Cognitive mapping the topic of hypercompetition
Joseph
Kim-keung Ho
Independent Trainer
Hong Kong, China
Abstract: The topic of hypercompetition in
the subject of Strategic Management is complex. By making use of the cognitive
mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the hypercompetition
topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of hypercompetition. The
result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on hypercompetition, should
be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping,
literature review and hypercompetition.
Key words: Hypercompetition,
cognitive mapping, literature review
Introduction
As a
topic in Strategic Management, hypercompetition is complex. It is thus useful
to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature
review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management,
the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping
technique can be employed to go through a literature review on hypercompetition. This literature review
exercise is taken up and reported in this article.
On the cognitive mapping exercise for
literature review
Literature
review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing
final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two
topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled
some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial
intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting
literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the
cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims
(1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature
on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps
involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:
Step 1:
gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Hypercompetition.
This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and
associated references.
Step 2: consolidate the main points from Table 1 to come up with
a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).
Step 3: link
up the cognitive map variables in a
plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under
review.
The next
section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on hypercompetition.
Descriptions of cognitive map variables on
the hypercompetition topic
From the
reading of some academic articles on Hypercompetition, a number of main points
(e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the writer. They are shown in Table 1 with
explicit referencing on the points.
Table 1: Main
points from the hypercompetition literature and referencing
|
Main points from the hypercompetition
literature
|
Referencing
|
|
Point 1: "Many industries have entered
into a state of competition called hyper-competition. Hyper-competition
is a state of competition within an industry with some very alarming characteristics:
*Advantage... *Innovation.... *Competitive
Escalation... Customer Power.... *Value
Proposition... *End of Chivalry... *End of Customer Loyalty... *Market Disruption as the
Rule... Hyper-competition is a state
of intense and often lethal competition".
|
Boar, B.H. 1998. "Hyper-competition part 1: The
new struggle for advantage" July.
|
|
Point
2: "Hypercompetition is
created by the acceleration of competitive moves in an industry where firms must
react quickly to develop their competitive advantage and to erode the
advantages of competitors. The strategic activity deployed in
hypercompetitive markets consists of rapid tactical responses in the form of
new products, processes, and business models. The objective of hypercompetitive
firms is to thrive in dynamic markets by unsettling existing standards and norms
of operation, and by generating a constant flow of short-term
advantages".
|
Sammut-Bonnici,
T. 2014. "Hypercompetition" in Cooper, C.L. (editor) Encyclopedia of Management, Wiley.
|
|
Point 3: "Hypercompetition may occur
in high-tech and low-tech industries, from internet services to automobile,
food, beverage, clothing, and building industries. It is typical of markets where
products, standards, and rules have shifted. The status quo of doing business
has been disrupted by competitors and by other external factors in the
environment.".
|
Sammut-Bonnici,
T. 2014. "Hypercompetition" in Cooper, C.L. (editor) Encyclopedia of Management, Wiley.
|
|
Point 4: "Corporate organizational approaches designed
to fit one stable environment must be reoriented to respond to the need for
greater flexibility to handle, potentially, continually shifting environments
(Volberda, 1996). Corporate competencies are eroded by frequent
discontinuities (Hamel, 2000). Idiosyncratic business-specific knowledge
bases are rendered obsolete or even misleading by shifts in basic market
relationships (Argote, 1999). Performance trends are, therefore, inherently
more difficult to sustain in such markets. Persistently successful businesses,
if any, emphasize entrepreneurship, adaptability to unstable and
fast-changing market circumstances, and adroit management of fluid, often
ephemeral assets and dynamic capabilities".
|
Mcnamara, G., P.M. Vaaler and C. Devers.
2003. "Same as it ever was: the search for evidence of increasing
hypercompetition" Strategic
Management Journal 24, Wiley: 261-278.
|
|
Point 5: "Thomas (1996: 221) finds
evidence of a generalized ‘hypercompetitive shift’ across U.S. industries from
the 1950s to the early 1990s, leading him to conclude that ‘competition in
the American economy has fundamentally changed over the last few decades from
static to dynamic.’ Hamel (2000) argues that basic organizational and market assumptions
in strategy merit reassessment given recent increases in the speed of change
in their environments, a view echoed by Brown and Eisenhardt (1998) when
referring to high-velocity industries transformed by ‘new economy’ technologies".
|
Mcnamara, G., P.M. Vaaler and C. Devers.
