Research notes and communications development and validation of the strategic locus of control scale

Previous studies investigating the role of locus of control beliefs in relation to strategy‐making behavior, organizational structure, performance and environment have employed the well known Rotter (1966) I‐E scale. Unfortunately, however, this scale is beset by a number of problems which render it unsuitable for studies of business organizations, namely, that the items comprising the scale lack context‐specificity and its well known tendency to correlate with measures of social desirability response set. This paper describes the development of a new measure designed to overcome these limitations. The measure, intended specifically for investigating locus of control beliefs in relation to issues of strategic management, assesses the extent to which respondents regard their own and other organizations' strategic issues to be resolved by the systematic application of strategic management techniques (e.g. environmental analysis, strategic planning, etc) or through external environmental forces (e.g. the actions of powerful competitors, unforeseen chance events, etc) largely beyond the control of organizations. Data is presented from two samples which indicate that the measure demonstrates acceptable reliability and construct validity.