The Red Queen among Organizations

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

CHAPTER 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

CHAPTER 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

CHAPTER 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

CHAPTER 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

CHAPTER 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

Summary of Findings 130

CHAPTER 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 170

Discovering Logics of Competition among

Microcomputer Manufacturers 193

Summary of Findings 213

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE RED QUEEN AND ORGANIZATIONAL NERTIA 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

CHAPTER 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