Homogeneity and Diversity

Abstract

The previous chapter was concerned with the first of the three substantive issues that the present study was designed to investigate, namely, the extent to which actors’ ‘private’ mental models of competitive space are meaningfully correlated with a range of exogenous variables that might be expected to have a bearing on competitor cognition. As we have seen, a number of the correlations observed between the exogenous variables incorporated in the study (reflecting key differences in the background characteristics of the participants and (perceived) aspects of their organizations’ strategy, structure/processes and context) and the logarithmically transformed participant source weight ratios associated with the three-way scaling analysis (reflecting variations in the relative saliance of the quality and market power dimensions of the group space configuration in accommodating their personal competitor assessments) were found to to be substantial, thereby adding empirical weight to the claims of social constructionist theortists (e.g. Porac et al., 1989, 1995; Porac & Thomas, 1990) that competitor cognition and choice are inextricably intertwined with the material conditions of the marketplace.