How rival partners compete based on cooperation?

Prior studies of coopetition have explained the what, how and why of firms cooperating with competitors. Among these, examining the how question as to the stream of coopetition dynamics is the most challenging theme. Previous research has focused much more on the cooperation side. Less attention has been paid to the competition side to reveal what happens to competition after the competitors have collaborated. This study sheds light on the issue of cooperation-based competition by answering the question: while cooperating with competitors, how do rival partners compete based on cooperation? Linking the competitive dynamics perspective to coopetition, we conducted a single-case study to analyse the competition between two leading competitors in the Taiwanese bicycle industry. We collected the reported issues pertaining to the competition in the European market and supported by in-depth interviews. The analysis leads us to develop three propositions and a conceptual framework for illustrating the cooperation-based competition and addressing how cooperation may influence competition in a coopetition relationship. This study provides new insights into a theoretical issue of cooperation-based competition. The case also provides management implications while taking a coopetition strategy.     

Who performs a stronger response to whom? Detecting individual competitive actions and reactions

This study analyzes the degree of competition through individual actions and reactions. Empirical support for this analysis has derived mainly from structural econometric models describing the nature of competition. This analysis extends the existing literature by empirically considering a direct measurement of competition through the analysis of the competitive actions and responses, and describing how firms compete within and between strategic groups. We estimate the firms’ conduct in the Spanish deposits market with 146 firms and 18,888 observations. This is a specially compelling context for the banking industry, in which a deregulation process gives rise to the adoption of aggressive strategies seeking to increase the market shares of deposit accounts; thus, producing a turbulent situation of increasing rivalry. Our results offer a deeper understanding of the firms’ competitive behavior, since we identify different patterns of actions and reactions depending upon the strategic group the firm belongs to.     

A Study of Industry Evolution in the Face of Major Environmental Disturbances: Group and Firm Strategic Behaviour of Spanish Banks, 1983–1997*

This paper examines the story of the evolution of a specific industry through the application of dynamic strategic group analysis. In particular, we analyse the relationship between major environmental disturbances and changes that have occurred over time in the competitive structure of the industry regarding two closely related central questions. First, the way in which these environmental transformations have influenced group patterns and stability, and second, the way in which such environmental disturbances has affected the strategic positioning of individual firms. We resort to alternative theoretical perspectives in an attempt to answer both questions. The empirical setting is the population of Spanish banks over the period 1983–1997. We make use of a new grouping algorithm – the Model‐based Clustering or MCLUST – which may be enormously fruitful in future empirical works on strategic groups. This method allows researchers to obtain the optimal number of groupings over time in a much more objective way than the cluster techniques used until now. Compared to previous dynamic studies that only consider the largest firms, our research illustrates how a richer analysis of an industry dynamics can be obtained by using a dynamic analysis of strategic groups. Our results show that while there have been no industry‐wide identical groupings year to year, there is an important strategic stability at group and firm‐level punctuated by a high degree of strategic instability at times of major environmental disturbances.     

Emotion in strategic management: A review and future research agenda

Emotion in strategic management has attracted increasing scholarly interest during the past twenty-five years. Researchers have demonstrated the nature and significance of emotion in strategic management from a broad range of perspectives across different levels of analysis. Given the expanding research on the topic, the time is ripe to synthesize this diverse and multifaceted body of knowledge. In a thematic synthesis of the literature, we address the following questions: how does emotion influence strategic management, and how can the field be further developed? We review emotion constructs used in the extant literature and identify three themes related to how emotions influence strategic management: the nonconscious influence of emotions, emotion regulation, and collective emotions. Based on these themes and our analysis, we propose three areas of future research to inspire the field to develop further: (1) scope conditions of emotion research in strategic management; (2) capturing emotion in strategic management; and (3) the ethics, power and politics of emotions in strategic management.     

