The fact is that most business-level behaviors are not really business-level activities. They are almost always business-level behaviors. That’s why I’ll talk about business-level strategies here.
Every single business-level strategy has two parts: Business-level activity and a business-level behavior. Business-level activities are those that are common to most businesses. Business-level behavior is anything that happens when a business is acting in a business-level way.
Business-level behaviors are those that go beyond the business-level activities, and they are more common in business because of their business-level behavior. Business-level behaviors are behaviors that are common to most businesses, but are likely to be more common in other businesses.
Some businesses are more business-level than others. For example, if a business is a fast-food restaurant, then it’s probably more business-level than a hotel. If a business is selling wine, then it’s probably more business-level than a cafe. The same is true in other areas, like music or movies.
So if we could compare behavior to business-level behavior, we could say that more business-level behaviors are more common in business. But more business-level behaviors are also found in other businesses. So if we could compare business-level behavior to business behavior, we could say that more business behaviors are more common in other businesses.
A better comparison would be to compare business-level behaviors to behavior more typical of other businesses. So we could say that in other businesses more business-level behaviors are more common, and in a business that is selling wine, more business behaviors are more common.
So far in this study we have been comparing business-level behaviors to business behavior more typical of the industry. But that would be comparing apples with apples. So if we can make a generalization, we can say that those more common behaviors are more common in other businesses, not in others. But we can also make a generalization that those more common behaviors are more common in other businesses, not in others.
This is more or less the same thing that’s been discussed in the literature about business strategy and the business cycle. More traditional business behaviors are more common than more creative business behaviors are in the business cycle. The classic example is the classic cycle of business management: More conservative business behaviors are more common in the early years of the cycle, and more creative business behaviors are more common in the later years.
