The Red Queen among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves

292 Pages·2008·2.68 MB·English

by  William P. Barnett

THE RED QUEEN AMONG ORGANIZATIONS

THE RED QUEEN
AMONG ORGANIZATIONS
HOW COMPETITIVENESS EVOLVES
William P. Barnett
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright©2008byPrincetonUniversityPress
PublishedbyPrincetonUniversityPress,41WilliamStreet,
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ISBN-13:978–0-691–13114–6
ISBN-10:0–691–13114–7
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To my parents, Burton and Dorothy Barnett

Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
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
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
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
viii CONTENTS
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
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
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 160
Discovering Logics of Competition among
Microcomputer Manufacturers 193
Summary of Findings 213
CONTENTS ix
SEVEN THE RED QUEEN AND ORGANIZATIONAL
INERTIA 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
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