Entrepreneurial piracy through strategic deception: the 'make, buy, or steal' decision

Thomas G. Pittz and Terry R. Adler

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2014, vol. 22, issue 4, 466-481

Abstract: In this paper, we explore the antecedents of entrepreneurial piracy through a case study approach involving the move of the National Basketball Association's (NBA's) Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City (OKC). The move of the Supersonics highlights an aspect of organisational strategy where existing theory is deficient in explaining the phenomena regarding firm boundaries and resource acquisition. Specifically, we argue in this paper for an expansion of the traditional 'make or buy' decision to include a 'steal' option. Several propositions are offered to suggest that the context in which this act of entrepreneurial piracy occurred could be generalised to other cases of artificial market constraints on valuable resources and includes the features of information compactedness, opportunism, bounded rationality, and strategic deception.

Keywords: opportunism; bounded rationality; information compactedness; make or buy; steal; entrepreneurial piracy; firm boundaries; strategic deception; legal piracy; uncertainty; business ethics; ethical decision making; strategy; strategic planning; entrepreneurship; case study; National Basketball Association; NBA; Seattle Supersonics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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