Content of the license to compete

From the perspective of the license to compete, the focus is on the roles of the firm and its stakeholders in their environment. In the traditional strategy theory, an environment-oriented perspective is taken by the ISV, which is concerned with the positioning of competing firms and how market structures and market forces influence the firm’s success. The firm is seen as an actor in an economic environment, more precisely in an attractive industry; stakeholders are not the focus as we discussed in Chapter 2.

In the perspective of the license to compete, we consider some elements of the traditional ISV. We rely on the concept of positioning and on the importance of the environment. The environment and especially the markets are not anonymous institutions, but are represented by different human beings forming groups or organizations as stakeholders (see Figure 4.1, p. 62). The firms and the stakeholders are interrelated by mutuality in networks, which implies various forms of positioning and cooperation between the firm and its stakeholders. The environment is consequently represented by stakeholder networks.