Cooperation among Competitors: Producer's Association in the American Salt Industry from 1914 to 1995

虽然同一行业的生产者在市场上相互竞争，但他们通常也加入协会。生产者协会有多种形式，并发挥多种功能：它们将生产者社区确定为“行业”，制定管理竞争者之间关系的规范，并作为与供应商、分销商、竞争行业、消费者和监管机构进行集体交易的代理人。因此，作为一个共同体和一个代理人，生产者协会在调节生产和更大的政治经济方面发挥作用。本文考察了盐业生产者协会及其后继者，重点考察了协会职能的变化以及生产者通过协会组织起来的方式。这些变化被假设为是对该行业在更大经济中的利基动态的反应-这种利基影响到公司的合理利益及其社区的团结。数据将从两个来源获得：（1）用于研究行业组织生态的汇总统计数据，历史和文件，以及（2）用于测量盐生产者协会如何使用协会进行内部监管和行业外部代表的会议记录的内容分析。这项研究将有助于我们了解影响生产者协会作用的因素，以及这些作用如何根据行业内因素和行业运作环境而变化。

Although producers in the same industry compete with one another in markets, they also commonly affiliate in associations. Producer's associations take a variety of forms, and serve a number of functions: They identify communities of producers as "industries," instate norms governing relations among competitors, and act as agents for dealing collectively with suppliers, distributors, competing industries, consumers, and regulators. As a community and as an agent, producer's associations thus play a role in the regulation of production and the larger political economy. This study examines the Salt Producer's Association and its successors, focusing on changes in the association's functions and on the ways in which the producers organize themselves through the association. These changes are hypothesized to be responses to dynamics of the industry's niche in the larger economy--a niche that affects the rational interests of firms and the solidarity of their community. Data will be drawn from two sources: (1) Aggregate statistics, histories, and documents for studying the organizational ecology of the industry, and (2) content analyses of the minutes of the meetings of the Salt Producer's Association for measuring how stake-holders use the association for internal regulation and external representation of the industry. The research will contribute to our understanding of the factors that shape the roles of producers associations, and how these roles change in response to factors within industries and the environments within which industries operate.