Agent-based methodology is adopted to analyze the relationship between governance structure and the evolution of product portfolio. A corporation and a cooperative are distinguished by the single origin constraint. The single origin constraint entails that the product requiring the inputs of the members of a cooperative will never be divested. It is es-tablished that a concentric diversification strategy results in randomly distributed clusters of related products of the product portfolio of corporations, while the single origin constraint of a cooperative is responsible for pulling all prod-ucts together in one cluster. More general, the centripetal effect of one product with infinite lifetime on portfolio com-position dominates the centrifugal effect of products with finite lifetime, regardless the number of products with finite lifetime.

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Erasmus Research Institute of Management
hdl.handle.net/1765/10505
ERIM Report Series Research in Management
ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management
Erasmus Research Institute of Management

Hendrikse, G., & Smit, R. (2007). On the Evolution of Product Portfolio Coherence of Cooperatives versus Corporations: An Agent-Based Analysis of the Single Origin Constraint (No. ERS-2007-055-ORG). ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/10505