Explicating Dynamic Capabilities

Introduction

The analytical merit of the paper lies in the decomposition of dynamic capability into three distinct moments — sensing, seizing, transforming — which convert an otherwise indistinct notion into an inspectable sequence. An organisation may sense signals without deliberating, deliberate without reallocating resources, or change locally without consolidating a new routine. The strength of the source for MARTRO resides precisely in this: it permits locating the fracture, in place of the generic judgement that the firm "is not agile enough."

In operational terms, sensing interrogates the way signals emerge in real work — complaints, delays, rework, deadlines, shifts in demand, friction between the commercial and operations functions. So long as such signals remain isolated episodes, the organisation does not learn; when instead they are recognised as patterns, they enter a decision chain. Seizing indicates the subsequent moment: is there an agent endowed with the right, the responsibility, and the context necessary to decide? Transforming closes the cycle: does the decision actually modify procedures, data, roles, or control instruments, or does it exhaust itself in a conversation without sedimentation?

The grid proves valuable because small firms, as a rule, do not fail across the entire cycle but at a specific segment of it. Some detect problems precisely yet invariably refer them to the owner; others decide swiftly but do not track effects; still others introduce tools without transforming the underlying process. It follows that decision latency is not a single, undifferentiated delay: it may originate in detection, in routing, in decision, or in transformation.

The operational translation is, in principle, simple: one takes a recent episode and follows it along the whole chain. Who detected it? Through which channel did it enter? Who interpreted it? Who held the authority to act? And, downstream of the decision, what changed in the system? Where the trace cannot be reconstructed, the dynamic capability is not inspectable — and it is precisely this kind of reasoning, not the definition, that confers diagnostic value on the reading.

The boundary consists in preventing the three terms from becoming decorative labels. Sensing, seizing, and transforming must not reduce to a presentation triptych but be treated as steps to be put to the test of real cases. MARTRO declares no competitive advantage and does not automatically measure the strategic quality of the firm; it draws on the source to clarify where the adaptive cycle breaks and what minimal evidence sustains its reading.