Competitive Intensity and Its Two-Sided Effect on the Boundaries of Firm Performance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Montez, Joao; Ruiz-Aliseda, Francisco; Ryall, Michael D.
• 署名单位: University of Lausanne; Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2017.2737
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 2716-2733
• 关键词: Game theory; Bargaining theory; market structure; Firm strategy; market performance; bargaining

摘要

The new perspective emerging from strategy's value-capture stream is that the effects of competition are twofold: competition for an agent bounds its performance from below, while that for its transaction partners bounds from above. Thus, assessing the intensity of competition on either side is essential to understanding firm performance. Yet, the literature provides no formal notion of competitive intensity with which to make such assessments. Rather, some authors use added value as their central analytic concept, others the core. Added value is simple but misses the crucial, for-an-agent side of competition. The core is theoretically complete but difficult to interpret and empirically intractable. This paper formalizes three, increasingly general notions of competitive intensity, all of which improve on added value while avoiding the complexity of the core. We analyze markets characterized by disjoint networks of agents (e.g., supply chains), providing several insights into competition and new tools for empirical work.