David G. McKendrick

From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry

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In the bud? Disk array producers as a (possibly) emergent organizational form

This article develops and tests theory on when and where a new organizational form will emerge. Recent theory holds that as the number of organizations using a particular external identity code first increases beyond a critical minimal level, the code becomes an organizational form. Going beyond this formulation, we theorize about how an external identity code is established. We argue that when the identities of individual organizations are perceptually focused, they will more readily cohere into a distinct collective identity. We develop ideas about how two observable aspects of organizations might generate perceptually focused identities in a common market: (1) de novo entry and (2) agglomeration in a geographic place with a related identity. Using comprehensive data from the market for disk drive arrays, we test these ideas and an alternative by estimating effects of different specifications of organizational and product densities on rates of entry and exit for array producers. Overall, the analysis supports the notion that firms with perceptually focused identities aid in establishing an organizational form.

Globalization of Production: Insights from the Hard Disk Drive Industry

Abstract Rapid change in the geographical location of production raises important questions regarding the welfare, development potential, and competitive position of different countries and regions. This paper explores in detail the geography of economic activity in a specific industry, the hard disk drive (HDD) component of the computer industry. Firms in the HDD industry are breaking the production system into ever smaller distinct steps, and spreading the physical location of these steps around the world. Firms from the United States dominate the industry. Our findings suggest that globalization has enabled US firms to sustain their dominant position in the industry, preserve employment in the United States (and possibly expand it), and increase employment worldwide, most notably in Southeast Asia.

Oppositional Identities and Resource Partitioning: Distillery Ownership in Scotch Whisky, 1826–2009

We build on recent theory and research on the role of categories in resource partitioning. We analyze Scotch whisky making between 1826 and 2009—a case that seemed initially to fail to conform to the pattern of the beer industry now treated as prototypical. On close examination (both qualitative and quantitative), we find that high concentration in the center of the market is not sufficient to generate a partition. Rather, we see a long delay between the heightening of concentration in the industry and the emergence of a cluster of peripheral producers that claim an identity in opposition to the dominant generalists. We explain the source of the delay as a function of the nature of the audience, which until recently did not regard conglomerate or foreign ownership of distilleries as an impediment to producing authentic whisky. Only when critics started to question how ownership of distilleries related to authenticity did the revival of the traditional form of ownership begin to occur. By analyzing entries of focused firms in the recent period, we find that widespread ownership of distilleries of diversified corporations (but not foreign ownership) supported the formation of more traditional types of whisky distillers. But endurance of identity-based resource partitioning might require development of a collective identity and collective strategy by producers. In the case we studied, each focused producer has an idiosyncratic identity, which may be insufficient to cause audiences to agree on a code that excludes the mainstream producers from membership in the new category and thereby maintain a partitioned market.

The Social Lives of Products: Analyzing Product Demography for Management Theory and Practice

Despite the centrality of products in many strategic and managerial theoretical frameworks, little is known systematically about how and why specific products come and go from markets. We argue that narrowing this gap will likely enhance management theory, and we propose that research on product demography—the social lives of products—is a promising way to proceed. For organizing various theoretical ideas used in prior studies, we offer a classification framework. It defines four broad theoretical perspectives on product demography: market rationality, firm rationality, organizational bounded