An approach to gain more with less concessions: Transitive strategic responses of organizations under the effect of organizational identity and relations with environment

Abstract

Strategic responses of organizations can be triggered by both environmental and organizational antecedents. Even though environments impose some constraints on organizations, they still have a range of response. We find that newspapers, in Turkey, have three different identities. One rooted in journalistic values. One rooted in running the newspaper as a business. And one rooted in maintaining its leadership role. These identities trigger three different transitive strategic responses. A transitive response is one in which an organization has an attack and a fall-back position. Further, we show how the link between an organization’s identity and its strategic response is moderated by the dominance of relations with institutional environment and the dominance of relations with technical environment. We tested these ideas in a pilot test with supportive interviews, and then in a large scale quantitative study.