Interest has been growing in understanding how organizations' aspiration levels affect their planning for future organizational change. Previous research has not specified whether organizations use direct competitors or other comparable organizations as referents for forming their aspirations. In this study, it is argued that organizations form their social aspirations based on two types of interorganizational comparisons: competitive and striving. In competitive comparisons, an organization compares its current performance against that of its current direct competitors. When relative performance is poor, these organizations plan more extensive and more radical change. However, the study shows that organizations that are performing well relative to competitors do not necessarily become inertial, as theory suggests. Rather, organizations engage in striving comparisons by comparing their current performance against the performance of organizations to which they strive to be like in the future. The analyses show that organizations with large striving discrepancies are driven to more extensive and more radical change, even if they are performing well compared to current competitors. The study examined this interplay between competitive and striving discrepancy in explaining organizational change on a sample of 131 AACSB accredited business schools.

We advance competitive dynamics research by introducing alliance portfolio configuration as an important antecedent of competitive action frequency. We propose and test a model for developing effective alliance portfolio configurations that enhance a firm's ability to discover, conceptualize, and carry out new competitive actions. Our model consists of three overlapping components: (a) opportunity recognition capacity as evidenced by the portfolio attribute of structural holes, (b) opportunity development capacity as indicated by R&D alliance scope, and (c) action execution capacity as exhibited by equity alliances with trusted partners. We hypothesize and find a multiplicative effect of the configuration of all three alliance portfolio attributes on the frequency of competitive actions carried out by 12 large global automobile manufacturing firms with 1,471 unique partners and 37,520 alliances formed over a 16-year period (1988 to 2003). The three-way configuration of portfolio attributes was stronger for more complex competitive actions requiring more time, expertise, and resources to develop and execute.Competitive dynamics research has consistently found that firms that compete aggressively by frequently "attacking" rivals with competitive actions (new products, product Acknowledgments: We would like to thank action editor Sucheta Nadkarni and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article.

R esearchers in competitive dynamics have demonstrated that firms that carry out intense, complex, and heterogeneous competitive actions exhibit better performance. However, there is a need to understand factors that enable firms to undertake competitive actions. In this study, we focus on two antecedents of competitive behavior of firms: (1) access to network resources and (2) use of information technology (IT). We argue that while network structure provides firms with the opportunity to tap into external resources, the extent to which they are actually exploited depends on firms' IT-enabled capability. We develop a theoretical model that examines the relationships between IT-enabled capability, network structure, and competitive action. We test the model using secondary data, about 12 major automakers over 16 years from 1988 to 2003. We find that network structure rich in structural holes has a positive direct effect on firms' ability to introduce a greater number and a wider range of competitive actions. However, the effect of dense network structure is contingent on firms' IT-enabled capability. Firms benefit from dense network structure only when they develop a strong IT-enabled capability. Our results suggest that IT-enabled capability plays both a substitutive role, when firms do not have advantageous access to brokerage opportunities, and a complementary role, when firms are embedded in dense network structure, in the relationship between network structure and competitive actions.

We examine, in hypercompetitive environments, why some firms fail to benefit from competitive aggressiveness while others experience superior profits. We explore the relationship between competitive aggressiveness and performance in a sample of 141 firms from three hypercompetitive industries-personal computers, computer-aided software engineering, and semiconductors-from 1995 to 2006. Contrary to the predominant view within competitive dynamics research, we find that competitive aggressiveness is not a universally effective strategy. For some firms, excessive competitive aggressiveness can escalate costs and diminish performance. Using polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology, we identify the conditions under which competitive aggressiveness enhances firm performance. Our findings reveal that firms benefit from competitive aggressiveness when they have specialized technological resources and support from a dense network of alliance partners.Competitive aggressiveness is a strategic competitive behavior that reflects a firm's propensity to challenge rivals by rapidly carrying out numerous competitive actions, such as new products, marketing campaigns, market entries, and price cuts (M. J. Chen, Lin, & Michel, 2010;M. J. Chen & Miller, 2012). Incorporating time and speed as essential attributes, Acknowledgments: We thank action editor Devi Gnyawali and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions.