IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/stratm/v15y1994i7p503-520.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The limits of growth of the multidivisional firm: A case study of the U.S. oil industry from 1930‐90

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Ollinger

Abstract

Some scholars (Chandler, 1977; Penrose, 1959) believe that firms grow by transferring inimitable marketing, production, and research skills from one line of business to another. Extending this view and emphasizing the role of the central office of a multidivisional firm to transfer administrative skills, Williamson (1975) argues that competition among business units within the firm mimics a competitive capital market and leads to an effcient allocation of resources. Coase (1937), however, argues that firm size is limited by the costs of organizing diverse transactions and Chandler (1991) claims that growth is constrained by the technical and marketing expertise of the top managers. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the scope of the multidivisional firm is limited by the transferability of firm‐specific skills and the efficiency of capital markets. Support comes from a case study of 19 oil companies over the 1930–90 period.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Ollinger, 1994. "The limits of growth of the multidivisional firm: A case study of the U.S. oil industry from 1930‐90," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(7), pages 503-520, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:15:y:1994:i:7:p:503-520
    DOI: 10.1002/smj.4250150702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250150702
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/smj.4250150702?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weston, J. Fred & Johnson, Brian A. & Siu, Juan A., 1999. "Mergers and restructuring in the world oil industry," Journal of Energy Finance & Development, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 149-183.
    2. Robert R. Wiggins & Timothy W. Ruefli, 2002. "Sustained Competitive Advantage: Temporal Dynamics and the Incidence and Persistence of Superior Economic Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(1), pages 81-105, February.
    3. Mudambi, Ram & Swift, Tim, 2011. "Proactive R&D management and firm growth: A punctuated equilibrium model," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 429-440, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:15:y:1994:i:7:p:503-520. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/0143-2095 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.