Competitive Threat Research Articles

The Contingent Effects of Intrateam Abusive Behavior on Team Thriving and New Venture Performance

This study sheds light on the dark side of entrepreneurship by examining how and under what conditions abusive behavior within new venture teams (NVTs) relates to new venture performance. Using a national (USA) random sample of NVTs, we find that the relationship of intrateam abusive behavior (i.e., degree to which NVT members exhibit “hostile” verbal behaviors toward each other) with new venture performance (i.e., sales and employment growth) is mediated by NVT thriving (i.e., level of vitality and learning exhibited within the NVT). Results further demonstrate that perceived competitive intensity of the industry moderates this relationship, with the indirect effect of intrateam abusive behavior on new venture performance (via thriving) being significantly less negative at high, than at low, levels of competitive intensity. We therefore conclude that perceived competitive threats to the survival of startups act to mitigate the otherwise deleterious effects of abusive behavior occurring within NVTs. These results broaden existing knowledge regarding the dark side of entrepreneurship by expanding the conversation on this topic to include the NVT and providing evidence for why some NVTs, but not others, are able to sustain the growth of their firms despite the occurrence of abusive behavior between their members.

Are male meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) influenced by social odor context with regard to scent marking behaviors?

AbstractMeadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) rely on olfactory communication, such as scent marking, to find and secure mating opportunities during the breeding season. Scent marks, and odors in general, provide information about the donors and persist in the environment for extended periods, allowing a wide audience. Whether a vole responds to another scent mark(s), or odor(s), depends on the social context and the information the odor provides about the donor(s). Therefore, we examined if male scent marking toward a social odor or female meadow voles is influenced by information present or previously encountered based on contextual differences in the social odor. We presented males with two odor associations of a male with a female with contextual differences in the age of the rival. We tested male scent marking under two conditions: one with two social odors present, current information, and a second with the females present from previously encountered social information, prior information. It was found that rival male age did not affect the scent marking behavior of males toward a social odor or female voles. Rival male age also did not affect preference as males did not show a preference for either female. The lack of an effect may lie in the properties of scent marks and the natural history of meadow voles during the breeding season. The odor of an individual rival may not represent a strong enough competitive threat to influence a signaler's decisions, but the association could still provide the signaler with valuable information about which females are considered high quality.

Product market threats and leverage adjustments

This research examines the effect of product market threats on firms’ leverage adjustments. We find that competitive pressures from the product market accelerate the leverage speed of adjustment (SOA) toward the target capital structure. To establish the causal effect of competitive threats on SOA, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment provided by large import tariff reductions in the U.S. manufacturing sector and show a significant increase in firms’ leverage adjustments after large tariff cuts. The impact of product market threats on leverage adjustments is more pronounced for firms with poor governance quality and exposed to product market threats. Finally, to the extent that reaching the target capital structure enhances firm value, we note that the faster SOA following competition translates into higher firm value. Overall, our study highlights the “bright side” of product market competition and suggests that agency conflicts between managers and shareholders are attenuated by intensified competition.

Entrepreneurial Orientation among Arts Managers in Western Australia

As a region, Western Australia is the largest and most isolated state in Australia, and supports a community of vibrant Arts Organisations. The Arts is widely recognised for its creativity and innovation, but what about the managers of these organisations, are they equally innovative, or entrepreneurial? Rusak (2016) explored this question and found that their Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) matched the three core dimensions of Innovativeness, Pro-activeness, and Risk-taking, but the study did not include the other two EO dimensions of Autonomy and Competitive Aggressiveness. It did however observe that "arts companies don’t generally try to take offensive postures or aggressive responses to competitive threats and rather work collaboratively, as this sample shows". This assertion was not the focus of the article, nor was it explored in any depth in that paper.
 There are at least two possibilities here: it could be a passive aversion to competitive aggression, or a more deliberate counter-behaviour of collaboration. Either of these would appear to contradict the EO construct, in particular the expectation that all EO dimensions covary, which makes it interesting from a theory perspective. This paper explores this challenge to the EO theory in some detail, using software-aided analysis to tease out the finer nuances in this dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness. While the sample size and its geographical confines limit the generalisations that can be made, there is solid evidence that in this sample of Arts Managers, the Arts acts as a powerful contextual modifier to the expectations of EO theory. The dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness has not simply been altered or toned-down by this context, it has been replaced by a polar opposite.

