Competitive Repertoire and Coordination of Chinese Horizontal Integrating Firms: Moderating Effects of Market Fragmentation

Because of market fragmentation, nowadays Chinese horizontal integrating firms are in a “two-line battle” competition both against MNEs and local firms. This paper attempted to discuss how can a firm, in such “two-line battle” competition, adopt a suitable competitive repertoire matching with its organizational coordination, and how dose market fragmentation have influence on this matching, if there is any. This paper, by empirically testing Chinese firms from three industries, found out that coordination has a negative moderating effect between complexity of repertoire and performance. Moreover, market fragmentation has weakening impact to the interaction between complexity and coordination. The conclusion enriched the analysis framework of competitive action (or repertoire) decision, and brought better understanding of the impacts of institutional context on firm competitive behavior. Key words: Repertoire; Competitive complexity; Coordination; Market fragmentation