Knowledge that Transforms

This paper explores the basic question of whether manufacturing-based relatedness between business units within a multibusiness firm serves as a basis for a competitive advantage at the business unit level. We developed a system for describing manufacturing relatedness that combines the study of value chain activities with 4-digit SIC codes, then we assessed presence of manufacturing synergies. We found no evidence that, on average, organizations involved in manufacturing-related businesses are reaping financial benefits from shared resources in manufacturing. However, some firms, through explicit commitment to coordination, do realize performance benefits from such involvement. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although one might expect differences between manufacturing and service firms in pioneering advantages, the extent of these differences has not yet been investigated. This is the first cross-national study that compares such differences in nine countries/regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore. We develop several hypotheses concerning the perceptions of managers of manufacturing firms and service firms regarding the benefits and post-entry risks of pioneering, and the cost and differentiation advantages accruing to the pioneering firm. We test the hypotheses with data from 2,419 firms representing all nine countries and both industrial sectors. We find that: (1) managers from all countries perceive pioneering to be associated with higher market share and/or profitability; (2) manufacturing firm managers perceive pioneering risks to be significantly more important than do service firm managers; (3) cost and differentiation advantages of pioneering are, for the most part, more significant to manufacturing than to service firm managers; (4) Western manufacturing firm managers perceive the cost advantages to be more important than Asian Pacific manufacturing firm managers. We conclude by presenting the managerial implications of our findings. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Foreign investors and their domestic joint venture partners must find ways to share the benefits of the venture if both sides are to be satisfied. Some work in the literature on joint ventures has asserted that there is a danger in all joint ventures, and especially joint ventures with Japanese, that one side will exploit the venture for its own gain, using it as a Trojan Horse. To test this assertion, we build a full data set of Japanese firms with joint ventures in the United States and track the ventures over time. Our data show that the Japanese partners do not take actions consistent with the Trojan Horse hypothesis. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In their response to our paper, Amihud and Lev (1999) and Denis, Denis, and Sarin (1999) claim that disciplinary differences don’t matter and that methods and evidence should speak for themselves. In contrast, we argue that important differences exist between financial economics and strategic management, leading to differing beliefs, norms, methods, and interpretations of empirical results. Using a strategic management perspective to review the evidence presented by Amihud and Lev in their earlier study (1981) and in their and Denis et al.’s critiques of our work (1999), we find no reason to revise our original conclusion: there is little theoretical or empirical basis for believing that monitoring by a firm’s principals influences its diversification strategy and acquisition decisions. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigates how important it is for a firm to select what turns out to be a dominant design in a technology-driven industry. Using the personal computer industry as a case study, this research shows that firms are not doomed when their entry design choices turn out to be ‘wrong.’ For early entrants, we found that switching to the dominant design is associated with increased chances of survival and market share. Contrary to our expectations, we found that even later entrants that switched to the dominant design also enjoyed higher survival rates and greater market position. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evolutionary and resource-based theories imply that firms in an industry with different resources and capabilities may differ in critical characteristics of their production functions, such as economies of scale. This paper measures these inter-firm differences in economies of scale and examines how they affect the subsequent evolution of the market share distribution in the money market mutual fund industry. The findings indicate that fund families with larger marginal benefits to increasing their scale do subsequently gain market share at the expense of their rivals, but that this effect diminishes as the fund family ages, perhaps as a consequence of imitation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.