Exploring Meso-Level Dynamic Capabilities to Address the Capability Rigidity Paradox

This dissertation aims to unpack the “capability rigidity paradox” within the dynamic capability view. Consequently, the author tackles one of the core challenges in strategic management of the past decades. Providing a novel and thorough literature review on dynamic capabilities from the point of this paradox, the author discusses the current state of the literature to derive the core shortcommings meticulously. A case study of capability evolution in the German Armed Forces is interpreted against the backdrop of a strategy as process and practice lens, thus, allowing to propose the concept of meso-level dynamic capabilities without falling prey to the capability rigidity paradox.

In Chapter II, the author provides the theoretical background of this dissertation. After defining the concept and core terms of dynamic capabilities as well as the inherent capability rigidity paradox, the author reviews the discussion on dynamic capabilities regarding past and current attempts to solve this challenge. This is done via multiple steps beginning with a review of different capability hierarchies as an early attempt to circumvent the rigidity paradox. Continuing with learning mechanisms and routine concepts, the study finds that macro-level conceptualizations of dynamic capabilities still have not solved the capability rigidity paradox. The author then turns to a rigorous literature review on the current turn toward micro-foundational concepts of dynamic capabilities focusing on managers and entrepreneurs to escape the rigidity paradox, which still does not solve the problem. Finally, the author turns to the relatively new meso-level constructs of dynamic capabilities and amends them with a strategy as process and practice perspective to provide a framework for the empirical analysis.

In this Chapter, the author lays out the empirical methodology of this study. Explaining the overall empirical setting while connecting it to the theory section, the author provides an in-depth overview of the single case used, as well as the German Federal Armed Forces as the surrounding organization. In the section on the research design, the author explains why a grounded theory approach is used. Afterward, the author explains how data is collected and analyzed. This section provides a detailed and in-depth, step by step guide on conducting qualitative empirical research. It can be of great value for young scholars to understand this particular method's dos and don'ts.

Chapter IV contains the main findings. In great detail, the author provides a thick description of the evolution of the culture capability in the German Federal Armed Forces between 1990 and 2017. In this regard, the first sub-chapter sets the stage by providing the prologue and the overall development. The author continuously digs deeper into the data in the following sub-chapters 2 to 4, providing more and more interpretation. Primarily chapters 3 and 4 provide the core of this study, describing and interpreting the capability evolution processes and practices while developing the adaptive community's core concept as a meso-level construct of dynamic capabilities.

Within this Chapter, the author provides a detailed discussion on how the insights gained from the case further our understanding of the dynamic capability concept with regard to the capability rigidity paradox. Similar to the separation between micro,- meso-, and macro-level constructs of the dynamic capability concept, the author discusses the contributions made by this study to each construct. In particular, the author describes how this study is among the first to provide an empirical understanding of meso-level dynamic capabilities and how they, within a holistic understanding of the dynamic capability concept, can be one attempt to explain dynamic capabilities without falling prey to the capability rigidity paradox.

In this last Chapter, the author summarizes the study, reconnecting all insights to the overall question of overcoming the capability rigidity paradox. Additionally, the author explains the limitations of being a single case study within a specific context while pointing to future research opportunities. Finally, the author provides some practical implications by reconnecting the results to existing research and practitioner guides, suggesting a similar direction.