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Formal contracting addresses the moral hazard problems inherent in interfirm deals via explicit terms designed to achieve incentive alignment. Alternatively, when firms expect to interact repeatedly, relational mechanisms may achieve similar results without the associated costs. However, as we now know from a growing body of theoretical and empirical work, the resulting intuition—that relational mechanisms will be substituted for formal ones whenever possible—does not generally hold. The extent to which firms substitute relational mechanisms for formal ones in the presence of repeated interaction is an empirical question that forms the basis of this paper. We study a sample of 52 joint technology development contracts in the telecommunications and microelectronics industries and devise a coding scheme to allow empirical comparison of contract terms. Counter to the above intuition (but consistent with recent research), we find that a firm's contracts are more detailed and more likely to include penalties when it engages in frequent deals (whether with the same or different partners). Our results suggest complementarity between formal and relational contracts, and have implications for optimal contracting, particularly in high technology sectors.

Research summary: This article provides the first review of a growing line of scholarly work in strategy that we refer to as \"value capture theory.\" The common thread in this work is its use of cooperative game theory as a general, mathematical foundation upon which to build a deep understanding of firm performance in market settings. Our review: (1) describes the primary elements of the theory; (2) highlights important blindspots that it resolves with respect to existing theoretical approaches; (3) calls attention to several of its novel insights; and (4) summarizes a myriad of applications and empirical studies that have appeared in recent years using value capture theory. Managerial summary: Traditionally, theoretical claims in strategic management have been supported by informal, qualitative reasoning. Recently, however, a new line of theoretical work based upon mathematical methods, known as \"value capture theory,\" has been gaining in popularity. This article reviews the recent advances in this line with a particular emphasis upon a number of its important insights, several of which challenge longstanding propositions from the traditional line. For managers, the formal nature of value capture theory is well-aligned with aata-ariven analyses of strategic situations.

The broker profits by intermediating between two (or more) parties. Using a biform game, we examine whether such a position can confer a competitive advantage, as well as whether any such advantage could persist if actors formed relations strategically. Our analysis reveals that, if one considers exogenous the relations between actors, brokers can enjoy an advantage but only if (1) they do not face substitutes either for the connections they offer or the value they can create, (2) they intermediate more than two parties, and (3) interdependence does not lock them into a particular pattern of exchange. If, on the other hand, one allows actors to form relations on the basis of their expectations of the future value of those relations, then profitable positions of intermediation only arise under strict assumptions of unilateral action. We discuss the implications of our analysis for firm strategy and empirical research.

This is a well-known translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics that is accompanied by a chapter-by-chapter commentary that is directed toward business executives, or those that aspire to become one. Taken together, the book provides a deep guide for how to live a fully integrated, flourishing life of excellence as a business manager. The book can be read independently, but can also provide the foundational content for a course on virtuous leadership or business ethics. The intended audience includes students of business ethics as well as individual business managers seeking insight into how to be excellent at what they do. Most modern managers and business students find philosophy books hard to read and understand. This approach gets such readers knowledgeable with the original source material, helps them develop a knack for reading this style of writing for the future, and helps them apply the principles in the book to their own professional lives.

The new perspective emerging from strategy’s value-capture stream is that the effects of competition are twofold: competition for an agent bounds its performance from below, while that for its transaction partners bounds from above. Thus, assessing the intensity of competition on either side is essential to understanding firm performance. Yet, the literature provides no formal notion of “competitive intensity” with which to make such assessments. Rather, some authors use added value as their central analytic concept, others the core . Added value is simple but misses the crucial, for-an-agent side of competition. The core is theoretically complete but difficult to interpret and empirically intractable. This paper formalizes three, increasingly general notions of competitive intensity, all of which improve on added value while avoiding the complexity of the core. We analyze markets characterized by disjoint networks of agents (e.g., supply chains), providing several insights into competition and new tools for empirical work. The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2737 . This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.

This paper presents the first formal examination of role of causal ambiguity as a barrier to imitation. Here, the aspiring imitator faces a knowledge (i.e., \"capabilities-based\") barrier to imitation that is both causal and ambiguous in a precise sense of both words. Imitation conforms to a well-explicated process of learning by observing. I provide a precise distinction between the intrinsic causal ambiguity associated with a particular strategy and the subjective ambiguity perceived by a challenger. I find that intrinsic ambiguity is a necessary but insufficient condition for a sustained capability-based advantage. I also demonstrate that combinatorial complexity, a phenomenon that has attracted the recent attention of strategy theorists, and causal ambiguity are distinct barriers to imitation. The former acts as a barrier to explorative/active learning and the latter as one to absorptive/passive learning. One implication of this is that learning by doing and learning by observing are complementary strategic activities, not substitutes—in most cases, we should expect firm strategies to seek performance enhancement using efforts of both types.

How does competition among economic actors determine the value that each is able to appropriate? We provide a formal, general framework within which this question can be posed and answered, and then provide several results. Chief among them is a condition that is both required for, and guarantees, value appropriation. We apply our methodology to (i) assess the familiar notion that uniqueness, inimitability, and competition imply value appropriation, and (ii) determine the value appropriation possibilities for an innovator whose unique discovery is of use to several others who can compete for the right to use it.

The new perspective emerging from strategy's value-capture stream is that the effects of competition are twofold: competition for an agent bounds its performance from below, while that for its transaction partners bounds from above. Thus, assessing the intensity of competition on either side is essential to understanding firm performance. Yet, the literature provides no formal notion of \"competitive intensity\" with which to make such assessments. Rather, some authors use added value as their central analytic concept, others the core. Added value is simple but misses the crucial, for-an-agent side of competition. The core is theoretically complete but difficult to interpret and empirically intractable. This paper formalizes three, increasingly general notions of competitive intensity, all of which improve on added value while avoiding the complexity of the core. We analyze markets characterized by disjoint networks of agents (e.g., supply chains), providing several insights into competition and new tools for empirical work.

We develop a model in which the parties to a joint production project have a choice of specifying contractual performance in terms of actions or deliverables. Penalties for noncompliance are not specified; rather, they are left to the courts under the legal doctrine of compensatory damages. We analyze three scenarios of increasing uncertainty: full information , where implications of partner actions are known; risk , where implications can be probabilistically quantified; and ambiguity , where implications cannot be so quantified. Under full information, action requirements dominate: they always induce the maximum economic value. This dominance vanishes in the risk scenario. Under ambiguity, deliverables specifications can interact with compensatory damages to create a form of “ambiguity insurance,” where ambiguity aversion is assuaged in a way that increases the aggregate, perceived value of the project. This effect does not arise under contracts specifying action requirements. Thus, deliverables contracts may facilitate highly novel joint projects that would otherwise be foregone as a result of excessive uncertainty. Suggested empirical implications include the choice of contract clause type depending on the level of uncertainty in a joint development project, one application being the level of partner experience with interfirm collaborations. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy .

This paper presents a formal theory of subjective rationality and demonstrates its application to corporate strategy. An agent is said to be subjectively rational when decisions are consistent with the available facts and, where these are lacking, with the agent's own subjective assessments. A self–confirming equilibrium arises when agents' subjectively rational actions generate events that are consistent with their own expectations. Equilibrium strategies may be suboptimal because certain counterfactual beliefs may be erroneous and yet fail to be contradicted by events observed in equilibrium. This weakening of the stronger rationality assumptions inherent in many of the more familiar equilibrium ideas appears well suited to applications in strategy. In particular, performance advantage may be sustained by a firm when its subjectively rational competitors persistently employ suboptimal self–confirming strategies.