Profitability, transactional alignment, and organizational mortality in the US trucking industry

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Silverman, BS; Nickerson, JA; Freeman, J
• 署名单位: University of Toronto; Washington University (WUSTL); University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199707)18:1+<31::AID-SMJ920>3.3.CO;2-J
• 发表日期: 1997
• 页码: 31-52
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL MORTALITY; transactional alignment; regulatory change; trucking

摘要

The winds of creative destruction rarely blow more fiercely than in a newly deregulated environment. Managers simultaneously face a novel focus on operating efficiency and an onslaught of new competitors. What must managers do to enable their firms to survive in such an environment? What factors bear on firms' survival? This paper presents an analysis of mortality of large motor carriers in the U.S. interstate for-hire trucking industry after deregulation. It examines this phenomenon through a multidisciplinary lens that encompasses organizational ecology, neoclassical economics, and transaction cost economics. The paper posits that carrier mortality is a function of both firm-level and industry-level attributes, which are drawn from bath ecological and economic theories. While each of these theories separately informs motor carrier mortality, the inclusion of predictions derived from both disciplines in one model significantly increases explanatory power over either theory evaluated alone. The empirical analysis is among the first to show increased mortality when firms do not adhere to operating policies consistent with transaction cost minimization principles. In sum, managers are well advised to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to strategy to ensure their firms' survival: (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.