2003. "Same as it ever was: the search for evidence of increasing
hypercompetition" Strategic
Management Journal 24, Wiley: 261-278.
|
|
Point 6: ".... assumptions and
prescriptive implications of an emerging ‘strategic entrepreneurship’
perspective in this decade (Hitt et al., 2001) exhibit several similarities
to those maintained by D’Aveni and other hypercompetition proponents in the
previous decade. For example, as with hypercompetition, a strategic
entrepreneurship view assumes increased instability in the manager’s
environment and suggests the pursuit of more flexible organizational boundaries
and strategies (Amit and Zott, 2001), as well as competitive advantage based on
exploitation of short-term opportunities arising from greater environmental
uncertainty".
|
Mcnamara, G., P.M. Vaaler and C. Devers.
2003. "Same as it ever was: the search for evidence of increasing
hypercompetition" Strategic
Management Journal 24, Wiley: 261-278.
|
|
Point 7: "Focusing on the idea of boundary
rationality, we explored the mechanism that the cognition of top managers
affects the process of acquiring and maintaining competitive advantage. There
are three sub-questions: the theoretical study of managerial cognition based
on the view of boundary rationality; why and how managerial cognition affects
strategic behavior, then affects the acquiring and maintaining of competitive
advantage; and why and how managerial cognition affects the evolution of
organizational capability then affects the acquiring and maintaining of
competitive advantage".
|
Shang, H. and P. Huang and Y. Guo. 2010.
"Managerial cognition: the sources of sustainable competitive advantage
in hypercompetition" Nankai
Business Review International 1(4), Emerald: 444-459.
|
|
Point 8: ".... top managers must
understand the environment, construct strategic problems and make decisions
by managerial cognition. “Managerial cognition” in this paper is the pattern
that is formed in the long-term process of business. This pattern, so-called
cognitive schema, causal schema or mental models, depends on the perspective
and understanding that is found by the experiences before. And it is based on
the manager’s knowledge and experience and has the characteristic of
repeatability. Essentially, it is a kind of pattern, and is called “cognition
pattern”, “cognition inertia”..".
|
Shang, H. and P. Huang and Y. Guo. 2010.
"Managerial cognition: the sources of sustainable competitive advantage
in hypercompetition" Nankai
Business Review International 1(4), Emerald: 444-459.
|
|
Point 9: "In a hypercompetition
environment, the key to acquiring and maintaining competitive advantage is to
focus on the dynamic mechanism of convention (Schreyogg and Kliesch, 2007).
Managerial cognition reaches the objective of organizational capability
evolution by reinforcing the “behavioral convention” of dynamic capability. Dynamic
capability is one kind of organizational capability, and essentially is one
kind of routine".
|
Shang, H. and P. Huang and Y. Guo. 2010.
"Managerial cognition: the sources of sustainable competitive advantage
in hypercompetition" Nankai
Business Review International 1(4), Emerald: 444-459.
|
|
Point 10: " A common sentiment among strategic
management scholars and practicing managers is that competition is becoming
increasingly intense and dynamic, making it difficult for firms to sustain advantages.
Among scholars, Bettis and Hitt (1995) highlighted the increasing pace of
technological change and strategic discontinuities. Others have drawn
attention to the Red Queen effect or the idea that a competitive success
spurs rivals to respond with their own innovative actions to enhance
performance".
|
Chen, M.J., H.C. Lin and J.G. Michel. 2010. "Navigating in a hypercompetitive environment: the
roles of action aggressiveness and TMT integration" Strategic Management Journal 31, Wiley: 1410-1430.
|
|
Point 11: "Hypercompetition and
competitive dynamics constitute two primary perspectives for understanding how
the dynamism and competitive intensity of a business environment lead to
temporary advantage. Identified as an ‘environment in which advantages are
rapidly created and destroyed’ (D’Aveni, 1994: 2), hypercompetition is ‘characterized
by intense and rapid competitive moves, in which competitors must move
quickly to build advantages and erode the advantage of their rivals’..".
|
Chen, M.J., H.C. Lin and J.G. Michel. 2010. "Navigating in a hypercompetitive environment: the
roles of action aggressiveness and TMT integration" Strategic Management Journal 31, Wiley: 1410-1430.
|
|
Point 12: "To enhance our
understanding of hypercompetition, particularly at the individual firm level,
we turn to competitive dynamics research, which focuses on the exchange of
moves among rivals (Smith, Ferrier, and Ndofor, 2001). This line of work has
shown the significance of action and response attributes, such as volume
(Ferrier, Smith, and Grimm, 1999) and speed (Yu and Cannella, 2007), but has
paid relatively little attention to the environmental context in which these attributes
emerge".
