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L’objectif principal de l’action stratégique consiste en la création et en la préservation dans le temps de l’avantage concurrentiel. Cet article estime que cet objectif peut être atteint par l’engagement des seules actions n’entraînant pas de réactions. Quatre caractéristiques liées aux actions (irréversibilité, spécificité, innovation et intensité) et trois caractéristiques associées aux réactions (occurrence, imitation et délai) sont testées dans le secteur de la presse magazine en France (presse “news ” et presse économique). Les résultats montrent que les actions irréversibles, innovantes et intenses provoquent beaucoup de réactions, alors que les actions spécifiques n’entraînent que peu de réponses. Ce qui émerge, cependant, est l’importance du délai de réaction, permettant aux firmes de se soustraire, pour un temps, à la concurrence. Vers la fin de l’année 1993, la préparation d’un nouveau quotidien du matin n’était plus qu’un secret de polichinelle: un journal allait voir le jour dans le segment déjà très encombré de la presse parisienne du matin. Une campagne de publicité se chargea d’annoncer au grand

Lynne Zucker and anonymous referees for valuable insights and suggestions. We remain responsible for all errors

Akey question for organizational learning research is to identify opportunities and constraints for firms to gain useful information from the activities and performance of other firms. We argue that market-level turnover events generate and release vicarious information that small multiunit organizations can use to enhance their likelihood of survival. We focus on two specific turnover events, ownership transfers and contemporaneous exit-entry pairs (cases in which both outlet entry and outlet exit occur within the same market within the same time period), because these events are likely to generate and release information without altering the total number of outlets in a market. We find that the likelihood of a multiunit owner’s outlet exit declines when there are many ownership transfers and exit-entry pairs in other markets where the owner also operates outlets. We conclude that these turnover events, even in just one market where a small multiunit organization is present, generate vicarious information substantial enough to increase the survival likelihood of all outlets of that multiunit organization. Our theory and supporting results show how organizational learning-based arguments can be combined with our knowledge of multiunit organizations to build a theory of relationships between geographically separated turnover events. Key words: multiunit organizations; small business; geography; vicarious learning; knowledge transfer Research in organizational theory and economics has explored the sources and effects of organizational learning (Argote 1999). Many studies find that firms learn from their own experience (e.g., Levinthal and March

Research Article The success of new ventures can hinge on obtaining venture capital (VC) funding. Virtually every successful IT venture has depended on VC funding early in its history. However, obtaining venture capital is difficult. Unlike earlier studies on VC funding that consider new ventures to be homogeneous, this study seeks to identify factors that VCs consider when they make funding decisions for IT ventures. Building on prior research in the area of agency and business risk, we develop a theoretical model that draws on work in finance and entrepreneurship. The model suggests that VCs consider two types of risk: business risk and agency risk. The relative importance of these two types of risk may be different across industries. We test this model using data from 139 business plans for IT startups that were considered for funding by VCs. Traditional structural equation modeling (SEM) does not accommodate non-normal data or dichotomous outcome variables. Using the Robust Weighted Least Squares approach, we test our model with non-normal data and dichotomous outcomes. In addition, we use Tetrad analysis to check model fit against alternative models, floor and ceiling analysis to test sample frame validity, relative effect size comparison to test relative elasticity of effects, and a Monte Carlo estimation approach to test overall model power and power of individual paths. We find that business risk is an important factor in startup funding for IT ventures. We do not find agency risk to be an important consideration in start-up funding for IT ventures.

The authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. They gratefully acknowledge the support of IRI/Europanel, who provided the data on which this study is based. They thank the participants at the MSI Conference on Competitive Reaction for constructive comments on an earlier draft of this work. Financial support by the Flemish Science Foundation (F.W.O) under grant G.0145.97 and the Research Council of the Catholic University of Leuven under grant OT.96.4 is greatly How do competitors react to each other’s price-promotion and advertising actions? How do these reactions influence the net sales impact we observe? We answer these questions by performing a large-scale empirical study of the short-run and long-run reactions to promotion and advertising shocks in over 400 consumer product categories, over a four-year time span. Competitive reaction can be passive, accommodating or retaliatory. We first develop a series of expectations on the type and intensity of reaction behavior, and on the moderators of this behavior. These expectations are assessed in two ways. First, vector-autoregressive models quantify the short-run and long-run effect of a promotion or advertising action on competitive sales and on competitive reactions. By cataloging the numerical results, we are able to formulate

Pricing series reflect multiple decisions (e.g., regular pricing and discounting) often made by multiple decision makers. For example, temporary price reductions (high frequency price changes) can be used to price discriminate in the short run, while regular price adjustments (low frequency price changes) reflect more strategic or long-term goals. It is therefore not implausible that the “reaction” of one brand’s price to another depends on the frequency of the data analysed. Time disaggregation does not remedy this problem, because frequency aggregation exists even when data are analyzed at the lowest possible level of time aggregation. This paper proposes an approach to decompose pricing interactions across pricing frequencies to shed some light on the nature of pricing interactions across price cycles (i.e., planning horizons). We use a spectral decomposition of weekly sku-level price data in 37 grocery categories. We find that cross-brand correlation in prices occurs at multiple planning horizons, and the planning horizon of the predominant interaction does not typically coincide with the sampling rate of the data. Using spectral analysis to identify planning horizons inherent in the data, we calibrate a structural model of competitive price responses at these different frequencies. Different conclusions about the nature

Number of pages 50

We examine the timing of foreign market entry by extending neoinstitutional theory's predictions about imitative influences on market entry rates, to include elements of a firm's competitive environment. Our focal construct is a bunched entry, which we define as a foreign market entry made as a timely response to a rival's entry. We find that the likelihood of a bunched entry is influenced by the density of prior entry activity of other home country firms and by industry rivals. Bunched entry is also influenced by conditions in the home country in terms of seller concentration in a firm's industry, and the characteristics of the entering firm and the preceding entrant. These findings, which are based on 18 years of data collected for 2,572 foreign market entries of 608 Japanese firms in 64 countries, support the idea that home rivalry is an important aspect of international strategy. Foreign market entry is a strategic action that has important consequences for the international competitiveness and profitability of a firm. It also has consequences and ramifications for the competitive position of a firm compared to its home country rivals. Although early depictions of foreign investment considered rivalry and competition to be important drivers of a firm's foreign investment decisions (Flowers, 1976; Hymer, 1976; Knickerbocker, 1973), competitive considerations have given way to examination of foreign entry as a response to market failure,