Researching the Dynamics of Miles and Snow's Strategic Typology

The research conducted on medium and large companies in the Croatian food and beverage industry confirms the presence of all four strategic types originally set by R.E. Miles and C.C. Snow. The strategic orientation of a company is determined through three periods (past, present, future), identifying also the dominant, holistic strategic type. A questionnaire designed by Conant et al. (1990) is used to reveal company's strategic type. The classification power of the questionnaire is further increased by introducing a quasi-numerical measure. The industry is dominated by the defender (34%) and analyzer (27%) strategic types of the holistic company behavior. The theoretically assumed (dominant) stability of strategic orientation of a company is confirmed with a high proportion of strategic change (44%). The dominant source of strategic change comes from companies applying the defender strategic orientation, while the dominant destination of strategic change is the analyzer strategic type. Within the companies that change their strategic orientation over the three periods, specific forms of strategic changes as well as the share of their presence have been identified.1. INTRODUCTIONIn strategic management there are numerous studies focused on identifying and understanding the level of strategy, i.e. strategic orientation of companies in various industries (Moore, 2005). Strategy researchers focused on various ways in which a company adapts to its environment by studying the relations between organizational environment, strategic process, strategic content, organizational performances, and many other variables.Although company strategies are very distinctive categories, the researchers sought to explain company business strategies by creating their typology, with the aim of grouping similar characteristics of organizational behavior of different companies under a common denominator. Different strategic typologies typically have a foothold in the theory of industrial organization and the resource theory, depending on the source of competitive advantage. There are numerous and different approaches, such as the studies on strategic groups by Murray et al. (2002), Caves and Porter (1977) and Harrigan (1985), those on generic competitive strategies by Porter (1980/1995, 1985/1998) and those on organizational configuration by Child (1972). However, strategic typologies are conceptually (not empirically) derived classifications of companies, which are commonly based on researcher's experience in a limited number of industries. Numerous studies conducted in various industries aim to empirically test the validity and usefulness of different strategic typologies.2. MILES AND SNOW'S STRATEGIC TYPESOne of the key premises of literature that investigates the area of strategy1 is that the strategy should align business performance with the environment in which the entity operates. In other words, the most successful organizations also have the most efficient interaction with their environment. Thus, the strategy acts as a kind of an adaptive mechanism.Miles and Snow's main research interest, presented in their book Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process (1978), is why and to what extent organizations within the same industry differ in their strategies, structures and processes. It is elaborated on empirical findings derived from four industries2. The authors study the interdependence of various organizational attributes, such as structure, strategic planning, market penetration, management processes and power of distribution within different types of strategic behaviors and determine the differences in the methods and intensity of their application.At the same time, organizational success rests on the quality of adaptation that management needs to achieve for some key variables, such as organizational domains of manufacturing markets, technologies servicing the specified domain and organizational structures and processes developed for the purpose of coordinating and controlling specific technologies, which is an extremely difficult task considering the fact that environment is constantly changing (Miles and Snow, 1978). …