Strategic Management Journal. Antecedents of temporary advantage, страница 13

In the future, we may see many new theories imported into the field of strategy to resolve this question. Wave theory is one such possibility. Waves carry energy and are disturbances in a medium, such as water, air, or space. The amplitude, duration, velocity, and periodicity of many different types of waves can all be described in mathematical equations. Some waves have shorter periods, travel faster, and dissipate sooner than others. The parameters of the wave formula define the period, frequency, and amplitude. With considerable empirical research, we could discover what influences the parameters in wave equations. We could visualize an industry with both long and short waves rippling through it. Thus, an industry would be represented by a series of wave equations (disruptions) with differing parameters, and the parameters would be based on the antecedents of advantages.

Chaos theory may be another theory that has the capability to describe the existence of simultaneous coexistence of short- and long-term advantages (Gleick, 1988). Likewise, complexity theory or the theory of complex systems (Waldrop, 1992; Anderson, 1999) may add to the theory of temporary advantage by enabling the integration of literatures on hypercompetition, hypervelocity, hyperturbulence, and complex competitive dynamics.

In addition, we may discover that hypercompetition turns out to be a special case of Porter's five forces (low barriers to entry and substitution, high power of buyers and suppliers, and rising industry rivalry). Some industry factors may still have residual effects over time, even though industry behavior is deteriorating.

As noted earlier, new tools and methods may be invented to resolve the question of mutual exclusivity versus compatibility of theories through looking more closely at the firm dyads as the level of analysis and then accumulating the results to see the industry-level implications. Perhaps tactics are short term, but strategies are long term. Perhaps temporary interactions between dyads of firms somehow accumulate into stable or unstable industry structures. And perhaps some aspects of industries may be stable while the firm level dyads are unstable due to temporary advantages. As our theories become more dynamic, so too will the data we study.

Finally, another emerging insight is that firms do not have just one strategy (D'Aveni, 2010). They may have a multiplicity of strategies—each strategy takes on rivals one at a time. In fact, in a world of temporary advantages, it may be rare to see a firm having just one strategy that universally applies across all rivals. A firm may have as many strategies as it has competitors. Yet the field of strategy still talks about firms as if they had just one strategy. Consequently, to understand temporary competitive advantages, we may need to move to the firm-dyad level of analysis, adding a new row to Tables 1 and 2. We may also need to allow more studies that are inductive, data exploratory, and dynamic or fine-grained in nature. After this special issue is published, we hope it will be easier for others to do and publish such studies. There is a lot to learn from breaking away from two of the most dominant paradigms in the field of strategy (RBV and the industrial organization economics perspective.). As competition gets more complex and change is fast and unpredictable, new paradigms, new models, and new data will be required to explain this new world. We hope this special issue advances research on temporary advantages.