"Strategy, Choice, Determinism, and Change in Organizational Task Environments: Empirical Evidence"

Abstract

Much of the extant management research implies that the existence of industries and organizations is dependent upon variables largely beyond their control, and survival is the result of a happy confluence of events related to their origins and growth rather than actions of their conscious volition. With data from the NBER-CES Manufacturing Industry Database, we studied changes in managerial choice and environmental determinism in a sample of 459 industries for the years 1958 to 2005 to test if industry circumstances can be overcome. Rather than study only rates of organization population change as dependent upon environmental change, we looked at whether some actions that could be taken by managers in the industry could, in the aggregate, impact their environment. We found that changes in the growth of innovation and concentration have some impact on the type of environment in which the industry later found itself. Migration and potential rationalization of organization production facilities, along with organization population pressures, were also strong forces in determining changes in organization environments. Our findings suggest that there is some degree of strategic choice at work and, at the industry level, firms may have some choice. The study’s implications are given.