Exploring the strategies of online and offline recycling channels in closed-loop supply chain under government subsidy.

The influence of online and offline dual recycling channels in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) is investigated in our work. The CLSC models of three recycling modes (single online recycling, single offline recycling, and dual recycling channels of online and offline) are established, respectively, and the impact of government subsidies on the pricing decision-making and recycling mode selection of channel members is therefore researched. The study found that the remanufacturer sets appropriate recycling price and transfer price to coordinate online and offline recycling channels and maximize its profits in the dual recycling modes; collector's offline recycling faces the competitive threat of remanufacturers' online recycling under the dual recycling modes, so the collector prefers a single offline recycling mode; the relationship between the collection quantities of the three modes depends on consumers' preference of the online recycling channel. In the meanwhile, it is illustrated that government subsidy plays a positive role in promoting the recycling and remanufacturing willingness of remanufacturers and collectors. This work provides practical insights for the CLSC system to make recycle decisions.

Competitive Advantage Threats and Opportunities in the South African Clothing, Textiles, Leather, and Footwear (CTLF) Industry

Despite the employment and competitive advantage decline experienced in previous years, the South African clothing, textile, leather, and footwear (SACTLF) industry is still a significant contributor to the country’s manufacturing sector. To restore employment figures last seen a decade ago in the industry, the SACTLF has to explore competitive advantage threats and opportunities, among others. To explore competitive advantage threats and opportunities in the SACTLF industry, a leading SACTLF retail group and two leading clothing manufacturers’ associations (representing over 100 CTLF organisations) were purposefully sampled and interviewed. Emerging from the transcripts is that the low rate of innovation and lack of access to manufacturing inputs are the main competitive advantage threats. Strengthening quick-response time and localisation emerged as competitively advantageous opportunities. This article’s findings show that the SACTLF industry has the potential to develop a competitive advantage. The findings of the study contribute new knowledge to the literature.
 
 Received: 27 July 2021 / Accepted: 7 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Opening the OTC drug market: The effect of deregulation on retail pharmacy’s performance

Governments in many countries have deregulated the retail pharmacy market to offer easier and broader access to pharmacy services. Such deregulation has spurred the competition by allowing the entry of new drug distribution channels. Current research leverages the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law revision introduced in South Korea in November 2012. The policy change allowed 24-hour convenience stores to sell 13 first-aid drugs directly to patients. This research investigates the causal effect of new retailers’ entry on incumbent pharmacies’ financial performance in terms of pricing, revenue, and market exit. The findings, based on the panel data of 2,795 pharmacies in a 36-month period from 2011 to 2013, suggest deregulation posed a significant competitive threat to incumbent pharmacies, resulting in lower average prices for the deregulated drugs, significant drops in revenue and accelerated financial failures. A significant heterogeneity in the treatment effect is found across pharmacies. Pharmacies with less loyal customers and poorer financial performance suffered more after deregulation. Our findings suggest that although such deregulation is intended to enhance consumers’ access to health care, opening the OTC drug market to new retailers may hamper consumers’ access to pharmacy services because of the exit from the market of underperforming incumbents.

Competitive pressure and firm investment efficiency: Evidence from corporate employment decisions

AbstractThis study examines the link between product market competition and labour investment efficiency. We find that competitive pressure distorts the efficiency of corporate employment decisions by creating an underinvestment problem. This finding withstands a battery of robustness checks and remains unchanged after accounting for endogeneity concerns. Additional analysis shows that the relationship between product market competition and labour investment efficiency is stronger for firms facing higher competitive threats, greater financial constraints, higher information asymmetry and higher labour adjustment costs. Our results suggest that as competition increases bankruptcy risk, it leads managers to underinvest in labour to avoid incurring labour‐related costs.

