Cognitive mapping the topic of hypercompetition

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.

14. Rūhli, E. 1997. "The concept of hypercompetition - a new approach to strategic management in large multinational firms" Strategic Change 6, Wiley: 377-390.

15. Sammut-Bonnici, T. 2014. "Hypercompetition" in Cooper, C.L. (editor) Encyclopedia  of Management, Wiley.

16. 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.