TY - JOUR

T1 - The co-evolution of competition and parasitism in the resource-based view

T2 - a risk model of product counterfeiting

AU - Busby, Jeremy Simon

N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in European Journal of Operational Research. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in European Journal of Operational Research, 276, 1, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.12.039

PY - 2019/7/1

Y1 - 2019/7/1

N2 - The primary concern in the resource-based view of the firm has been competition. For many firms, however, the relevant ecology includes parasites as well as competitors – notably product counterfeiters who parasitically exploit a firm’s reputational resource. This parasitic process both diminishes the reputational resource it exploits, and produces significant risk of harm as a by-product. This article extends the resource-based view, presenting an account of the mechanism by which competition and parasitism co-evolve and produce a distinctive form of resource erosion. It does so using a model which, because a firm’s reputational resource exists distributedly in the minds of mutually-influencing but not centrally-coordinated consumers, takes an agent-based approach. This model then naturally forms a basis for the probabilistic risk assessment of the consequences of parasitism – particularly the harm that arises from the counterfeiting of safety critical products such as pharmaceuticals. The intended contribution is to show how the resource-based view can be extended to reflect the fact that heterogeneous resource distribution is implicated in parasitism as much as competition, and to show how a model of the underlying mechanisms can support risk analysis.

AB - The primary concern in the resource-based view of the firm has been competition. For many firms, however, the relevant ecology includes parasites as well as competitors – notably product counterfeiters who parasitically exploit a firm’s reputational resource. This parasitic process both diminishes the reputational resource it exploits, and produces significant risk of harm as a by-product. This article extends the resource-based view, presenting an account of the mechanism by which competition and parasitism co-evolve and produce a distinctive form of resource erosion. It does so using a model which, because a firm’s reputational resource exists distributedly in the minds of mutually-influencing but not centrally-coordinated consumers, takes an agent-based approach. This model then naturally forms a basis for the probabilistic risk assessment of the consequences of parasitism – particularly the harm that arises from the counterfeiting of safety critical products such as pharmaceuticals. The intended contribution is to show how the resource-based view can be extended to reflect the fact that heterogeneous resource distribution is implicated in parasitism as much as competition, and to show how a model of the underlying mechanisms can support risk analysis.

KW - Multi-agent systems

KW - resource-based view

KW - reputational resources

KW - parasitism

KW - product counterfeiting

KW - risk analysis

U2 - 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.12.039

DO - 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.12.039

M3 - Journal article

VL - 276

SP - 300

EP - 313

JO - European Journal of Operational Research

JF - European Journal of Operational Research

SN - 0377-2217

IS - 1

ER -