Learning races, patent races, and capital races: Strategic interaction and embeddedness within organizational fields

Abstract

In this paper we examine how the pattern of strategic interactions between organizations is influenced by embeddedness within organizational fields. In particular, we discuss the impact of coercive, normative, and imitative processes on competition and cooperation. We focus our attention on two organizational populations embedded within larger organizational fields: biotechnology and credit unions. In the first section of the paper we describe competitive strategies (races and rivalry) and cooperative strategies (alliances and collaboration) in greater detail. We then turn to the composition of organizational fields and a brief discussion of the coercive, normative and imitative processes that can occur within organizational fields and the effects they can have on the pattern of strategic interaction. This discussion is followed by a description the fields involved in biotechnology and financial services. We then provide an overview of the empirical work on competitive and cooperative strategies among biotechnology firms ana credit unions. The paper ends with a discussion of the role of organizational embeddedness in shaping competitive interactions