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Complaining about rivals: Indifference, cooperation, and competition in the governance of advertising
Author(s) -
Cluley Robert
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/rego.12211
Subject(s) - competitor analysis , competition (biology) , corporate governance , adjudication , business , subject (documents) , mechanism (biology) , advertising , marketing , industrial organization , political science , law , ecology , philosophy , finance , epistemology , library science , computer science , biology
What should rivals do when they see competitors breaking agreed rules within systems of self‐regulation? This study investigates compliant behavior among British advertisers to empirically answer this question. It analyses five years of complaints ( n = 146,062) and adjudications ( n = 4,832) published by the self‐regulatory body for the British advertising industry. The majority of firms adopt a strategy of indifference and rarely regulate their rivals. Highly engaged firms either adopt an angelic strategy as they use their resources to complain about their rivals; a deviant strategy as they are subject to a large number of complaints; or a predatory strategy as they attack their rivals through advertising regulation. This illustrates a unique form of regulatory capture in which a regulatory system becomes an arena of competition for some actors while continuing as a governance mechanism for others.