An investigation of the relationships among industry structure, strategy type, organizational characteristics and organizational performance: A case study of the food and chemical industries of Iran

Abstract

Studying the influence of main factors on organizational performance is an important subject in the strategic management literature. Generally, performance differentiations’ resources among organizations are definable in terms of the existing industrial structure in industrial organization literature (OI) or characteristics of the organization in resource-based view (RBV). In this article, a model has been developed based on these two fundamental views after studying related literature. The proposed model has been examined in 48 chemical and 76 food industries by means of structural equations’ model and based on partial least squares (PLS) methodology. Results imply that industrial structure determines organizational characteristics, which in turn leads to superior organizational performance. Non-homogeneity of organizational characteristics could be explained not only through competition intensity but also by the means of applied strategic type in an organization that shows goodness and consistency of organizational-strategy characteristics. The obtained experimental results support almost all of the hypotheses except the hypothesis related to the influence of industrial structure on strategic type. Key words: Industrial structure, strategic type, market orientation, organizational learning, innovative culture, organizational performance.