Abstract: Brands represent a strategic resource that meets the criteria that was advanced by Barney (1991). In this paper, we focus on the recreation or reintroduction of brands in the form of sequels in the U.S. motion picture industry. We show that although sequels need the same actors for sake of similarity and the same production companies for sake of consistency, the need for these tends to decrease with an increase in the years lapsed between successive films and with the number of sequels. Furthermore, the performance of sequels weakens if the years lapsed between films is higher, but strengthens with an increase in the number of sequels.

Abstract: By testing a group of factors that explain the performance difference in a typical business context—a group of multi-business firms is attacked by one from outside incumbents’ primarily focused industry, this study develops a model of cross-industry competitive interaction among firms that are generally categorized in different industries. Such firms always share little market commonality and resource similarity (MC-RS) in business type, and therefore often fall out of the attention for competitive analysis by managers and discussion by strategy scholars. Drawing on competitive dynamics, this study addresses the gap by presenting evidence from a population of xx cross-industry interactions in xx industries over a xx-year period and suggests that two sets of factors, the relative capabilities between challengers and incumbents and the reactive capabilities of incumbents, define the cross-industry competitive landscape, delineate the shifting picture of industry boundaries as well as determine the consequential performance.

Abstract: Studies of how business divestitures affect subsequent firm performance offer mixed results. This paper explores the way that firm strength, based on greater profitability, affects the relationship between divestitures and subsequent performance, along with the mechanisms by which divestitures free and invest resources. We find that divestitures help weak firms improve their profitability, while helping strong firms grow and avoid becoming acquisition targets. Examining the mechanisms shows that divesting firms tend to retain managerial capacity that they can focus on new opportunities, while strong divesting firms gain most in financial resources available for reinvestment. In turn, weak divesters are most acquisition active, yet strong divesters gain greatest growth from their acquisitions and have most resources to invest in marketing support for opportunities.

Abstract: We investigate how U.S companies adapted their investments in key strategic resources―employees, physical capital, innovation, and stakeholder relationships―during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. To obtain exogenous variation in the severity of the recession, we exploit the differential impact of the housing price collapse across U.S. regions, instrumenting the housing price drop with Saiz’ (2010) topological measure of housing supply elasticity. Our findings indicate that companies significantly laid off workers and cut capital expenditures. However, they did not cut investments in R&D and corporate social responsibility (CSR). This suggests that intangible resources such as R&D and CSR are instrumental in maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. We further document that companies that sustained their R&D and CSR performed better once the economy recovered.