A review of empirical research on dynamic competitive strategy, страница 9

Organizational structure→Competitive strategy. This review identified many studies on how organizational structure impacts competitive strategy. Generally, static organizational characteristics have been seen as sources of inertia. Overcoming such obstacles to strategic adaptation is therefore often cited as a manager's key task (Cyert and March 1963). Inertia can result from structural characteristics such as formalized control mechanisms (Hannan and Freeman 1977, 1984; Reuf 1997), set decision-making rules, paradigms (Pfeffer 1982) and organizational routines (McKinley 1992). In addition, many researchers also consider firm size as one of the most important sources of inertia (Glen and Hambrick 1995; Gordon et al. 2000; Greve 2000). On the flipside, some studies of structural organizational change have found that it facilitates the strength and duration of subsequent strategic adaptations. The structural changes that have been studied include a wide range of variables, such as changes in ownership (Capron et al. 1998; Goodstein and Boeker 1991), and in the board of directors (Golden and Zajac 2001; Sakano and Lewin 1999), as well as CEO succession (Goodstein and Boeker 1991; Miller 1993) or changes in CEO compensation (Carpenter 2000). In terms of the characteristics of strategic change, studies in this link seem to rely almost entirely on the general likelihood or the type of strategic adaptation as dependent variable. As far as we can determine, only Glen and Hambrick (1995) investigate the impact of organizational size on the timing of strategic adaptation, finding that small firms tend to be faster in executing their own competitive moves, but slower in responding to those of their rivals. However, despite a promising start using organizational size as a broadly defined proxy variable for structural organizational characteristics, no other study we know of has extended the findings with respect to the timing of strategic actions. Furthermore, none of the studies we identify has focused on the influence exerted by long-term structural development on competitive strategy decisions.

Organizational resources and capabilities→ Competitive strategy. This is the last of the organizational contingencies that we shall discuss. According to the resource-based view of the firm (Barney 1991; Peteraf 1993) and dynamic capability theory (Eisenhardt and Martin 2000; Teece et al. 1997; Teece and Pisano 1994), this group of organizational contingencies is the foundation of competitive advantage. Consequently, longitudinal research on dynamic competitive strategy includes studies that explore how resource stocks as well as accumulation and depletion processes shape the intensity and direction of strategic actions.

First, this research focuses on path dependencies by suggesting that businesses tend to shape paths of strategic actions that reinforce and extend their existing resource base. For example, Apple's move into the mobile phone business represents a competitive strategy that tries to build on its superior customer understanding and design capabilities to enter new but technologically related market segments. This has been shown in terms of alliance formation patterns (Gulati 1999; Sakakibara 2002; Tsai 2000), research trajectories in drug innovation (White 2000) and market entries (Greve 2000), where firms initially enter where barriers are lowest, but then move towards long-term positions that reflect their resource base (Bogner et al. 1996).

Second, resources can be at the heart of both inertia and persistence (Leonard-Barton 1992) particularly after radical environmental changes, when a history of successful exploitation not only makes it attractive to managers to sustain the current focus, but also means that they have had no relevant alternative experiences (Kraatz and Zajac 2001).