|
Chen, M.J., H.C. Lin and J.G. Michel. 2010. "Navigating in a hypercompetitive environment: the
roles of action aggressiveness and TMT integration" Strategic Management Journal 31, Wiley: 1410-1430.
|
|
Point 13: "Accelerated competition, also known as
hypercompetition, calls for players to produce strategies to enable them to
survive over rapidly unfolding series of contests. This is because contest-specific
strategies, and the barriers they set up against competitors, quickly
disintegrate in the face of disruptive moves made by aggressive rivals (D’Aveni,
1994, p. 10). Hypercompetition thus differs from normal competition, as it
involves a departure from the usual type of competitive equilibrium. If, as
D’Aveni claims, this phenomenon is of recent origin, the question becomes
whether hypercompetition is simply a passing phase or whether it will be a
more enduring phenomenon".
|
Parayre, R. and D. Hurry. 2001.
"Corporate Investment and Strategic Stability in Hypercompetition" Managerial and Decision Economics 22:
281-298.
|
|
Point 14: "Innovation provides a way
for a firm to extend its technological capabilities. It also offers a way for
the firm’s technology, or other knowledge-derived competence, to replicate
itself in a new product. The process by which knowledge evolves through new
forms of application is known as memetic evolution (Dawkins, 1989). The
phenomenon is as real and natural as its genetic counterpart in all aspects
that matter to the process of evolution/
natural selection".
|
Parayre, R. and D. Hurry. 2001.
"Corporate Investment and Strategic Stability in Hypercompetition" Managerial and Decision Economics 22:
281-298.
|
|
Point 15: "Proponents argue that a wide range of
industries has exhibited hypercompetition in recent decades (Thomas, 1996;
Wiggins and Ruefli, 2005). Skeptics argue that ‘hypercompetition is a
self-inflicted wound, not the inevitable outcome of a changing paradigm of
competition’ (Porter, 1996: 61). Some studies do not find empirical evidence
supporting broad-based, long-term increases in hypercompetition (Castrogiovanni,
2002; McNamara, Vaaler, and Devers, 2003). They argue that hypercompetition may
be limited to a subset of high-technology industries".
|
Lee, C.H., N. Venkatraman, H. Tanriverdi
and B. Iyer. 2010. "Complementarity-based hypercompetition in the
software industry: theory and empirical test, 1990-2002" Strategic Management Journal 31,
Wiley: 1431-1456.
|
|
Point 16: "The software industry is
often cited as the epitome of high-technology industries in which hypercompetition
may be the most pronounced. It is characterized by high-velocity innovation (Brown
and Eisenhardt, 1997), technological change (Schmalensee, 2000), and
turbulence in revenues, market shares, and profits of firms (Baldwin and
Clark, 2000; Schmalensee, 2000; Shapiro and Varian, 1999). However, there is
lack of large sample empirical evidence concerning the presence and nature of
hypercompetition in the software industry".
|
Lee, C.H., N. Venkatraman, H. Tanriverdi
and B. Iyer. 2010. "Complementarity-based hypercompetition in the
software industry: theory and empirical test, 1990-2002" Strategic Management Journal 31,
Wiley: 1431-1456.
|
|
Point 17: "The strategy oriented hypercompetition
paradigm (D’Aveni, 1994; Ilinitch et al., 1996) is a relatively recent dynamic
approach to framing competitive strategy. In contrast to Porter’s industry
structure and competitive strategy perspective (Porter, 1980), the major
contribution of the hypercompetition paradigm is its concentration on
competitive dynamics and exploration of the patterns and pathways of
strategic maneuvering that take place among industrial competitors".
|
Fiegenhaum, A., H. Thomas and M.J. Tang.
2001. "Linking Hypercompetition and Strategic Group Theories: Strategic
Maneuvering in the US Insurance Industry" Managerial and Decision Economics 22, Wiley: 265-279.
|
|
Point 18: "In Scherer and Ross’s
terminology, hypercompetition (D’Aveni, 1994) can be viewed as either differentiated
oligopoly or monopolistic competition, but not as anything really ‘new’.
Hypercompetitive markets exhibit some aspects of oligopoly, and some of
perfect competition, but are not some simple combination of
both".
|
Fiegenhaum, A., H. Thomas and M.J. Tang.
