Blind trust: Market control, legal environments and the dynamics of competitive intensity in the early American film industry 1893-1920

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mezias, SJ; Boyle, E
• 署名单位: New York University; National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 1-34
• 关键词: MANHATTAN HOTEL INDUSTRY; public-policy; Labor unions; DUE-PROCESS; state; resource; ecology; legitimacy; insurance; TRANSFORMATION

摘要

This study of the emergence of the film industry in the U.S. between 1893 and 1920 contributes to the growing literature linking legal environments and population dynamics. This was an era characterized by a shift to active anti-trust policy, which manifested itself in legal action to disband a trust that had dominated the industry, the Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). We use archival data to show that mortality was reduced by trust membership and increased with the market share of the trust members. The effects of litigation are varied, with litigation filed by trust members enhancing mortality and litigation filed against trust members decreasing mortality. Analysis of coded headlines from media reports on the emerging industry shows that a shift in the view of the trust in the normative environment toward a more negative view was also associated with decreased mortality. Results also show that learning and the compensatory fitness enjoyed before anti-trust law was enforced prevented the MPPC members from recognizing changes in the marketplace; as a result, they were less likely to move from making short films to making increasingly popular feature-length films.