About the Book

There's a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen, having just led a chase with Alice in which neither seems to have moved from the spot where they began, explains to the perplexed girl: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Evolutionary biologists have used this scene to illustrate the evolutionary arms race among competing species. William Barnett argues that a similar dynamic is at work when organizations compete, shaping how firms and industries evolve over time. Barnett examines the effects--and unforeseen perils--of competing and winning. He takes a fascinating, in-depth look at two of the most competitive industries--computer manufacturing and commercial banking--and derives some startling conclusions. Organizations that survive competition become stronger competitors--but only in the market contexts in which they succeed. Barnett shows how managers may think their experience will help them thrive in new markets and conditions, when in fact the opposite is likely to be the case. He finds that an organization's competitiveness at any given moment hinges on the organization's historical experience.Through Red Queen competition, weaker competitors fail, or they learn and adapt. This in turn heightens the intensity of competition and further strengthens survivors in an ever-evolving dynamic. Written by a leading organizational theorist, The Red Queen among Organizations challenges the prevailing wisdom about competition, revealing it to be a force that can make--and break--even the most successful organization.

Table of Contents:
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