The Competitive Dynamics of Status and Niche Width: US Investment Banking, 1920-1949.

By integrating the status-based model of market competition and the resource partitioning model, this paper develops the resource-status space imagery of markets and two propositions. First, the paper argues that the benefit that an organization derives from an increment in status is not independent of the organization's niche width. Second, the paper considers the implications of status-based stratification for the resource partitioning model's specification of the effects of increasing market concentration. Using the resource-status space imagery, this paper posits that if expanding generalists are reluctant to lower their status or are unable to increase their status, they will expand within their current status level. The expanding generalists will thus encroach on the niches of similar status generalists and specialists, rather than expand into the niches of generalists across the whole status spectrum. We discuss implications for the sociology of markets. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.