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EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
To test the main propositions in strategic management, such as firm ef- fects in determining performance; immobile, valuable resources in in- fluencing performance; and the impact of certain corporate strategies (e.g., global/product diversification, mergers, and acquisitions) on per- formance, many empirical studies have been conducted. In general, these studies confirmed that:

1. Firm effects are relatively more important in determining perfor- mance.
2. Many firm resources such as innovativeness, corporate culture, a firm’s history, and employee know-how are effective in influenc- ing firm performance.
3. Only diversification strategies based on valuable, rare, and costly-to-imitate resources generate superior performance.
4. There is a noticeable impact of national differences on firm capabil- ities.
5. Certain resources and combinations of resources produce better performance for alliances.
6. There are no rules for garnering “persistent” superior performance (Barney & Arikan, 2001).

Although many empirical methods of investigation have been adopted for these studies, strategic management researchers have found it challenging to develop ways to empirically test the resource-based view of a firm because valuable resources, by nature, are less observable (Godfrey & Hill, 1995). As previously stated, the resources and capabili- ties that create sustainable competitive advantages are valuable, rare, not substitutable, and imperfectly imitable. Such a definition seems to be fundamentally tautological and presents difficulties in strategy mea- surement and thus causality examination. It becomes even more chal- lenging when intangible, knowledge-based assets are considered. Lockett and Thompson (2001) concluded that causal ambiguity and firm-specific opportunity sets have been the greatest challenges for em- pirical testing in such studies.
In response to such measurement challenges, early scholars focused on examining strategies using in-depth case studies, especially in in- stances in which less tangible resources are involved (Hoskisson et al., 1999). Although one might review a firm or a group of firms in their market context, by adopting detailed field-based case studies that incor- porate both archival and interview data, the lack of large data sets to test theory and apply multivariate statistical tools creates significant challenges for strategic management researchers. It also makes it more

difficult for media strategy studies to become a more mature, respected scholarly field of study. Finally, because it is difficult to measure many intangible resources, proxy variables such as awards (e.g., Emmys) and salaries (e.g., CEO’s compensation) have been used as measures of many intangible resources (Landers & Chan-Olmsted, 2002; Miller & Shamsie, 1996). Some strategic management researchers have expressed reserva- tions that proxies may not be valid measures for many underlying con- structs (Godfrey & Hill, 1995).
In response to such empirical challenges, some strategy researchers have tried combining quantitative questionnaires and qualitative inter- views to increase the validity and reliability of their measures (Henderson & Cockburn, 1994). Some have suggested a step-by-step approach: First, identify a potential resource; second, examine its prop- erties theoretically based on previous research; third measure the effect of the resource on performance (Deephouse, 2000). Because of the mul- tiplicity of methods needed to identify, measure, and understand firm characteristics, strategy might be best researched as a dynamic or evo- lutionary phenomenon and empirically approached with a combination of longitudinal, in-depth case studies and other quantitative measures.
In terms of the application of statistical techniques, cluster analysis, which groups observations into similar segments, has been used fre- quently in strategic management research since the 1970s. This multivariate technique is often used because the variables in strategy studies are complex and multidimensional. As a result, researchers need some way to identify sets of firms that share commonalities among a set of variables and to find configurations that capture the complexity of organizational reality (Ketchen & Shook, 1996). Nevertheless, cluster analysis has been heavily criticized by scholars in recent years because of its extensive reliance on researcher judgment and its lack of test sta- tistics for hypothesis testing. In fact, many empirical studies in strategic management have failed to find links between group membership and performance. As a result, strategic management scholars recommend limited use of this statistical technique and stress the importance of se- lecting variables inductively. When using this technique, researchers should also pay extra attention to determining and validating the num- ber of clusters (Ketchen & Shook, 1996).