State and municipal preferences: impact on competition

The article considers the institute of state and municipal from the point of view of its impact on competition. Based on the analysis of the legislation and practice of making decisions by the antimonopoly bodies on giving consent to the granting of state or municipal preferences, studying the experience of the European Union, it is concluded that there is a threat of restricting competition even if the antimonopoly body agrees to grant preferences. The importance of the antimonopoly body's assessment of the proportion of positive and negative consequences of such provision of preferences is noted.

Can community involvement policies mitigate NIMBYism and local opposition to asylum seeker centres?

Local governments have to take authoritative decisions about the placement of controversial but necessary facilities such as Asylum Seeker Centres (ASCs). Opposition from local residents against such facilities is often considered to be an expression of NIMBYism. This article explores whether a policy of community involvement addressing the underlying reasons for local opposition can mitigate such opposition towards an ASC. It uses a mixed methods approach combining survey data and semi-structured interviews among neighbourhood residents about an ASC in Utrecht. Local opposition is associated with experiences of economic competition and cultural threat. The policy strategy did not moderate these effects. Those who became involved were a selective group of locals who were largely already accepting of the centre and its inhabitants and involvement was often incidental. However, contact between asylum seekers and neighbours developing within and beyond the ASC mediated the effect of cultural threat – confirming Allport’s contact hypothesis.

Business model innovation in video-game consoles to face the threats of mobile gaming: Evidence from the case of Sony PlayStation

This paper investigates how videogame consoles have innovated their business model (BM) in response to the entrance of mobile gaming. Business Model Innovation (BMI) is widely recognized in management literature as a strategic tool that incumbent firms can leverage to face the competitive threat of new entrants. However, none of the previous work has addressed this topic for the context of videogame industry. With the aim of filling this gap, we explored the case of Sony PlayStation by adopting a qualitative approach. All the innovations that were identified were coded in terms of value creation and value capture mechanisms. We detected that the evolution of the Sony PlayStation's BM can be articulated in four phases where mechanisms typical of mobile games have been detected and incrementally integrated. Our findings were finally discussed to highlight novel insights about the innovations implemented by Sony, that can be beneficial for both scholars and practitioners. Indeed, this paper contributes to the academic debate in the field of BMI research as well as offers practical indications for managers and executives of incumbent firms that face the competition of new entrants in their industry.

Neural encoding of perceived patch value during competitive and hazardous virtual foraging

Natural observations suggest that in safe environments, organisms avoid competition to maximize gain, while in hazardous environments the most effective survival strategy is to congregate with competition to reduce the likelihood of predatory attack. We probed the extent to which survival decisions in humans follow these patterns, and examined the factors that determined individual-level decision-making. In a virtual foraging task containing changing levels of competition in safe and hazardous patches with virtual predators, we demonstrate that human participants inversely select competition avoidant and risk diluting strategies depending on perceived patch value (PPV), a computation dependent on reward, threat, and competition. We formulate a mathematically grounded quantification of PPV in social foraging environments and show using multivariate fMRI analyses that PPV is encoded by mid-cingulate cortex (MCC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortices (vMPFC), regions that integrate action and value signals. Together, these results suggest humans utilize and integrate multidimensional information to adaptively select patches highest in PPV, and that MCC and vMPFC play a role in adapting to both competitive and predatory threats in a virtual foraging setting.

