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.

我们将企业集团研究与关于竞争手段的文献联系起来——公司的行动组合是其战略特征的一部分——以检验企业集团从属关系对公司战略的影响。我们的理论认为，无论是在公司内部还是通过业务集团网络，获得更大的股票和广泛的资源，使附属公司能够执行更多数量（竞争曲目强度）和更广泛（竞争曲目复杂性）的竞争行动。我们对 2009-2017 年印度公司样本的分析支持了我们的假设。在补充分析中，我们发现企业集团的特征——规模和附属公司在集团内的地位——对竞争性有积极影响。我们还发现，竞争剧目强度介导了附属公司与公司绩效的关系。我们的研究结果通过建立附属公司战略绩效之间的联系来增强我们对业务集团的理解。我们的工作还扩展了对基于网络和基于所有权的竞争曲目前因的研究。我们详细讨论这些影响。