Abstract
This study distinguishes two sources of critical contingencies for organizations: environment and strategy. In turn, it explores how coping with each type of contingency is related to power within top management teams. Executives had high power if, by virtue either of their functional area of scanning behavior, they coped with the dominant requirement imposed by their industry's environment. Power patterns within each industry were further affected by the extent to which executives coped with the contingencies posed by their organizations' particular strategies. A temporal critical contingencies model of power is proposed.
Keywords
ContingencyPower (physics)Contingency theoryCoping (psychology)BusinessProcess managementIndustrial organizationPsychologyOperations managementKnowledge managementComputer scienceEconomicsEpistemology
Related Publications
Environmental scanning and organizational strategy
Abstract The purpose of this study was to test empirically the relationships between the environmental scanning activities of upper‐level executives and their organizations' str...
The Role of Value Congruity in Intraorganizational Power
To understand better the differences in power between subunits, this paper examines the relationship between perceived departmental power and the extent to which departments app...
Evolution of the Marketing Organization: New Forms for Turbulent Environments
Rapid changes in industrial structure and global competition have occurred in the last two decades. The changes herald the post-industrial era, producing an environment of ambig...
Strategic awareness within top management teams
Abstract ‘Strategic awareness’ is viewed in two ways: the extent to which an executive's perception of the organization's strategy aligns (a) with the organization's ‘realized’ ...
Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology
How should we understand why firms exist? A prevailing view has been that they serve to keep in check the transaction costs arising from the self-interested motivations of indiv...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1981
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 253-253
- Citations
- 600
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
600
OpenAlex
Cite This
Donald C. Hambrick
(1981).
Environment, Strategy, and Power Within Top Management Teams.
Administrative Science Quarterly
, 26
(2)
, 253-253.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2392472
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.2307/2392472