A unified theory of market partitioning: an integration of resource-partitioning and sunk cost theories
整合组织生态学的资源分割理论与经济学的沉没成本理论，解释高集中度与高密度并存的双重市场结构的成因与竞争策略差异，对研究市场演化的学者有参考价值。
Our objective was to integrate a sociological and an economic theory of market partitioning into a unifying framework: Glenn Carroll's resource-partitioning and John Sutton's sunk cost theories, respectively. In so doing, two important theory fragments from organizational ecology and industrial organization are integrated in an attempt to understand the antecedents and consequences of so-called dual market structures. A dual market structure features high concentration and high density, two market structure conditions that in most extant theory are thought to be unrelated. We argue that both theory fragments are highly complementary, offering different stories about the evolution of competition that produce similar market structure outcomes. In terms of the competitive strategies and organizational forms involved, however, the accounts of dual market structure evolution in the resource-partitioning and sunk cost theories are very different. This is instrumental in developing a dynamic theory of Porterian strategic management. We use these insights to reinterpret existing evidence, discussing a series of well-known industry studies. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.