The regional and temporal nature of hypercompetition

Abstract

Numerous scholars have suggested that the global technology-intensive sector has become hypercompetitive, yet few have tested this empirically. Those that have find seemingly conflicting evidence. Applying commonly used measures, we explore whether this could be due to hypercompetition being more time and context specific than previously thought. Based on data from the United States, Europe, Japan, and China covering 1980–2018, we find no indication of a generalized increase in business performance volatility in this sector across regions. We do find a declining stability in the performance of Japanese firms over the study period, but in US firms only leading up to the burst of the dotcom bubble. A structural break analysis helps us conclude that hypercompetition is a phenomenon limited in both location, time, and industry, linked to industry breakpoints across its life cycle.