Environment, Strategy, and Power Within Top Management Teams

This study distinguishes two sources of critical contingencies for organizations: environment and strategy. In turn, it explores how coping with each type of contingency is related to power within top management teams. Executives had high power if, by virtue either of their functional area of scanning behavior, they coped with the dominant requirement imposed by their industry's environment. Power patterns within each industry were further affected by the extent to which executives coped with the contingencies posed by their organizations' particular strategies. A temporal critical contingencies model of power is proposed.