Strategic Management Journal. Antecedents of temporary advantage, страница 12

Hermelo and Vassolo (2010) find that the modernization of economic and other institutions increases the amount of temporary advantage across several countries in Latin America. Lee et al. (2010) find that dynamic capabilities speed up the escalation of temporary advantages. Chen et al. (2010) identify another antecedent of temporary advantage, especially aggressive actions—top management team characteristics. Sirmon et al. (2010) find that a firm's weaknesses interact with its strengths to limit the advantage of strengths. We can see from these studies that environments defined by temporary advantage, such as hypercompetitive industries and high-velocity industries, may be driven by much more than Schumpeterian competition. It may be that hypercompetition is not equivalent to Schumpeterian competition as many researchers have assumed. Hypercompetition can be caused by factors other than technological development and innovation, such as the distribution of firm resources and the change in these resources over time.

The consequences of temporary advantages

Several other studies in this special issue refine or contest established notions of what works best for performance in environments of temporary advantages. Rather than self-cannibalize and proactively pre-empt the market with the next new advantage, Pacheco-de-Almeida (2010) showed that it is often better to self-displace—that is, to voluntarily give up leadership of an industry. He observes that the magnitude and duration of the next advantage may be too short to earn more rents than by simply milking the old advantage. Also in contrast to accepted wisdom, Chen et al. (2010) find that aggressive actions are not always the best way to precede in hypercompetitive or high velocity environments. Also in contrast, Chen et al. (2010) reconfirm that aggressive actions work best in hypercompetitive Asian markets, even though the society is based on collective and cooperative cultural norms. Finally, Rindova, et al., (2010) found that in certain hypercompetitive environments, it is better to use predictable and simple sequences of actions to signal the stock market, rather than unpredictable actions to confuse rivals.

THE FUTURE OF TEMPORARY VERSUS SUSTAINABLE ADVANTAGE: MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE OR SIMULTANEOUSLY COEXISTENT?

1.Top of page

2.Abstract

3.Antecedents of temporary advantage

4.The management of temporary advantage

5.Consequences of temporary advantage

6.The field of strategic management without sustainable advantage

7.SUMMARY OF EXTANT WORK ON TEMPORARY ADVANTAGE

8.THIS SPECIAL ISSUE'S UNIQUE CONTRIBUTIONS TO TEMPORARY ADVANTAGE

9.THE FUTURE OF TEMPORARY VERSUS SUSTAINABLE ADVANTAGE: MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE OR SIMULTANEOUSLY COEXISTENT?

10.REFERENCES

Some scholars have argued that temporary advantage is a horse of a very different color when compared to sustainable advantage-based models of strategy (Grimm et al, 2005). Some argued that temporary advantage is applicable under different circumstances (D'Aveni, 1999) or involve very different underlying assumptions (Lengnick-Hall and Wolff, 1999). And some empiricists have implied that sustainable and temporary competitive advantages are mutually exclusive concepts. Studying the increased volatility of returns, declining impact of industry effects, and the relationship between rivalry and industry performance, Thomas (1996) and Thomas and D'Aveni (2009), argued that industries based on sustainable oligopolies were being replaced by industries that had become hypercompetitive. But are these paradigms mutually exclusive or can both sustainable and temporary advantage simultaneously coexist?