MENTORING PROGRAM: Empowerment and Human Resources Development

The need for quality employees is a necessity, this is believed to be able to help the company in achieving its goals. In fact, the highest quality employees can drive rapid progress and help companies stand out from competition and global business threats. Based on this, the company is aware of an effort to develop employees in the right way, namely through mentoring or mentoring programs. This study aims to identify, analyze, and suggest how to develop employees well through a mentoring program. To answer this goal, a qualitative scientific method was used. Data and information were obtained through observation and interviews with employees of Hutama Karya companies who participated in the mentoring program. While the analytical method using descriptive technique. The results of the study show that mentoring programs can help employees accelerate their abilities and increase better opportunities. The interesting thing about this program is that the company has an effective leadership regeneration system, so that it can help maintain the company's existence in the future

The Causes of Societal Discrimination against Religious Minorities in Christian-Majority Countries

Using the Religion and State-Minorities and WVS datasets, this study examined the impact of religiosity in Christian-majority countries on societal religious discrimination (i.e., discrimination by non-state actors) against religious minorities. We found that increased levels of religious activity and commitment in a country lead to less discrimination against Muslim and Jewish religious minorities but more discrimination against Christian minorities. We offered two explanations for this complex relationship. First, when Christian-majority nations hold high levels of religiosity, other Abrahamic religions are potential allies in the fight against secularism. Second, in religiously active Christian-majority nations, the majority religion views Christian minorities (rather than Jews and Muslims) as an unwanted competitive threat because denomination switching is more common within the same religious tradition.

TOPICAL ISSUES OF ECONOMIC SECURITY

This paper will consider certain aspects of unfair competition and the economic security of an organization. For greater clarity and clarity, the threats of unfair competition were considered in two categories: industrial espionage and unfair advertising.

Foreign competition threat and ethnic minority inclusion in the board

The underrepresentation of ethnic minorities among directors of corporate boards has been widely recognized as a challenging issue for Corporate America. In this paper, we draw on a branch of social categorization theory and argue that competition threat from a foreign source enhances ethnic minority inclusion in the board by lowering existing intergroup bias. Foreign competition threat blurs the boundaries between ingroup (white directors) and outgroup (minority directors) and makes the common domestic identity and fate more salient. Leveraging the exogeneous shock that increased foreign competition threats — that is, China’s accession to the WTO in late 2001 and the predetermined industry variation in the importation costs — we devise a difference-in-differences study where we predict that the U.S. manufacturing firms facing greater competition threats from Chinese imports are more likely to have minority directors on their boards. The results support our theory, where firms exposed to high foreign competition threats are 15% more likely to include minority directors on their board than the unconditional probability. In line with the theory, our supplementary analysis shows that those exposed firms also express more “oneness” after the shock as they increase the usage of the collective pronoun “we” in their annual report. A series of robustness tests and supplementary analyses support our theory on ethnic minority inclusion and address potential alternative explanations.

Making Sense of Factor Market Blind Spots: Evidence from Personnel Mobility Networks, 2008-2015

A foundational assumption of competitive dynamics research holds that competition in product markets antecedes awareness of competitive threats, and thus factor market threats are most salient among product market rivals. However, changing economic and technological conditions of digital arenas are enabling threats to encroach from seemingly unrelated domains. Addressing the problem of factor market blind spots (i.e., competitive threats in factor markets without corresponding product market overlap), this study applies a sensemaking lens to develop a model for attentional triangulation, which integrates multilevel, relational cues—firm status, dyadic category similarity, and triadic closure—for triangulating areas of high factor market threat despite low product market awareness. We find support for our hypotheses using a multiplex network sample that combines customer-oriented competitive relations and personnel mobility network data in the information technology arena during 2008-2015.

