The Red Queen Among Organizations (ebook)

Argumento de The Red Queen Among Organizations (ebook)

"The main strength of the book is in highlighting the importance of competition in market-based economies for building viable, adaptive organizations."--Jason Potts, Kate Morrison, The Business Economist

"The most ambitious and important new book is The Red Queen among Organizations, by William P. Barnett. . . . [I]t is the best strategy book of the year because of its main insights: Competition concerns relative performance, not absolute performance; a company's competitiveness is context specific, and contexts can change, giving rise to the competency trap; learning comes from competing, not isolation from competition; and differentiation is desirable as a way to secure rents, but must be pursued in the context of competition, not in the vain hopes of avoiding it."--Phil Rosenzweig, Stratgey & Business

"Barnett's presentation of the Red Queen theory is a well-crafted, nuanced, and thoughtful contribution to the voluminous literature on organizational population change."--David Knoke, American Journal of Sociology

"Engaging and thought-provoking, Barnett's construct of 'learning organizations' that evolve as a function of their particular competitive environment and capabilities is, in my experience, an accurate description of this complex and important corporate dimension. Having spent fifteen years in the disc-drive industry, which is generally regarded as the most competitive segment in the technology marketplace, I strongly recommend this book to anyone concerned with the strategic and organizational issues related to corporate competitiveness."--Steve Luczo, chairman of Seagate Technology

"The Red Queen tells us that corporations and other organizations can run faster, but fall behind because others are running too. Worse, they learn how to run faster by studying the leaders in their race. Barnett's analysis is pathbreaking and equally interesting to academics and practitioners because it lays out the many ironies that make superior rates of learning and adaptability in one set of circumstances counterproductive when those circumstances evolve (as they always do)."--John Freeman, University of California, Berkeley

"A very important contribution to the literature on competition and strategy. Barnett writes with admirable clarity and shows a depth of knowledge of a wide range of industries that he uses to illustrate his ideas. His empirical analysis is rigorous."--David Barron, University of Oxford

"Organizational analysts have a lot to learn from reading this book. Old assumptions are questioned, attention to institutional and competitive logics is extended, historical detail is presented with precision and depth, and the empirical specifications of the model are much improved over previous analyses. Without a doubt, this is cutting-edge research in organization and management theory."--Stanislav D. Dobrev, University of Chicago

"Barnett presents an excellent theoretical account of the evolution of competitiveness, supported by empirical evidence. . . . This ecological theory provides an excellent complement and contrast to many existing theoretical frameworks in strategic management."--J.J. Bailey, Choice

The Red Queen Among Organizations represents outstanding scholarship in the organisational theory field but is sufficiently rooted in the "real world" to be of benefit to business strategists and particularly to MBA and doctoral students in the field of corporate strategy. [I]t is a serious attempt to understand organisational behaviour, and it does it exceptionally well."--Cary L. Cooper, Times Higher Education0Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii

CHAPTER ONE: WHY ARE SOME ORGANIZATIONS MORE COMPETITIVE THAN OTHERS? 1
"Competitiveness" Varies from Organization to Organization 3
Organizations Are Intendedly Rational Adaptive Systems 4
Organizations Compete with Similar Organizations 7
What It Takes to Win Depends on a Context's Logic
of Competition 8
Organizations Learn a Context's Logic of Competition by Competing 12

CHAPTER TWO: LOGICS OF COMPETITION 14
Analyzing Logics of Competition 17
Meta-Competition among Alternative Logics 28
The Logic of Predation 34
Discovering Logics of Competition 37
Summary and Implications for the Model 43

CHAPTER THREE: THE RED QUEEN 46
How Do Organizations Respond to Competition? 47
The Red Queen as an Ecology of Learning Organizations 50
Consequences of Constraint in Red Queen Evolution 59
Killing the Red Queen through Predation 69
Argument Summary 72

CHAPTER FOUR: EMPIRICALLY MODELING THE RED QUEEN 74
Modeling "Competitiveness" as a Property of Organizations 75
The Red Queen Model 77
Modeling a Pure-Selection Process 79
Modeling Myopia 80
Modeling the Implications of Predation 82
Modeling Organizational Founding 84
Modeling Organizational Survival 85
Comparisons to Other Ecological Models of
Organizations 87

CHAPTER FIVE: RED QUEEN COMPETITION AMONG COMMERCIAL BANKS 90
The Institutional Context of Twentieth-Century
U.S. Commerical Banking 90
Logics of Competition among U.S. Banks 97
Specifying the Red Queen Model for Illinois Banks 105
Estimates of the Bank Founding Models 109
Estimates of the Bank Failure Models 119
Summary of Findings 130

CHAPTER SIX: RED QUEEN COMPETITION AMONG COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS 132
The Computer Industry and Its Markets 136
Discovering Logics of Competition among
Mainframe Computer Manufacturers 138
Discovering Logics of Competition among
Midrange Computer Manufacturers 170
Discovering Logics of Competition among
Microcomputer Manufacturers 193
Summary of Findings 213

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE RED QUEEN AND ORGANIZATIONAL NERTIA 215
The Competition-Inertia Hypothesis 218
The Red Queen and Inertia among Computer
Manufacturers 222
The Red Queen and the Rise and Fall of Organizations 224

CHAPTER EIGHT: SOME IMPLICATIONS OF RED QUEEN COMPETITION 228
Managerial Implications of the Red Queen 230
Research Implications of the Red Queen 232

APPENDIX: DATA SOURCES AND COLLECTION METHODS 237
Commercial Banks 237
Computer Manufacturers 241

Notes 245
References 259
Index 275