2001. "Linking Hypercompetition and Strategic Group Theories: Strategic
Maneuvering in the US Insurance Industry" Managerial and Decision Economics 22, Wiley: 265-279.
|
|
Point 19: " In essence,
hypercompetition is a lens developed for a strategy perspective that focuses
on particular aspects of competition and rivalry, including the dynamics of
strategic maneuvering, competences and capabilities, speed, timing and differentiation.
It is also evolutionary because it allows that individual competitors choose
among a variety of strategic pathways, more than one of which may be
compatible with a single (global) equilibrium, should one exist; i.e. local
equilibria are not uniquely determined by a global equilibrium".
|
Fiegenhaum, A., H. Thomas and M.J. Tang.
2001. "Linking Hypercompetition and Strategic Group Theories: Strategic
Maneuvering in the US Insurance Industry" Managerial and Decision Economics 22, Wiley: 265-279.
|
|
Point 20: "Although the strategic
groups’ theory started from a static perspective, recent studies have focused
on the strategic mechanisms, a key concept of the hypercompetition paradigm, that
define movement across groups".
|
Fiegenhaum, A., H. Thomas and M.J. Tang.
2001. "Linking Hypercompetition and Strategic Group Theories: Strategic
Maneuvering in the US Insurance Industry" Managerial and Decision Economics 22, Wiley: 265-279.
|
|
Point 21: ".... a hypercompetitive firm not only has to
constantly destruct competitive advantages of opponents but also has to keep
on destroying its own competitive advantages".
|
Rūhli, E. 1997. "The concept of
hypercompetition - a new approach to strategic management in large
multinational firms" Strategic
Change 6, Wiley: 377-390.
|
With a
set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map
variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1.
These variables are presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Cognitive
map variables based on Table 1
|
Cognitive
map variables
|
Literature
review points
|
|
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in hypercompetition
|
Point 5: "Thomas (1996: 221) finds
evidence of a generalized ‘hypercompetitive shift’ across U.S. industries from
the 1950s to the early 1990s, leading him to conclude that ‘competition in
the American economy has fundamentally changed over the last few decades from
static to dynamic.’ Hamel (2000) argues that basic organizational and market assumptions
in strategy merit reassessment given recent increases in the speed of change
in their environments, a view echoed by Brown and Eisenhardt (1998) when
referring to high-velocity industries transformed by ‘new economy’ technologies".
Point 10: " A common sentiment among strategic
management scholars and practicing managers is that competition is becoming
increasingly intense and dynamic, making it difficult for firms to sustain advantages.
Among scholars, Bettis and Hitt (1995) highlighted the increasing pace of
technological change and strategic discontinuities. Others have drawn
attention to the Red Queen effect or the idea that a competitive success
spurs rivals to respond with their own innovative actions to enhance
performance".
Point 13: "Accelerated competition, also known as
hypercompetition, calls for players to produce strategies to enable them to
survive over rapidly unfolding series of contests. This is because contest-specific
strategies, and the barriers they set up against competitors, quickly
disintegrate in the face of disruptive moves made by aggressive rivals (D’Aveni,
1994, p. 10). Hypercompetition thus differs from normal competition, as it
involves a departure from the usual type of competitive equilibrium. If, as
D’Aveni claims, this phenomenon is of recent origin, the question becomes
whether hypercompetition is simply a passing phase or whether it will be a
more enduring phenomenon".
|
|
Variable 2: Improve intellectual
understanding of hypercompetition
|
Point 1: "Many industries have entered
into a state of competition called hyper-competition. Hyper-competition
is a state of competition within an industry with some very alarming characteristics:
*Advantage... *Innovation.... *Competitive
Escalation... Customer Power.... *Value
Proposition... *End of Chivalry... *End of Customer Loyalty... *Market Disruption as the
Rule... Hyper-competition is a state
of intense and often lethal competition".
Point
2: "Hypercompetition is
created by the acceleration of competitive moves in an industry where firms must
react quickly to develop their competitive advantage and to erode the
advantages of competitors. The strategic activity deployed in
hypercompetitive markets consists of rapid tactical responses in the form of
new products, processes, and business models. The objective of hypercompetitive
firms is to thrive in dynamic markets by unsettling existing standards and norms
of operation, and by generating a constant flow of short-term
advantages".