The determinants of openness to competitors:An integrated perspective of capacity and rational views

Absorptive capacity view suggests that innovation failure as an activation trigger will intensify a firm’s capacity to outsource from external relationships. This view appears to be challenged when applying to competitive contexts whereby the firm may be sensitive to competitors’ threats. We examine two modes of openness to competitors – bilateral (i.e., formal cooperation) and unilateral (i.e., external search) – which differ in the extent to which the focal firm is bound up with competitors and thereby face different levels of competitive threats. Using a panel data of Spanish manufacturing and service firms, we show that firms with high absorptive capacity, operationalized by more R&D investments, are more likely to open with competitors in forms of both external search and formal cooperation. However, we find that firms tend to be rational in the respect of selecting specific modes – they prefer unilateral modes (i.e., external search) over bilateral ones (i.e., formal cooperation), especially when they experienced innovation failures. Our work integrates the absorptive capacity view, which deems R&D investment and innovation failure to be the drivers of firm openness, with a rational view (transaction cost economics), which highlights firm’s rationality of risk aversion in selecting openness modes.

Identifikasi Potensi Desa Tawaang Timur Sebagai Salah Satu Daya Tarik Wisata di Minahasa Selatan

The development of the province of North Sulawesi, specifically South Minahasa, especiallyEast Tawaang Village, has a very interesting potential to be developed into a rural touristdestination. However, to develop these destinations, it is necessary to identify what potentialscan become the backbone of the area. Determining the identification of potential in the area willfacilitate the initial steps for strategy preparation and initial mapping as one of the leadingdestinations in South Minahasa.Qualitative descriptive research method is used to determine the potential that exists in thevillage of East Tawaang and is supported by interviews of related people to get valid results. Theresults of this research show that the village of Tawaang Timur has various potentials that can bedeveloped.By formulating a SWOT analysis, it can be found that the strengths of East Tawaang Villageinclude the potential for natural tourism, culture and local arts. Natural tourism such as moinitbeach, songkur beach, mangrove forest, BTO dam has natural tourist attractions. Art tourismwhich is the basis of the Minahasa art, such as the kebesaran dance, lenso, and the culture ofmaking traditional cap tikus needs to be a concern. weakness of East tawaang Village in terms ofinfrastructure and human resources.From the village profile, there are still many people who have very low education, infrastructureto get to tourist attractions is still lacking, roads that are still damaged or not even paved, publictoilets are not available, restaurants or eating places that have not been formed and properlyorganized, service and cleanliness which is very minimal, lodging, souvenir shops that are notyet available must be a priority that need fixing. The involvement of the local government andlocal communities is very lacking in understanding the tourism potential in the village of EastTawaang. There are many opportunities for East Tawaang Village, the potential for nature, artsand culture should be able to be explored deeper and be prepared more thoroughly to become atourist village because this village has potentials that are very rarely found in other villages,traditional arts need to be formed and traditionalized to children - Adolescents and young people,dance studios are made to shape the character of the citizens' arts and culture, and can bedisplayed in front of tourists visiting potential places, training on handicrafts to make souvenirobjects that can be used as a driving force for the tourism economy. The village of TawaangTimur has threats from other villages if they are late or do not think that the tourism sector is amainstay of the village, in addition to the threat of competition, the threat of local cultural threatsthat are degraded due to technological developments can be lostKeywords: Identification, Potential, Tourist Attraction

Impact of employees’ perceived threat of market competition on unethical marketing and selling practices: Moral disengagement and ethical leadership

AbstractThis study draws on the social cognitive theory to examine the effect of perceived market competition on employees’ unethical marketing and selling practices. The boundary conditions associated with this relationship were examined, and we posit that perceived market competition is related to unethical marketing and selling practices through the mediating mechanism of moral disengagement. We further propose that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between the perceived threat of market competition, moral disengagement, and tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 387 employees working in the banking sector in Pakistan. Our results suggest that moral disengagement had a full mediation effect between the perceived threat of market competition and tendency of employees toward unethical marketing and selling practices. Moreover, ethical leadership moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and the tendency of employees toward unethical marketing practices. The research findings indicate that when field employees encounter threat perceptions due to market competition, they have a propensity toward engaging in unethical marketing and selling practices when they can activate moral disengagement. This study also found that ethical leadership negatively moderates the relationship of moral disengagement with employees’ tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices.