Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Standard setting in markets: the browser war
- 2 Competition through institutional form: the case of cluster tool standards
- 3 The economic realities of open standards: black, white, and many shades of gray
- 4 Coordination costs and standard setting: lessons from 56K modems
- 5 Promoting e-business through vertical IS standards: lessons from the US home mortgage industry
- 6 Intellectual property and standardization committee participation in the US modem industry
- 7 Manipulating interface standards as an anticompetitive strategy
- 8 Delay and de jure standardization: exploring the slowdown in Internet standards development
- 9 Standardization: a failing paradigm
- 10 Standards battles and public policy
- 11 Switching to digital television: business and public policy issues
- 12 Should competition policy favor compatibility?
- Index
- References
2 - Competition through institutional form: the case of cluster tool standards
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Standard setting in markets: the browser war
- 2 Competition through institutional form: the case of cluster tool standards
- 3 The economic realities of open standards: black, white, and many shades of gray
- 4 Coordination costs and standard setting: lessons from 56K modems
- 5 Promoting e-business through vertical IS standards: lessons from the US home mortgage industry
- 6 Intellectual property and standardization committee participation in the US modem industry
- 7 Manipulating interface standards as an anticompetitive strategy
- 8 Delay and de jure standardization: exploring the slowdown in Internet standards development
- 9 Standardization: a failing paradigm
- 10 Standards battles and public policy
- 11 Switching to digital television: business and public policy issues
- 12 Should competition policy favor compatibility?
- Index
- References
Summary
Abstract
Few economists and theorists have thought about the choice of organizational form as a competitive weapon. Here, the author does so by examining the case of cluster tools, which are a type of equipment for manufacturing semiconductors. Within the US industry, competition for these devices is divided between a large vertically integrated firm, Applied Materials, and a large fringe of smaller, more specialized competitors. These latter have responded to the competition by creating a common set of technical interface standards, called the Modular Equipment Standards Committee standards. The author analyzes the trade-off between the benefits of systemic innovation and coordination versus those of external economies of scope and modular innovation. Although standards have so far kept the competitive fringe in the ballgame, modularity in the industry may ultimately take a different form, as some of the larger firms adhering to the standards become broadly capable systems integrators that outsource manufacturing to specialized suppliers of subsystems.
Introduction
Industrial economists tend to think of competition as occurring between atomic units called firms. Theorists of organization tend to think about the choice among various kinds of organizational structures – what Langlois and Robertson (1995) call business institutions. But few have thought about the choice of business institution as a competitive weapon.
In this essay I examine, and attempt to learn from, a case in which choice of organizational form is in fact a major element of competition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Standards and Public Policy , pp. 60 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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