Linking High-Level Capabilities to Managerial Practices in Dynamic Capability Processes: A Longitudinal Case Study

The dynamic capabilities perspective explains how firms sustain a competitive advantage in contemporary rapidly changing environments, yet it still lacks empirical accounts of how the three high-level capabilities of sensing, seizing, and transforming become observable processes through managerial practices. The study examines Thunder Tiger, a firm that developed into a leading global brand in the technologically dynamic and highly competitive radio-control model industry, and uses 30 strategic initiatives identified from its 36-year development trajectory as the units of analysis. Adopting the extended case method, we conduct simultaneous coding across two dimensions: the core content of high-level capabilities and observable managerial practices. We develop an analytical framework for dynamic capability processes comprising three layers: the three high-level capabilities, four functional domains, and twelve process items. Through this framework, we show how high-level capabilities can be linked to observable managerial practices in Thunder Tiger’s strategic initiatives.