臺大管理論叢NTU Management Review VOL.27, No.3

從動態競爭觀點審視作業流程管理的創新與改進

The ever-increasing mutual footholds eventually lead to restraint and competitive

stability, which lower the follower firmʼs entry rate (Baum and Korn, 1999). That is, the risk

of retaliation,

, tends to outweigh the benefits of the followerʼs additional market-entry

actions (Gimeno and Woo, 1996). The leading firm is likely to react aggressively to the

follower firm’s market entry. In addition, such retaliation may not only be limited to the

localized markets, but also escalate to all the other shared markets. Therefore, within the

context of a multimarket rivalry, the follower has an incentive to avoid entering a new

market that is occupied by the leader to discourage potential multimarket retaliation (Chen

and MacMillan, 1992). Formally:

= exp(

) +

(4)

where

is a constant to ensure that market commonality is within the range from 0 to

1, and

represents the tension derived from small-scale improvement actions, which will be

explained later.

Accordingly, we obtain an inverted U-shaped relationship between the firmsʼ

multimarket contact and the followerʼs rate of market entry as stated in Baum and Korn

(1999):

= (

–

) ⁄

(5)

4.2 Motivation: Competitive Tension and Commitment

Competitive tension,

, is affected by the levels of survival pressure derived from direct

competition,

, and growth pressure derived from indirect competition,

(Rahmandad,

2012). A direct (i.e., head-on) competition will greatly raise the tension between opponents,

and in an indirect competition, their devious actions will lower the tension:

dH⁄dt = D – N

(6)

In fact, the leader’s various actions could cause the follower to interpret the competitive

tension in different ways. Notice that the (re)actions taken to developing process

improvement and/or innovation capabilities, such as a TQM program, which often involves a

large lump sum investment (Repenning and Sterman, 2002; Kim et al., 2012). This

investment signals a firm’s commitment and the irreversibility of its actions (Chen and