities turned out to be crucial. Therefore, several authors were considered, along with their various designations. A pattern was drawn from what was and was not agreement upon. Firstly, two frameworks were combined in order to best assess the object of this study. The microfoundations of dynamic capabilities by Teece (2007); and the leadership agenda*, developed by Dos and Kosonen (2010), which evaluates the leaders’ roles in what they called “strategic agility” of business model renewal. Then, we analyze the case of Mazoni, S.A. In order to better understand the company in question, we studied the footwear industry in Europe and then zoom in on Portugal’s footwear industry. Finally, we dissect Mazoni from its foundation to our current days. The step before assessing the leader’s capabilities was to define what Mazoni’s dynamic capabilities were. In their opinion, they provide product and service quality both with relative low cost. With this they mean that they do not sell the cheapest shoes, but taking their medium/high quality into account, they represent one of the best options in market. Finally, the assessment of the leader’s roles was performed. A table that combined the two previously addressed frameworks was filled out with quotes from several interviews with members of Mazoni. This encoded information enabled us to realize which were the competencies that the leaders possessed when managing the Mazoni shoe company.