Centralized versus Decentralized Competition for Price and Lead‐Time Sensitive Demand

We study two firms that compete on price and lead‐time decisions in a common market. We explore the impact of decentralizing these decisions, as made by the marketing and production departments, respectively, with either marketing or production as the leader. We compare scenarios in which none, one, or both of the firms are decentralized to see whether decentralization can be the equilibrium strategy. We find that under intense price competition, with intensity characterized by the underlying parameters of market demand, firms may suffer from a decentralized structure, particularly under high flexibility induced by high capacity, where revenue‐based sales incentives motivate sales/marketing to make aggressive price cuts that often erode profit margins. In contrast, under intense lead‐time competition, a decentralized strategy with marketing as the leader can not only result in significantly higher profits, but also be the equilibrium strategy. Moreover, decentralization may no longer lead to lower prices or longer lead‐times if the production department chooses capacity along with lead‐time.      

Environmental Factors,Managerial Processes,and Information Technology Investment Strategies

Although significant research attention has been directed at understanding the value of information technology (IT) investments for firms, very little attention has been paid to understand the IT investment behavior of firms. This article seeks to fill this void. We introduce the concept of IT investment strategy, defined by dimensions of intensity and proactiveness, to characterize the IT investment behavior of firms. Synthesizing the environmental deterministic and strategic choice perspectives of a firm's strategic decision making, we examine the effects of environmental factors, managerial processes, and the interplay between them on IT investment strategy. Specifically, we examine the impact of environmental factors such as industry clockspeed and information intensity on IT investment strategy. We also incorporate the strategic choice perspective to argue that managerial processes such as frequent chief executive officer—chief information officer communications and collective information systems planning play a critical role in shaping the firm's IT investment strategy. The empirical results show that the environmental variables are related to IT investment strategy. Besides, managerial processes serve as a means to understand the environment and thus moderate the relationships between the environmental variables and the various facets of IT investment strategy. The conceptualization of IT investment strategy and the focus on both environmental determinism and strategic choice should enrich our understanding of firms’ IT investing behavior.     

基于风险的企业战略控制系统

本文从分析战略风险的形成以及战略风险类型出发,指出了预期战略与应急战略的风险产生主要是由相应的环境因素和风险压力的结合导致的。依据此逻辑,为防止预期战略和应急战略的风险,需要从组织外部和内部视角建立相应的控制机制,最终组成企业完整的战略控制系统(TOEM模型)。最后,为使战略控制系统在实践中切实发挥效果,企业要采取一定的措施,使战略控制系统得以实施、维护和更新。     

Why do Emerging Market Firms Engage in Voluntary Environmental Management Practices? A Strategic Choice Perspective

In this paper, we investigate firms’ decisions to engage in voluntary environmental management (VEM) practices within an emerging market context. Drawing on the strategic choice and the resource‐based view perspectives, we report results from a survey of VEM practices – a specific form of self‐governance – drawing on a sample of 519 Turkish firms from various industries to identify important strategic antecedents of firms’ decisions to engage in such practices. We find that as firms become more customer focused, more inclined to pursue a differentiation strategy and subject to a higher level of strategy‐oriented stakeholder focus, they tend to implement higher levels of VEM practices, with important implications for research, policy and practice for both emerging and developed markets.     

A Theoretical Model of Manufacturing Lead Times and Their Relationship to a Manufacturing Goal Hierarchy*

In recent years, manufacturing firms have realized that a new, higher level of global competition causes them to compete simultaneously on multiple manufacturing goals, such as quality, delivery, cost, and flexibility. In response to this realization, considerable research now focuses on the relationship of manufacturing improvement programs to manufacturing goals. However, to date, this research has not investigated the specific underlying statistical relationships between manufacturing goals and the shop floor. This study investigates manufacturing lead time linkages with manufacturing programs and manufacturing goals. The basic purpose of this study is to understand and explain how programs affect the elements of manufacturing lead time and how manufacturing lead time affects manufacturing goal capabilities. By understanding these linkages, managers can logically trace the effects of specific programs to their eventual effects on manufacturing goal capabilities. This study's most important finding is that statistical variations in the elements of lead time cause a tendency for certain manufacturing goals to be more difficult to control and achieve than others because of canonical relationships of lead time variances. To control these lead time variances, successful firms concentrate their early program targets first on achieving “fitness for use” quality, followed by delivery reliability, short delivery lead time and cost, current product flexibility, and lastly, new product flexibility. This study mathematically illustrates which improvement programs most affect manufacturing goals through their relationship to manufacturing lead time variance reduction. It suggests that firms improve goal performance by initially targeting improvement through setup time reduction programs, defect reduction programs, and preventive maintenance programs, to facilitate quality improvements. By targeting specific programs and their related lead time variances, firms improve their manufacturing facility competitiveness with minimum obstacles.     

