Abstract

This study integrates both the fields of competitive dynamics and international business to explore the MNCs' competitive interaction because not too many of previous studies focus on MNCs' competitive interaction in the global context. We choose the international shipping container industry as the empirical research target. The 434 news with 2,117 firms' action gathering of this study is retrieved from Shipping Digest R.O.C., the containers' company websites, and financial reports from year 2007 to 2008 by dividing into eight seasons. This study designates the global top 20 shipping container firms as research samples and adopts 153 MNCs-season samples to carries on the statistical analysis by the hierarchical regression. Our empirical evidence show that: (1) focal firm's strategic orientation and the numbers of firms cooperating to take actions negatively affect competitor actions; (2) both focal firm's competitive actions and the degree of focal firm's internationalization positively affect competitors' actions; (3) focal firm's competitive actions positively affect its performance, and finally the focal firm's irregular competitive rhythm negatively affect its performance. Implications and suggestions of these research results are also discussed.