Detail Information
| Category | Study/Lecture Record/Oral History/Conference Paper |
|---|---|
| Title | Robust disruptors and incumbent capabilities in the Japanese taxi industry, Conference Paper: submitted by Padrón-Hernández, Ivar and Masahiro Kotosaka |
| Institution | Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) |
| Number | |
| Publisher | |
| Date | 2021/07/03 |
| Places | online |
| Exhibition Date | 2021/07/03 |
| Abstract | The ongoing disruption in taxi services by international ride sharing platforms is highly publicized. Recent research in strategic management (e.g. Baron, 2018) has showed how this phenomenon is a prime example of non-market strategy where formal and informal institutions are just as—if not more—important than traditional market factors such as price, quality and demand. However, extant research tends to focus on disruptors on one side and policymakers on the other. Incumbents, i.e. traditional taxi companies, have received less attention. This is surprising considering their public visibility, including the staging of violent protests. Incumbent activities also include efforts to affect regulation, with the aim to suppress ride sharing companies. This has resulted in a lobbying war (e.g. Pelzer, Frenken & Boon, 2019) with a wide variety of policy outcomes across regions. While some have banned ride sharing firms outright, others have let them in virtually unregulated, with a majority of regions falling in the middle with varying and ever-evolving policies. This paper focuses on incumbent innovation. We have gathered archival data and identified patterns on incumbent, policy and disruptor responses in OECD countries. Findings suggest an inverted U-shaped relationship between the extent of policy barriers and incumbent innovation. When barriers are low, disruptors quickly gain dominance over the market, threatening incumbent survival. Conversely, when policy barriers are high, the status quo is preserved with no need for incumbent innovation. However, a moderate level of regulation requires incumbent capabilities to innovate. The second stage of the study focuses on the Japanese incumbent taxi industry, as it stood out among OECD incumbents in its responses. It formed an industry-wide alliance and developed its own platform, complete with associated hardware, to erase the main competitive advantages of disruptor Uber. The second empirical stage aims to delve into this development by leveraging hitherto unseen access to executives in the Japanese taxi industry. By mapping the plethora of responses and innovation outcomes and conducting an in-depth study on a case where incumbents quickly learned from the robust strategy of disruptors, we hope to shed light on a still-developing and highly topical phenomenon. Our focus on incumbents are rare access to primary data add an underresearched piece of the puzzle that complements research focusing on ride sharing companies (Baron, 2018), reactions of the general public (Laurell & Sandström, 2016) or the wider implications and consequences for our understanding of organizations (Cornelissen & Cholakova, forthcoming). |
| Notes | |
| URL | https://sase.confex.com/sase/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/17690 |
| Label | 経営学, 戦略論 |
| Register date | 2021/07/03 |
