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The creation and management of temporary competitive advantages has emerged as an alternative to sustainable models of competitive advantage in the strategy literature. We review the literature and discuss questions related to the antecedents, consequences and the management temporary advantage in the introduction of this special issue. The overall goal is to ask: What would the field of strategic management look like if sustainable advantages did not exist? We summarize the papers published in this special issue and highlight directions for future research.

Digital technology has already upended the media and information sectors. It's about to do the same to the manufacturing economy, and pave the way for what can be called the \"pan-industrial\" strategy.

This exploratory study of 57 large bankruptcies and 57 matched survivors examined the top management team (TMT) characteristics associated with major corporate failure. Prior research was used to guide selection of specific team characteristics for study. Not only did the failing firms show significant annual, or cross-sectional, divergence from survivors on several indicators of TMT composition, but also those divergences became more pronounced, even accelerating, over the last five years of the bankrupts' lives. The results thus suggest that deterioration of the top management team is a central element of the downward spiral of large corporate failures. Based upon a limited test of causality, the authors propose that a two-way process is at work: (1) team deficiencies bring about or aggravate corporate deterioration, either through strategic errors or stakeholder uneasiness with the flawed team; and (2) corporate deterioration brings about team deterioration, through a combination of voluntary departures, scapegoating, and limited resources for attracting new executive talent.

Strong forces of change—globalization, demographic shifts (e.g., aging population and declining fertility rates), advances in information technology, demassification of society, and hypercompetition—are reshaping the competitive landscape worldwide. As a result, companies in most industries are not only undergoing rapid and radical change, but are also experiencing a fundamental shift in the rules of competition and the way the game of competition is played. The old, genteel, stable oligopolies that defined competition during the 20th century are rapidly restructuring. In their place are emerging markets fraught with uncertainty, diverse global players, rapid technological change, widespread price wars, and seemingly endless reorganization. That transition is occurring not only in the United States, but also in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In this issue, we demonstrate that (as predicted by those early researchers) a dramatic and far-reaching shift has occurred in the nature of competition in most industries. We present evidence that the shift has resulted in a new organizational paradigm that has been described as \"hypercompetition\".

This paper extends earlier work on an alternative view of bankruptcy suggesting that bankruptcy occurs when creditors withdraw then support from a firm's top management team. It further proposes that support for the top team depends upon the team's prestige. Five characteristics measuring the relative status of top teams were tested for their association with bankruptcy. Three of the characteristics focused on items commonly associated with membership in economic elites elite educational backgrounds, board memberships, and previous employment as officers in other corporations. The fourth and fifth characteristics focused on membership in political and military elites. The results indicated that political and board connections were negatively associated with bankruptcy in the year of failure, even when financial factors and cooptive board linkages were controlled. The results also showed that failing firms attempted to improve their managerial prestige three to four years before they failed. They were, however, unable to hold onto their gains because of the \"bailout\" by prestigious managers in the last two years before bankruptcy.

A study tested links between vertical integration, cost structure, and performance at the line-of-business level of analysis. Major findings were: 1. Vertical integration results in economies even after industry effects and economies of scope and scale are controlled. Vertically integrated lines of business economized on general and administrative, other selling, advertising, and R&D expenditures but had higher production costs and thus only marginally better profitability than nonintegrated lines of business in the same industry. 2. The higher production costs were linked to backward vertical integration, suggesting insulation from market pressures and lack of incentive to manufacture the lowest cost inputs. Forward vertical integration was associated with lower transaction-related costs. Thus, evidence of both efficiency effects and bureaucratic costs emerged, with the benefits of vertical integration slightly outweighing its costs.

A study of inputs (students and new faculty) and outputs (MBA and Ph.D. graduates) of 20 business schools found that status perceived by certain stakeholder groups (constituencies) affects the mobility of individuals between schools and limits the competition among schools for student inputs and for output placement. The study examined schools that differed in status perceived by three constituencies: the national business community, the academic community, and MBA students. The results indicate that, depending on their status in the opinion of different constituencies, the schools engaged in different degrees of student input creaming, scrambling for inputs, input targeting, input avoidance, and output streaming (all terms developed as part of the model proposed herein). The results suggest that in Ph.D. markets, status hierarchies tend to make groups of schools a closed system, leading to homosocial reproduction of senior faculties and social isolation and immobility for certain Ph.D. graduates. Barriers appear to be created between the subsystems of schools. One major theoretical implication of the study findings is that status hierarchies define patterns of social ecology of business schools and limit competition for resources. One practical implication of the study findings is that schools are at a disadvantage in competing for student inputs and placing MBA and Ph.D. graduates if they lack status in the national business community. High status in the opinion of students and academics is not associated with all of the advantages afforded by status in the national business community. Hence, teaching and research strategies designed to achieve status among students or academics alone may not be as successful as those that have relevance to the broader \"real world.\"

In this paper we explore the following research question: When faced with a tender offer, why do some firms resist and others cooperate? In the past, researchers have suggested that the manner in which firms respond to takeover attempts may be, in part, a function of managers' personal motivations. We contribute to this line of research by questioning whether other factors might be involved. Specifically, we examine whether cooperation may be a function of the friendliness of the bidding company and the social networks shared by executives in the two firms (i.e., bidder and target). We examine how the power and connections of managers affect their responses to tender offers. Our results suggest that these factors do indeed play a role. We found, for example, that target managers are more likely to cooperate under two conditions: (1) if they have less prestigious connections than managers in the bidding firm, and (2) if the target and bidding firms' share numerous ties to the same prestigious networks. In contrast, we found that target managers are more likely to resist a bidder's advances if: (1) the managers in both firms are poorly connected, or (2) the targets' managers hold more prestigious connections relative to the bidders. Together these findings suggest that cooperation and resistance may be a function of the social networks and power relationships that exist between and within firms. We discuss our findings within the framework of numerous organizational theories such as social class and social network theory, agency theory, and resource dependence. Although each of these perspectives suggests somewhat different results, we propose a reconciliation of these various perspectives. Specifically, we suggest that the variables of managerial power and connections may have different effects depending on whether we are observing firms before or after tender offers are made. It may be, for instance, that before a takeover offer is received, the power and prestige of target managers is associated with adoption of anti-takeover defenses (i.e., defenses designed to thwart takeover attempts). In fact, this finding has already been well documented in the literature. On the other hand, our findings suggest that after an offer is received, these same factors of prestige and power appear to be associated with resistance. Finally, our results call into question previous views that corporate takeovers are a mechanism for disciplining or ridding the company of incompetent managers. Instead, our findings suggest that the nature of the takeover process (i.e., cooperative versus resistant) may do little more than perpetuate existing social structures. Powerful and prestigious managers may not suffer the same negative effects of takeovers as their less prestigious and less powerful counterparts.

When a firm's chief executive officer is also the chairperson of its board, directors have opposing objectives. According to organization theory, such CEO duality establishes strong, unambiguous leadership. But according to agency theory, duality promotes CEO entrenchment by reducing board monitoring effectiveness. A contingency framework was developed to resolve these perspectives. Sampling 3 industries to enhance generalizability, it is found that board vigilance was positively associated with CEO duality. Duality was less common, however, when CEOs had high informal power and when firm performance was high.