Niche width revisited: Organizational scope, behavior and performance

Strategic Management Journal

Volumn 27, Issue 10, 2006, Pages 915-936

  Sorenson, Olav ^a   McEvily, Susan ^b   Rongrong Ren, Charlotte ^c   Raja, Roy ^d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

^c PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d TULANE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Diversification; Niche width; Organizational ecology; Product strategy

Indexed keywords

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH; MARKETING; PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT; SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS; STRATEGIC PLANNING;

DIVERSIFICATION; NICHE WIDTH; ORGANIZATIONAL ECOLOGY; PRODUCT STRATEGY;

INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT;

EID: 33748929177     PISSN: 01432095     EISSN: 10970266     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/smj.550     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Abernathy WJ, Clark KB. 1985. Innovation: mapping the winds of creative destruction. Research Policy 14: 3-23.
2. Anderson P. 1995. Personal computer manufacturers. In Organizations in Industry: Strategy, Structure and Selection, Carroll GR, Hannan MT (eds). Oxford University Press: New York; 37-58.
3. Bandura A. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
4. Barnett WP, Carroll OR. 1995. Modeling internal organizational change. Annual Review of Sociology 21: 217-236.
5. Barnett WP, Freeman J. 2001. Too much of a good thing? Product proliferation and organizational failure. Organization Science 12: 539-558.
6. Baum JAC, Singh JV. 1994. Organizational niches and the dynamics of organizational founding. Organization Science 5: 483-502.
7. Berger PG, Ofek E. 1995. Diversification's effect on firm value. Journal of Financial Economics 37: 39-65.
8. Campa JM, Kedia S. 2002. Explaining the diversification discount. Journal of Finance 57: 1731-1762.
9. Carroll GR. 1985. Concentration and specialization: dynamics of niche width in populations of organizations. American Journal of Sociology 90: 1262-1283.
10. Carroll GR, Hannan MT. 1989. Density delay in the evolution of organizational populations: a model and five empirical tests. Administrative Science Quarterly 34: 441-430.
11. Carroll GR, Hannan MT. 2000. The Demography of Corporations and Industries. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.
12. Cohen WM, Klepper S. 1992. The anatomy of industry R&D intensity distributions. American Economic Review 82: 773-799.
13. Cyert RM, March JG. 1963. A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
14. Dobrev S, Kim T-Y, Carroll GR. 2003. Shifting gears, shifting niches: organizational inertia and change in the evolution of the U.S. automobile industry. Organization Science 14: 264-282.
15. Dobrev S, Kim T-Y, Hannan MT. 2001. Dynamics of niche width and resource partitioning. American Journal of Sociology 106: 1299-1337.
16. Dowell G, Swaminathan A. 2000. Racing and backpedaling into the future: new product introduction and organizational mortality in the U.S. bicycle industry, 1880-1918. Organization Studies 21: 405-431.
17. Ehrnberg E, Jacobsson S. 1997. Indicators of discontinuous technological change: an exploratory study of two discontinuities in the machine tool industry. R&D Management 27: 107-126.
18. Finegold D, Brendley K, Lempert R, Henry D, Cannon P, Boultinghouse B A, Nelson M. 1994. The Decline of the U.S. Machine Tool Industry and Prospects for its Sustainable Recovery (Vol. I). RAND: Santa Monica, CA.
19. Freeman J, Hannan MT. 1983. Niche width and the dynamics of organizational populations. American Journal of Sociology 88: 1116-1145.
20. Guo G. 1993. Event history analysis for left truncated data. Sociological Methodology 23: 217-243.
21. Hannan MT. 1998. Rethinking age dependence in organizational mortality. American Journal of Sociology 104: 126-164.
22. Hannan MT, Carroll GR, Polos L. 2003. The organizational niche. Sociological Theory 21: 309-340.
23. Hannan MT, Freeman J. 1977. The population ecology of organizations. American Journal of Sociology 82: 929-964.
24. Hannan MT, Freeman J. 1984. Structural inertia and organizational change. American Sociological Review 49: 149-164.
25. Hastie R. 1984. Causes and effects of causal attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46: 44-56.
26. Hutchinson GE. 1957. Some concluding remarks. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 22: 415-427.
27. Kekre S, Srinivasan K. 1990. Broader product line: a necessity to achieve success. Management Science 36: 1216-1232.
28. Kernighan BW, Morgan SP. 1982. The UNIX operating system: a model for software design. Science 215: 779-783.
29. Lang LHP, Stulz RM. 1994. Tobin's q, corporate diversification, and firm performance. Journal of Political Economy 102: 1248-1280.
30. Levitt B, March JG. 1988. Organizational learning. Annual Review of Sociology 14: 319-340.
31. Maddala GS. 1983. Limited-Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K.
32. March JG. 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science 2: 71-87.
33. March JG, Simon HA. 1958. Organizations. Blackwell: Cambridge, MA.
34. Nelson R. 1959. The simple economics of basic scientific research. Journal of Political Economy 67: 297-306.
35. Nelson R, Winter S. 1982. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
36. Penrose ET. 1959. The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.
37. Perloff JM, Salop SC. 1985. Equilibrium with product differentiation. Review of Economic Studies 52: 107-120.
38. Pigou AC. 1920. The Economics of Welfare. Macmillan: London.
39. Podolny JM, Stuart TE, Hannan MT. 1996. Networks, knowledge and niches: competition in the worldwide semiconductor industry, 1984-1991. American Journal of Sociology 102: 659-689.
40. Roberts PW, McEvily S. 2005. Product-line expansion and resource cannibalization. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 57: 49-70.
41. Rolt LTC. 1965. A Short History of Machine Tools. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
42. Roy R, McEvily SK. 2004. Incumbent survival during market fusion in matured industries: the influence of component and architectural capabilities on the survival of U.S. machine tool manufacturers during 1975-1995. In Business Strategy over the Industry Life Cycle: Advances in Strategic Management, Baum JAC, McGahan AM (eds). JAI Press: Oxford; 199-224.
43. Rumelt RP. 1982. Diversification strategy and profitability. Strategic Management Journal 3(4): 359-369.
44. Sorensen JB, Stuart TE. 2000. Aging, obsolescence and organizational innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly 45: 81-112.
45. Sorenson O. 2000. Letting the market work for you: an evolutionary perspective on product strategy. Strategic Management Journal 21(5): 277-292.
46. Sorenson O. 2003. Interdependence and adaptability: organizational learning and the long-term effect of integration. Management Science 49: 446-463.
47. Stinchcombe AL. 1965. Social structure and organizations. In Handbook of Organizations, March JG (ed.). Rand McNally: Chicago, IL; 142-193.
48. Swaminathan A. 2001. Resource partitioning and the evolution of specialist organizations: the role of location and identity in the U.S. wine industry. Academy of Management Journal 44: 1169-1185.
49. Teece DJ. 1982. Towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations 3: 39-63.
50. Thorndike E. 1927. The law of effect. American Journal of Psychology 39: 212-222.
51. Tushman ML, Anderson P. 1986. Technological discontinuities and organizational environments. Administrative Science Quarterly 31: 439-465.
52. Ushijima T. 2002. Multinationality and the value of the firm. Working paper, University of California, Los Angeles, CA.
53. Villalonga B. 2004. Does diversification cause the 'diversification discount' ? Financial Management 33: 5-27.
54. Villalonga B. 2005. Diversification discount or premium? New evidence from the Business Information Tracking Series. Journal of Finance 59: 479-506.