An Organizational Identity Approach to Strategic Groups

We argue that a firm forms three distinct relationships with strategic groups—identification, disidentification, and ambivalent identification. Firms can form any of these relationships with multiple strategic groups, and the set of these relationships comprises a firm's strategic group configuration (SGC). We propose that the nature of a firm's identity influences the characteristics of its SGC. We demonstrate the implications of our model by exploring how a firm's strategic group configuration affects its information-seeking behaviors. Finally, we describe how the SGC framework offers several key implications for this field of research.