For most of the last half century, economic concepts of efficiency have dominated antitrust law and competition policy. Debates have largely centered around how to apply these concepts to specific types of business conduct, for example, whether a particular merger is efficient or a particular action will exclude equally efficient competitors from the market, while concerns about market structure have largely receded into the background. Business scholarship and practice, however, have begun to place an increasing emphasis on sustainability. Sustainability not only challenges the basic assumption of efficiency analysis that firms rationally pursue profit maximization, sustainability also suggests that overreliance on efficiency may be a trap that renders markets less resilient and more prone to collapse in the face of abrupt changes. Growing concern about the fragility of supply chain networks provides a case in point. To avoid the efficiency trap requires consideration of both efficiency and resilience.

Now that the rule of reason has largely over taken per se rules of antitrust law in the United States, antitrust enforcement generally requires evaluation of a wide variety of evidence to determine the challenged conduct's effect on competition. This article provides an overview of three concepts commonly taught in MBA-level strategic management courses to evaluate much of the same evidence for purposes of determining the firm's competitive strategy: cooperative strategies, stakeholder management, and sustainable business practices. Unlike the neoclassical microeconomic view of competition commonly used in modern antitrust analysis, strategic management teaches students to view competitors not only as rivals, but also as stakeholders with whom their firms may need to cooperate. While the application of these concepts to specific antitrust issues requires further analysis, these concepts provide a basis for supplementing the understanding of business competition under the rule of reason.

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