This study attempts to empirically test several theorized perspectives from the organizational ecology literature as to how organizations change their strategic orientations in response to changes in the size of the niche in which they operate. Strategic orientation is measured in terms of the degree to which a firm is either Prospector-like or Defender-like as devined by Miles and Snow (1978). Niche size is defined as the total revenue earned in a particular industry.
An index of strategic orientation, the PD (Prospector/Defender) index, was computed for each of 16 firms in industry over a period of twenty years, from 1967 to 1986. The intent of the study was to see if firms became either more or less Prospector-like (or Defender-like) in response to growth and contraction of niche size.
The results of the research study revealed the following:
1) At the industry level, the year-to-year variation in strategic orientation was significantly higher in both the periods of rapid expansion and contraction of niche size than in the period of low, stable growth, and was highest in the period of niche size contraction.
2) At the firm level, strategic orientations did not become more Prospector-like during the period of rapid growth in niche size as predicted by theory based on the population ecology perspective.
3) Strategic orientations did not become more Defender-like during the period of niche size contraction as predicted. Instead, they became overwhelmingly more Prospector-like in orientation during this period.
4) In both the periods of rapid expansion and contraction of niche size, the more Prospector-like the firm, the greater the magnitude of change in strategic orientation that occurred.
The findings of this study do not necessarily refute population ecology theory because of the way in which niche size was conceptualized. Had industry unit volume rather than industry revenue been used to operationalize niche size, the hypotheses based on population ecology would have been supported.
A conclusion of this study is that the use of niche size offers some conceptual and methodological advantages over product or industry life cycle as a way of operationalizing environmental change. As to the choice of an appropriate measure of niche size, the question remains for other research to address. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/54389 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Little, John L. |
| Contributors | Management, Litschert, Robert J., Alexander, Larry D., Bonham, Thirwall W., Robinson, Jerald F., Wokutch, Richard E. |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | xiv, 152 leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 20880549 |
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