• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.24-36
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• 2008

Architecture-based competition has become a very important issue in many industries. As companies seek lower cost, fast development, and more customizability at the same time, modular architecture of products and processes seem to be an inevitable choice. Existing literature, however, has only focused on the basic contents of architecture-based competition. Different competitive environments and technological competencies of incumbent companies influence the evolutionary dynamics of dominant architecture of industries. In this paper we suggest a new theoretical framework to deal with the complex co-adaptation process of architecture-based competition. We first explore the emerging modular architecture in Chinese commercial vehicle industry, and then compare it with the architecture strategies of Korean companies. Based on the explorative case study, we propose new hypotheses relating the market demand, technological competencies of major players and dominant architecture in an indus-try.