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Confidence in Imitation: Niche-Width Strategy in the UK Automobile Industry

Department of Management, College of Business Administration, 2404 Maile Way, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, and Public Policy Institute of California, 500 Working Street, San Francisco, California 94111
Department of Sociology, Yonsei University, Seoul, 120–749 Korea
mooweon{at}hawaii.edu
ychoon{at}stanford.edu
joonhan{at}yonsei.ac.kr

Our study examines the imitation behavior of UK automobile manufacturers from 1894 to 1981 and supports previous studies on interorganizational imitation by showing that manufacturers tend to imitate other manufacturers that are similar. We also find that the degree of confidence manufacturers have in their imitating behavior affects the intensity of that behavior, where an organization’s confidence is determined by the variance of the routines used by its reference group and the number of firms in the reference group. Our results show that (1) manufacturers whose reference groups showed large variance in niche-width changes during the previous year are less likely to imitate (the mean of) those changes, (2) manufacturers who have large reference groups are more likely to imitate the changes, and (3) the negative effect of variance on the imitating behavior is strengthened as the number of reference organizations increases.

Key Words: niche-width strategy; interfirm imitation; confidence
History: Received: November 18, 2003;