Point 6: ".... assumptions and
prescriptive implications of an emerging ‘strategic entrepreneurship’
perspective in this decade (Hitt et al., 2001) exhibit several similarities
to those maintained by D’Aveni and other hypercompetition proponents in the
previous decade. For example, as with hypercompetition, a strategic
entrepreneurship view assumes increased instability in the manager’s
environment and suggests the pursuit of more flexible organizational boundaries
and strategies (Amit and Zott, 2001), as well as competitive advantage based on
exploitation of short-term opportunities arising from greater environmental
uncertainty".
Point 7: "Focusing on the idea of boundary
rationality, we explored the mechanism that the cognition of top managers
affects the process of acquiring and maintaining competitive advantage. There
are three sub-questions: the theoretical study of managerial cognition based
on the view of boundary rationality; why and how managerial cognition affects
strategic behavior, then affects the acquiring and maintaining of competitive
advantage; and why and how managerial cognition affects the evolution of
organizational capability then affects the acquiring and maintaining of
competitive advantage".
Point 8: ".... top managers must
understand the environment, construct strategic problems and make decisions
by managerial cognition. “Managerial cognition” in this paper is the pattern
that is formed in the long-term process of business. This pattern, so-called
cognitive schema, causal schema or mental models, depends on the perspective
and understanding that is found by the experiences before. And it is based on
the manager’s knowledge and experience and has the characteristic of
repeatability. Essentially, it is a kind of pattern, and is called “cognition
pattern”, “cognition inertia”..".
Point 11: "Hypercompetition and
competitive dynamics constitute two primary perspectives for understanding how
the dynamism and competitive intensity of a business environment lead to
temporary advantage. Identified as an ‘environment in which advantages are
rapidly created and destroyed’ (D’Aveni, 1994: 2), hypercompetition is ‘characterized
by intense and rapid competitive moves, in which competitors must move
quickly to build advantages and erode the advantage of their rivals’..".
Point 12: "To enhance our
understanding of hypercompetition, particularly at the individual firm level,
we turn to competitive dynamics research, which focuses on the exchange of
moves among rivals (Smith, Ferrier, and Ndofor, 2001). This line of work has
shown the significance of action and response attributes, such as volume
(Ferrier, Smith, and Grimm, 1999) and speed (Yu and Cannella, 2007), but has
paid relatively little attention to the environmental context in which these attributes
emerge".
Point 17: "The strategy oriented hypercompetition
paradigm (D’Aveni, 1994; Ilinitch et al., 1996) is a relatively recent dynamic
approach to framing competitive strategy. In contrast to Porter’s industry
structure and competitive strategy perspective (Porter, 1980), the major
contribution of the hypercompetition paradigm is its concentration on
competitive dynamics and exploration of the patterns and pathways of
strategic maneuvering that take place among industrial competitors".
Point 18: "In Scherer and Ross’s
terminology, hypercompetition (D’Aveni, 1994) can be viewed as either differentiated
oligopoly or monopolistic competition, but not as anything really ‘new’.
Hypercompetitive markets exhibit some aspects of oligopoly, and some of
perfect competition, but are not some simple combination of
both".
Point 19: " In essence,
hypercompetition is a lens developed for a strategy perspective that focuses
on particular aspects of competition and rivalry, including the dynamics of
strategic maneuvering, competences and capabilities, speed, timing and differentiation.
It is also evolutionary because it allows that individual competitors choose
among a variety of strategic pathways, more than one of which may be
compatible with a single (global) equilibrium, should one exist; i.e. local
equilibria are not uniquely determined by a global equilibrium".
Point 20: "Although the strategic
groups’ theory started from a static perspective, recent studies have focused
on the strategic mechanisms, a key concept of the hypercompetition paradigm, that
define movement across groups".
|
|
Variable 3: Effective hypercompetition
practices
|
Point 4: "Corporate organizational approaches designed
to fit one stable environment must be reoriented to respond to the need for
greater flexibility to handle, potentially, continually shifting environments
(Volberda, 1996). Corporate competencies are eroded by frequent
discontinuities (Hamel, 2000). Idiosyncratic business-specific knowledge
bases are rendered obsolete or even misleading by shifts in basic market
relationships (Argote, 1999). Performance trends are, therefore, inherently
more difficult to sustain in such markets. Persistently successful businesses,
if any, emphasize entrepreneurship, adaptability to unstable and
fast-changing market circumstances, and adroit management of fluid, often
ephemeral assets and dynamic capabilities".
Point 9: "In a hypercompetition
environment, the key to acquiring and maintaining competitive advantage is to
focus on the dynamic mechanism of convention (Schreyogg and Kliesch, 2007).