Supplier competition and its impact on firm׳s sourcing strategy

Most research on firms׳ sourcing strategies assumes that wholesale prices and reliability of suppliers are exogenous. It is of our interest to study suppliers׳ competition on both wholesale price and reliability and firms׳ corresponding optimal sourcing strategy under complete information. In particular, we study a problem in which a firm procures a single product from two suppliers, taking into account suppliers׳ price and reliability differences. This motivates the suppliers to compete on these two factors. We investigate the equilibria of this supplier game and the firm׳s corresponding sourcing decisions. Our study shows that suppliers׳ reliability often plays a more important role than wholesale price in supplier competition and that maintaining high reliability and a high wholesale price is the ideal strategy for suppliers if multiple options exist. The conventional wisdom implies that low supply reliability and high demand uncertainty motivate dual-sourcing. We notice that when the suppliers׳ shared market/transportation network is often disrupted and demand uncertainty is high, suppliers׳ competition on both price and reliability may render the sole-sourcing strategy to be optimal in some cases that depend on the format of suppliers׳ cost functions. Moreover, numerical study shows that when the cost or vulnerability (to market disruptions) of one supplier increases, its profit and that of the firm may not necessarily decrease under supplier competition.     

生产能力限制下价格Stackelberg博弈模型

生产能力限制条件下,同质产品市场中两企业以价格为决策变量进行Stackelberg竞争,采取有效配给规则。两企业对称情况下,生产能力较小时模型存在唯一的子博弈精炼纳什均衡,两企业销量达到自身生产能力,得到相同收益;生产能力较大时,追随企业匹配领头企业的价格,博弈存在后动优势。分析了领头企业生产能力大于追随企业的不对称情形,并给出相应均衡。算例分析表明,企业价格竞争的前提是充分大的供给能力,追随企业应在领头企业生产能力较大时进入市场。     

Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability: Resolving the innovator's dilemma

How do organizations survive in the face of change? Underlying this question is a rich debate about whether organizations can adapt—and if so how. One perspective, organizational ecology, presents evidence suggesting that most organizations are largely inert and ultimately fail. A second perspective argues that some firms do learn and adapt to shifting environmental contexts. Recently, this latter view has coalesced around two themes. The first, based on research in strategy suggests that dynamic capabilities, the ability of a firm to reconfigure assets and existing capabilities, explains long-term competitive advantage. The second, based on organizational design, argues that ambidexterity, the ability of a firm to simultaneously explore and exploit, enables a firm to adapt over time. In this paper, we review and integrate these comparatively new research streams and identify a set of propositions that suggest how ambidexterity acts as a dynamic capability. We suggest that efficiency and innovation need not be strategic tradeoffs and highlight the substantive role of senior teams in building dynamic capabilities.     

Board governance of Strategic Change: An assessment of the literature and avenues for future research

Boards of directors play a central role in governing corporate strategic change. We systematically review corporate governance research on strategic change published over the past 40 years, differentiating between strategic change types and board characteristics. We identify three developments: a focus on specific strategic change types, board composition and structure, and North American listed firms as a dominant study context. Yet, our analysis of the literature shows that research on board governance of interrelated strategic changes, on different board roles and behaviour, and on the governance of strategic changes across different contexts remains underdeveloped. To address these research gaps, we suggest three future research avenues: (1) examining how boards govern interrelated changes in a strategic change portfolio and its evolution over time; (2) studying the mediating relationship between board governance (particularly different board roles and behaviour), strategic changes, and corresponding outcomes; and (3) gaining a better understanding of the role of context in board governance of interrelated strategic changes. We contribute to corporate governance research by developing a framework that synthesizes extant research on the relationships between different board governance variables and strategic change types, highlights important research gaps, and outlines several future research directions to address these gaps. Our framework and literature overview serve as analytical tools to examine whether boards are well-designed and prepared to govern multiple and interrelated strategic changes.     

