Adaptive strategies of trading companies

Paul Ellis

International Business Review, 2001, vol. 10, issue 2, 235-259

Abstract: Past research into the development of trading companies has seldom been able to separate the economic raison d'être of the firm from the political and legislative influence of the home-country government. In contrast to other countries, the evolution of international trade intermediaries in Hong Kong has not been directly influenced by government policy. In the absence of legislative inducements or protection, Hong Kong traders exist purely by their ability to respond to market forces, suggesting that important insights regarding organizational survival can be gleaned from studying their patterns of behavior. In this paper, an evolutionary model is proposed and then evaluated against data collected from trading companies at five different stages of development. Specifically, these firms' adaptive strategies are assessed in terms of their patterns of diversification along three dimensions: product, geographic, and function. For scholars, the findings may be considered a stepping stone towards the articulation of a truly generic model of trading company evolution, while the value of the study for policy-makers in search of new archetypes lies in the identification of a variety of market-responsive organizational forms.

Keywords: Trading; company; Adaptive; strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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