Managerial cognition reaches the objective of organizational capability
evolution by reinforcing the “behavioral convention” of dynamic capability. Dynamic
capability is one kind of organizational capability, and essentially is one
kind of routine".
Point 14: "Innovation provides a way
for a firm to extend its technological capabilities. It also offers a way for
the firm’s technology, or other knowledge-derived competence, to replicate
itself in a new product. The process by which knowledge evolves through new
forms of application is known as memetic evolution (Dawkins, 1989). The
phenomenon is as real and natural as its genetic counterpart in all aspects
that matter to the process of evolution/
natural selection".
Point 16: "The software industry is
often cited as the epitome of high-technology industries in which hypercompetition
may be the most pronounced. It is characterized by high-velocity innovation (Brown
and Eisenhardt, 1997), technological change (Schmalensee, 2000), and
turbulence in revenues, market shares, and profits of firms (Baldwin and
Clark, 2000; Schmalensee, 2000; Shapiro and Varian, 1999). However, there is
lack of large sample empirical evidence concerning the presence and nature of
hypercompetition in the software industry".
Point 21: ".... a hypercompetitive firm not only has to
constantly destruct competitive advantages of opponents but also has to keep
on destroying its own competitive advantages".
|
|
Variable 4: Learn from hypercompetition
practices
|
Point 3: "Hypercompetition may occur
in high-tech and low-tech industries, from internet services to automobile,
food, beverage, clothing, and building industries. It is typical of markets where
products, standards, and rules have shifted. The status quo of doing business
has been disrupted by competitors and by other external factors in the
environment.".
Point 15: "Proponents argue that a wide range of
industries has exhibited hypercompetition in recent decades (Thomas, 1996;
Wiggins and Ruefli, 2005). Skeptics argue that ‘hypercompetition is a
self-inflicted wound, not the inevitable outcome of a changing paradigm of
competition’ (Porter, 1996: 61). Some studies do not find empirical evidence
supporting broad-based, long-term increases in hypercompetition (Castrogiovanni,
2002; McNamara, Vaaler, and Devers, 2003). They argue that hypercompetition may
be limited to a subset of high-technology industries".
|
The next
step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on hypercompetition.
The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.
A cognitive map on hypercompetition and
its interpretation
By
relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a
cognitive map on hypercompetition, as shown in Figure 1.
These
cognitive map variables, four of them
altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of hypercompetition. The
links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences
between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to
an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in
one variable leads to a decrease in another variable. If there no signs shown on the arrows, that
means the influences can be positive or negative. For further information on hypercompetition,
readers are referred to the Literature on
hypercompetition Facebook page.
Concluding remarks
The
cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables
involved in hypercompetition. The resultant cognitive map promotes an
exploratory way to study hypercompetition in a holistic tone. The experience of
the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and
entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as hypercompetition in Strategic
Management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should
also find the article informative on this mapping topic.
Bibliography
1.
Boar, B.H. 1998. "Hyper-competition part 1: The new struggle for
advantage" July.
2.
Chen,
M.J., H.C. Lin and J.G. Michel. 2010.
"Navigating in a hypercompetitive
environment: the roles of action aggressiveness and TMT integration" Strategic Management Journal 31, Wiley:
1410-1430.
3.
Eden, C. and P.
Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70,
in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational
Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.
4.
Eden, C., C. Jones
and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in
Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and
management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
5.
Fiegenhaum,
A., H. Thomas and M.J. Tang. 2001. "Linking Hypercompetition and Strategic
Group Theories: Strategic Maneuvering in the US Insurance Industry" Managerial and Decision Economics 22,
Wiley: 265-279.
6.
Lee,
C.H., N. Venkatraman, H. Tanriverdi and B. Iyer. 2010.
"Complementarity-based hypercompetition in the software industry: theory
and empirical test, 1990-2002" Strategic
Management Journal 31, Wiley: 1431-1456.
7.
Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address:
https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).
8. Literature on hypercompetition
Facebook page, maintained by Joseph,
K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-hypercompetition-153215095252053/).
9. Literature on
literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).
10. Managerial intellectual learning
Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address:
https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).
11. Mcnamara, G., P.M.
Vaaler and C. Devers. 2003. "Same as it ever was: the search for evidence
of increasing hypercompetition" Strategic
Management Journal 24, Wiley: 261-278.
12. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University,
U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April
10, 2017].
13. Parayre, R. and D. Hurry. 2001.
"Corporate Investment and Strategic Stability in Hypercompetition" Managerial and Decision Economics 22:
281-298.
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