逆境期における長寿企業の生存戦略

──倒産企業との比較分析に基づく類型化──

抄録

 The purpose of this paper is to analyze the strategies adopted by long-established companies for identifying the factors promoting their survival in hostile environments. While Japan has the world's largest number of companies older than a century, there is a scarcity of empirical studies using objective data about them. The majority of prior research is based on surveys of long-lasting companies and focuses on the commonalities of the subjective responses. On the contrary, this study collects financial information on survivors (firms that have remained in existence for more than 300 years) as well as bankrupts (firms that had moderate longevity but failed after the bursting of the bubble economy) from 1978 to 1992. We conducted a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) using data from 18 listed Japanese firms to categorize the strategies of both the survivors and bankrupts.

 Analytical findings indicate that there are three categories of typical strategies adopted by the survivors. The first category consists of leveraging large assets along with a broad business domain to maintain an above-average growth rate even in unfavorable circumstances. The second category is different from the first and pursues stability and financial security due to its large scale and broad scope. The third category is growth-oriented and based on stable cash flow by relatively small but diversified companies. This analysis further reveals a typical pattern of bankruptcy. It is partially similar to the third survival strategy, but does not achieve commensurate growth with the expansion of its scope. To put it differently, a small to medium-sized enterprise aiming to realize long-term survival needs to implement an entrepreneurial survival strategy that involves moving into growing domains along with withdrawing from declining markets.