With a focus on the digital camera industry, which of all IT devices Japan has high industry competitive advantage, we discuss what product strategy did companies employ to create and capture value as the market developed, and how product architecture has changed. To meet the different needs of...

Product architecture is typically established in the early stages of the product development (PD) cycle. Depending on the type of architecture selected, product design, manufacturing processes, and ultimately supply chain configuration are all significantly affected. Therefore, it is important...

This paper's title is an echo of Alfred Chandler's (2001) chronicle of the electronics industry, Inventing the Electronic Century. The paper attempts (A) a general reinterpretation of the pattern of technological advance in (American) electronics over the twentieth century and (B) a somewhat...

This paper examines complementarity among vertical integration decisions in automobile product development. Though most research assumes that contracting choices are independent of each other, contracting complementarity arises when the returns to a single vertical integration decision are...

A point repeatedly stressed by transaction cost economics is that the more specific the asset, the more likely is vertical integration to be optimal. In spite of the profusion of empirical papers supporting this prediction, recent surveys and casual observation suggest that higher levels of...

We explore the nature of Business Groups, that is network-like forms of hierarchical organization between legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders. Exploiting a unique dataset of 270,474 headquarters controlling more than 1,500,000 (domestic and foreign)...

This paper represents the first case study attempt to develop a transaction cost conceptual model to describe industry evolution of the paper and lumber industries in the Southern United States around the late 1800s and early 1900s. We use transaction cost theory to explain the co-evolution of...

While research has revealed the role of common property in risk diversification, poverty alleviation and resource management, few studies identify how common property management systems fill that role uniquely where market mechanisms or private property rights fail. To address that gap, the...