Business group affiliation and competitive repertoire

We connect business group research with literature on competitive repertoire—a firm’s portfolio of actions that characterize its strategy—to examine the influence of business group affiliation on firm strategy. We theorize that access to a larger stock and a broad range of resources, both within the firm and through the business group network, enables affiliate firms to execute a higher number (competitive repertoire intensity) and a wider variety (competitive repertoire complexity) of competitive actions. Our analysis of a sample of Indian firms during 2009–2017 supports our hypotheses. In supplementary analyses, we find that business group characteristics—size and affiliate intra-group position—positively influence competitive repertoire. We also find that competitive repertoire intensity mediates affiliation-firm performance relationship. Our findings enhance our understanding of business groups by establishing the link between affiliation-firm strategy-performance. Our work also extends research on network-based and ownership-based antecedents of competitive repertoire. We discuss these implications in detail.