Purpose

This paper aims to propose a novel approach to constructing an economic taxonomy that demonstrates the complex relationships between firms, which are not fully revealed by traditional industry classification systems such as the NAICS or ICB.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on narrative economic theory, data from CNBC news reports between 01/01/2019 and 03/27/2019 regarding four selected firms, namely, Walmart, Amazon, Netflix and Boeing, were analyzed and coded as the basis to guide the construction of a firm-to-firm relationship taxonomy.

Findings

The relationships between firms are more complex than the simple relationships defined by the traditional classification systems with yes or no in terms of production process (NAICS) or major profit resource (ICB). Based on the sample firms, the authors proposed a four-layer hierarchical taxonomy framework that quantitatively reveals the inherent contradictory relationships between firms, which the authors defined as competition vs consistency. The proposed taxonomy framework is sufficiently flexible to accommodate complex relationships between firms, and it is also adaptable to new information. Under both the competition and consistency categories in the taxonomy model, more detailed subcategories are further coded into two more layers quantitatively to represent the firms' nuanced relationships.

Originality/value

This study provides a novel atheoretical approach to reveal complex firm relationships utilizing narrative text data gathered from news media. The framework of the firm relationship taxonomy constructed in this study provides an alternative and supplementary approach to the classical industry classification systems that can quantitatively specify comprehensive and dynamic connections between firms.

中文翻译：

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基于新闻报道构建反映牢固关系的经济分类

目的

本文旨在提出一种构建经济分类法的新方法，该方法可以展示公司之间的复杂关系，而传统的行业分类系统（如 NAICS 或 ICB）并未完全揭示这些关系。

设计/方法/方法

基于叙事经济理论，对 2019 年 1 月 1 日至 2019 年 3 月 27 日 CNBC 新闻报道中有关沃尔玛、亚马逊、Netflix 和波音 4 家选定公司的数据进行分析和编码，作为指导建设的依据。企业间关系分类法。

发现

企业之间的关系比传统分类系统定义的简单关系更为复杂，即生产过程（NAICS）或主要利润资源（ICB）是或否。基于样本公司，作者提出了一个四层分层分类框架，定量揭示了公司之间固有的矛盾关系，作者将其定义为竞争与一致性。拟议的分类框架足够灵活，可以适应公司之间的复杂关系，并且还可以适应新信息。在分类模型中的竞争和一致性类别下，更详细的子类别被进一步编码为两个更多的层，以表示公司的细微关系。

原创性/价值

本研究提供了一种新颖的非理论方法来利用从新闻媒体收集的叙事文本数据来揭示复杂的公司关系。本研究构建的企业关系分类框架为经典行业分类系统提供了一种替代和补充方法，可以定量地指定企业之间全面和动态的联系。