Strategy-Making in Context: Ten Empirical Archetypes

A more encompassing form of contingency theory is proposed to study organizations and their decision-making behaviour. Instead of looking at bivariate relationships between environmental, organizational, and decision- making style variables, it is suggested that researchers attempt to find a number of causal models which represent archetypal, or frequently occurring relationships amongst a broad host of such variables. In this manner, relationships are qualified by their context and a more complete picture of organizational functioning emerges. A methodology for isolating archetypes is presented and we discuss some findings which portray strategy making behaviour under different environmental and organizational states.