IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/1682.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Organizational Evolution of Global Technological Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Barnett, William P.

    (Stanford U)

  • McKendrick, David

    (U of California, San Diego)

Abstract

Various industries are marked by rapid technological change and increasingly global competition. We explain how such developments provide a context for "Red Queen" competition, where organizational learning and competition accelerate each other over time. Arguing that competition stimulates organizational development, we predict that organizations experiencing a history of competition are less likely to fail. This implies that a strategy of technological differentiation generates short-run survival advantages, but backfires over time as isolated organizations suffer from increasing rates of failure. Also, we argue that the Red Queen magnifies differences in competitiveness among organizations due to underlying differences in their propensities to learn, so that technologically leading organizations are especially strong competitors. This strength, paradoxically, makes technological leadership a hazardous strategy because technological leaders must compete against stronger rivals. We find support for these conjectures in a study of the worldwide hard disk drive market, estimating organizational ecology models that allow for increasing global competition over time and that help to explain national differences in organizational survival rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Barnett, William P. & McKendrick, David, 2001. "The Organizational Evolution of Global Technological Competition," Research Papers 1682, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:1682
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP%201682.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christensen, Clayton M. & Rosenbloom, Richard S., 1995. "Explaining the attacker's advantage: Technological paradigms, organizational dynamics, and the value network," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 233-257, March.
    2. Chesbrough, Henry W, 1999. "The Organizational Impact of Technological Change: A Comparative Theory of National Institutional Factors," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 8(3), pages 447-485, September.
    3. James G. March, 1991. "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 71-87, February.
    4. Christensen, Clayton M., 1993. "The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of Commercial and Technological Turbulence," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 531-588, January.
    5. Josh Lerner, 1997. "An Empirical Exploration of a Technology Race," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(2), pages 228-247, Summer.
    6. Iansiti, Marco & Khanna, Tarun, 1995. "Technological Evolution, System Architecture and the Obsolescence of Firm Capabilities," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 4(2), pages 333-361.
    7. Olav Sorenson, 2000. "Letting the market work for you: an evolutionary perspective on product strategy," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(5), pages 577-592, May.
    8. Langlois, Richard N., 1992. "External Economies and Economic Progress: The Case of the Microcomputer Industry," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 1-50, April.
    9. Fleming, Lee & Sorenson, Olav, 2001. "Technology as a complex adaptive system: evidence from patent data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1019-1039, August.
    10. Carroll, Glenn R & Teo, Albert C, 1996. "Creative Self-Destruction among Organizations: An Empirical Study of Technical Innovation and Organizational Failure in the American Automobile Industry, 1885-1981," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 5(2), pages 619-644.
    11. Jaideep Anand & Bruce Kogut, 1997. "Technological Capabilities of Countries, Firm Rivalry and Foreign Direct Investments," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 28(3), pages 445-465, September.
    12. Levinthal, Daniel A, 1998. "The Slow Pace of Rapid Technological Change: Gradualism and Punctuation in Technological Change," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 7(2), pages 217-247, June.
    13. Dosi, Giovanni, 1993. "Technological paradigms and technological trajectories : A suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 102-103, April.
    14. Clayton M. Christensen & Fernando F. Suárez & James M. Utterback, 1998. "Strategies for Survival in Fast-Changing Industries," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(12-Part-2), pages 207-220, December.
    15. Park, Douglas Y & Podolny, Joel M, 2000. "The Competitive Dynamics of Status and Niche Width: US Investment Banking, 1920-1949," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 9(3), pages 377-414, September.
    16. Daniel A. Levinthal, 1997. "Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(7), pages 934-950, July.
    17. Levinthal, Daniel & March, James G., 1981. "A model of adaptive organizational search," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 307-333, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wezel, Filippo Carlo, 2002. "The organization enacts the environment and the environment feeds back : mortality rates in the UK motorcycle industry, 1895-1993," Research Report 02G41, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    2. Mikael Sandberg, 2007. "The evolution of IT innovations in Swedish organizations: a Darwinian critique of ‘Lamarckian’ institutional economics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 1-23, February.
    3. repec:dgr:rugsom:02g41 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Murmann, Johann Peter & Frenken, Koen, 2006. "Toward a systematic framework for research on dominant designs, technological innovations, and industrial change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 925-952, September.
    2. Mary Tripsas, 2008. "Customer preference discontinuities: a trigger for radical technological change," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2-3), pages 79-97.
    3. Khraisha, Tamer, 2020. "Complex economic problems and fitness landscapes: Assessment and methodological perspectives," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 390-407.
    4. Qu, Guannan & Chen, Jin & Zhang, Ruhao & Wang, Luyao & Yang, Yayu, 2023. "Technological search strategy and breakthrough innovation: An integrated approach based on main-path analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    5. Schön, Benjamin & Pyka, Andreas, 2013. "The success factors of technology-sourcing through mergers & acquisitions: An intuitive meta-analysis," FZID Discussion Papers 78-2013, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
    6. William P. Barnett & Elizabeth G. Pontikes, 2008. "The Red Queen, Success Bias, and Organizational Inertia," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(7), pages 1237-1251, July.
    7. Christopher Esposito & David Rigby, 2017. "When Buzz and Pipelines Fail," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1701, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Jan 2017.
    8. Karén Hovhannissian & Marco Valente, 2004. "Modeling Directed Local Search Strategies on Technology Landscapes: Depth and Breadth," ROCK Working Papers 028, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 17 Jun 2008.
    9. Taalbi, Josef, 2017. "What drives innovation? Evidence from economic history," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1437-1453.
    10. Christina Fang & Jeho Lee & Melissa A. Schilling, 2010. "Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Structural Design: The Isolation of Subgroups and Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 625-642, June.
    11. Dirk Martignoni & Thomas Keil & Markus Lang, 2020. "Focus in Searching Core–Periphery Structures," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 266-286, March.
    12. Gatti, Corrado & Volpe, Loredana & Vagnani, Gianluca, 2015. "Interdependence among productive activities: Implications for exploration and exploitation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 711-722.
    13. Giovanni. Gavetti & Daniel A. Levinthal, 2004. "50th Anniversay Article: The Strategy Field from the Perspective of Management Science: Divergent Strands and Possible Integration," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(10), pages 1309-1318, October.
    14. Dibiaggio, Ludovic & Nasiriyar, Maryam & Nesta, Lionel, 2014. "Substitutability and complementarity of technological knowledge and the inventive performance of semiconductor companies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(9), pages 1582-1593.
    15. Yang, Hongyan & Steensma, H. Kevin, 2014. "When do firms rely on their knowledge spillover recipients for guidance in exploring unfamiliar knowledge?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(9), pages 1496-1507.
    16. Koen Frenken & Alessandro Nuvolari, 2004. "Entropy statistics as a framework to analyse technological evolution," Chapters, in: John Foster & Werner Hölzl (ed.), Applied Evolutionary Economics and Complex Systems, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Valente Houhannisian, 2004. "Modeling Directod Local Search Strategies on Technology Landscapes and Breadth," Quaderni DISA 091, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 17 Jun 2008.
    18. Joshua S. Gans & Michael Kearney & Erin L. Scott & Scott Stern, 2021. "Choosing Technology: An Entrepreneurial Strategy Approach," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 39-53, March.
    19. Sarah Kaplan & Rebecca Henderson, 2005. "Inertia and Incentives: Bridging Organizational Economics and Organizational Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(5), pages 509-521, October.
    20. Luo, Jianxi, 2018. "Architecture and evolvability of innovation ecosystems," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 132-144.

    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:ecl:stabus:1682. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    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.