Imitation as Organization’s Strategy

Program: MIMA student – International business and Entrepreneurship Course name: Master Thesis (EFO705)Title: Imitation as Organization’s StrategyAuthors: Voravej AssavapisitkulSataporn Bukkavesa Supervisor: Sven-Åke NyströmProblem: Does imitation really benefit organization? Purpose: The authors are writing this topic because the authors feel that this topic is not widely been investigated, moreover, it is a very interesting topic for the authors. According to the course literatures that the authors have read, the authors perceived that most of them focused on innovation and seems like they ignored or mentioned little on the topic of imitation and how can imitation benefits organization. Therefore, the authors are personally interested in the topic. The authors hope that the readers would gain more knowledge on the topic and would be able to apply with their business or study. Method: Interpretivist; Documentary; Interview Summary: In this Master Thesis, the authors have discussed several dimensions of imitation with examples. First, the authors discussed about imitation during the early stage of industrialization with the examples in Korea. This topic discussed of the opportunity provided through imitation process for the new firms to be able to catch up and compete with experienced firms. The next topic is on unique capability. Firms can apply imitation as their own capability that can prevent others’ imitation, moreover, they can become successful in the new market. Then the authors found that there are ways to imitate other firms’ knowledge legally in the form of strategic alliances. In the topic of creation of strategic alliances, the authors suggested four patterns of engagement that firms can select according to their objectives. Under the topic of firms experience, there are some empirical data supported that the degree of imitation has negative relationship with firms’ experience curve. Moreover, the authors discussed about the how competitors’ actions affect the firms to select different strategy of organization management in the topic of the choice of alliances and mergers and acquisitions by competitor’s move. Then the authors discussed about how successful were the imitations by reverse-engineering implemented by Korea’s electronics industry. Furthermore, the authors also provide examples of imitations in other industries. The next topic is limitation and prevention on imitation. Then the authors provided the reasons why do firms imitate. Moreover, the authors discussed about the factors that affect the speed of imitation process and show how the speed of imitation related to benefits and losses of the firms. Next, the authors suggested some successful strategies for product imitation. Then the authors discussed about the drawbacks of imitation with some examples. Finally, the authors provided the results and analysis of the interviews as primary data collection to show the success of firms that implemented imitations, people’s attitudes toward imitation, and the degree that originality and product origin can limit imitation