Genesis of a research field: district,network, strategic network

This article summarizes the changes since the beginning of the 1980s in the scholarly approach to organizational and economic research on Italian firms. Beginning with the study of industrial districts, which sparked a major reconsideration of the conventional wisdom, most scholars focused primarily on the significance of firm geographical proximity while marginalizing issues related to firm structure and strategy. Nevertheless, industrial district research eventually led to the question of firm networks, in particular how to manage relational capabilities and cooperation, both of which affect a firm’s competitive position. This new analytical framework no longer dependent on either the single firm or an industrial sector has opened up new research perspectives that promise rich insights into socio-economic studies.     

The business portfolio approach—Where it falls down in practice

During the past decade the SBU (or portfolio) concept has enjoyed widespread popularity as a basis for corporate-wide strategic planning systems within large, diversified firms. This article discusses the implementation of such systems on the basis of 3 years of clinical and small sample research. A ‘basic model’ of implementation is used as a basis for comparison to progressive practice as observed in a sample of 13 firms. Furthermore, a new conceptual perspective for the portfolio concept is developed as a complement to the observed approach to implementation.     

Innovating firms’ strategic signaling along the innovation life cycle: The standards war context

Firms that develop market-focused technological innovations regularly employ strategic signals to influence market participants’ perceptions of the uncertainties that pervade innovation-based competition. Focusing on the standards war context, we argue that an innovation’s technical, market and standards uncertainties will vary as the innovation evolves through its life cycle, influencing innovating firms’ strategic signaling behaviors and, hence, the impacts of these signals on market participants’ perceptions of these firms’ likelihood of innovation success. We also examine how such influences vary depending on innovating firms’ strategic positions during different phases of the innovation life cycle. Our insights are developed into testable propositions.     

财政补贴VS.政府自营:“兜底”动机下政府干预基本公共品提供的策略选择

现代政府的一个基本功能就是保障全民的基本公共品（公共服务）,因此与一般商品相比,当企业无法满足部分居民的基本公共品需求时,政府具有全面覆盖居民需求的“兜底”动机。本文使用内生化的市场覆盖因素刻画政府的“兜底”动机,并基于市场垂直竞争框架建立了基准模型和政府干预模型两个模型以讨论政府干预的最优策略选择问题。研究显示：首先,消费者支付意愿和厂商生产意愿两个因素决定了政府干预与否的边界条件;其次,这两个因素还分别确定了补贴和自营两种干预方式的可行范围,政府应选择与之匹配的干预方式,否则将因干预方式的错配而致使干预无效;最后,出于消费者剩余最大化考虑,政府应在对应的匹配范围内选择补贴高质量厂商或自营高质量的干预策略。基于此,本文认为在现实中,政府应当重点分析未覆盖市场的产生原因,当未覆盖市场由厂商生产意愿过低所致时选择补贴高质量厂商策略,当部分未覆盖消费者具有迫切需求时选择自营高质量策略。     

全球战略:一个文献综述

全球战略是国际商务和战略管理领域的一个重要研究问题。本文通过对相关文献进行考察,试图提出一个对全球战略的综合认识。我们的文献回顾显示:(1)全球战略包含多种要素,这些要素可能单独存在,也可能同时存在并起作用;(2)组织设计、组织协调和战略制定过程的公正程度影响全球战略的执行;(3)全球战略对企业绩效的影响受到全球战略类型、企业层面因素和外部环境因素的调节;(4)竞争环境的变化影响全球战略的演变,在一定条件下,全球战略也会向多国战略和地区战略转变。     

On pricing and protection of complementary products

The business literature advises firms producing complementary products to sell the core product at a low price, but to price the complementary product at a higher premium. This strategy, however, is problematic if firms face competitors in the market for complementary products as well, as observed in recent years for instance in the market for printers/ink cartridges. Motivated by several measures the firms have taken in this market, the current paper analyzes whether firms are interested in protecting their complementary product from outside competition. We find that firms protect their products only if consumers underestimate the demand for the complementary product when deciding which core product to buy. Moreover, we investigate how the decision to protect the complementary product interacts with a firm’s pricing decision. We show that the price policy proposed in the business literature should only be applied, if consumers sufficiently underestimate their demand for the complementary product so that firms strongly protect these products from outside competition.