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This paper investigates competitive tension, or the strain between a focal firm and a given rival that is likely to result in the firm taking action against the rival. Drawing on the awareness-motivation-capability perspective, we show how perceived competitive tension, as constructed from managers' and industry stakeholders' competitor assessments, is influenced by the independent and interactive effects of three factors: relative scale, rival's attack volume, and rival's capability to contest. Our results provide a new avenue for studying competitors and the relationship between competitor analysis and interfirm rivalry.

It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic management has enjoyed. How might one explain this paradox? We seek answers to this question by relying first on a large‐scale survey of strategic management scholars from which we derive an implicit consensual definition of the field—as tacitly held by its members. We then supplement this implicit definition with an examination of the espoused definitions of the field obtained from a group of boundary‐spanning scholars. Our findings suggest that strategic management's success as a field emerges from an underlying consensus that enables it to attract multiple perspectives, while still maintaining its coherent distinctiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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