The positive performance impact of a coalignment between the environment and strategy of a business is an important theoretical proposition in strategic management. In spite of its importance and intuitive appeal, the extent of empirical support is equivocal and riddled with problems of conceptualizing and testing for coalignment. This paper evaluates alternate approaches to testing such a proposition and argues in favor of specifying coalignment as ‘profile deviation’, which states that coalignment is the degree to which strategic resource deployments adhere to an ‘ideal profile’ for a given environment. Subsequently, this proposition is tested across two time periods, and eight distinct environments in two different samples drawn from the PIMS data base. Results, which were generally robust across the two periods, strongly support the proposition of a positive performance impact of environment-strategy coalignment. Implications and research directions are developed.

Environment Strategy Coalignment: An Empirical Test of Its Performance Implications

A two-level scheme for reviewing contingency theory research on organizational strategy is proposed. This scheme employs a systems model for delineating the domain of contingency perspectives on strategy research at the first level and incorporates relevant analytical dimensions at the second level. Patterns observed reinforce criticisms of contingency theory research in other macro-organizational areas. Recommendations pertaining to both theoretical and methodological issues are offered to strategy researchers conducting contingency theory-based empirical investigations.

Contingency Perspectives of Organizational Strategy: A Critical Review of the Empirical Research

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, a comprehensive measure of production competence that assesses the level of support that manufacturing provides for the strategic objectives of a firm is developed. Second, hypotheses relating production competence to several financial measures of business performance are tested using data from a large sample of firms (n=65) in the furniture industry. Third, the impact of business strategy both directly on performance and as a moderating variable in relation to production competence is analyzed. The results of the study suggest that production competence may have more of an effect on business performance for certain strategies than for others.

Production Competence and Business Strategy: Do They Affect Business Performance?

Each of the articles in this special section makes a distinctive contribution to the long-standing controversy over the managerial value of the product life cycle concept. This overview is designed...

The product life cycle: analysis and applications issues

The traditional product life cycle framework has little to say about the competitive processes that accompany the evolution of a market. The first part of the article identifies the major shortcomi...

Evolutionary Processes in Competitive Markets: Beyond the Product Life Cycle:

This study examined the market structures, performance, and strategies of over 1000 industrial businesses to determine whether and to what extent product life cycle forces were at work. The finding...

Stephen C. Burnett

Papers

The Nature of Product Life Cycles for Industrial Goods Businesses