Environment‐strategy coalignment: An empirical test of its performance implications
- 1 January 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Strategic Management Journal
- Vol. 11 (1) , 1-23
- https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250110102
Abstract
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.Keywords
This publication has 49 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Concept of Fit in Strategy Research: Towards Verbal and Statistical Congruence.Academy of Management Proceedings, 1987
- Congruence, Contingency, and Theory BuildingAcademy of Management Review, 1987
- The market share‐profitability relationship: An empirical assessment of major assertions and contradictionsStrategic Management Journal, 1986
- Contingency Perspectives of Organizational Strategy: A Critical Review of the Empirical ResearchAcademy of Management Review, 1985
- Contingency Perspectives of Organizational Strategy: A Critical Review of the Empirical ResearchAcademy of Management Review, 1985
- Operationalizing Organizational Strategy: Toward an Integrative FrameworkAcademy of Management Review, 1984
- An Inventory and Critique of Strategy Research Using the PIMS DatabaseAcademy of Management Review, 1984
- Moderator variables: A clarification of conceptual, analytic, and psychometric issuesOrganizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1982
- FUNCTIONAL IMPORTANCE AND COMPANY PERFORMANCE - MODERATING EFFECTS OF GRAND STRATEGY AND INDUSTRY TYPEStrategic Management Journal, 1981
- Short term financial success in large business organizations: The environment‐strategy connectionStrategic Management Journal, 1980