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Antecedents and temporal dynamics of strategic divergence in multinational corporations: Evidence from Europe

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  • Brauer, Matthias
  • Heitmann, Mark

Abstract

Coordinating consistent strategy implementation has been identified a key challenge for multi-national corporations. Based on intraorganizational evolutionary models of strategy formation, this paper thus empirically investigates the antecedents and temporal dynamics of strategic divergence. Strategic divergence is the deviation of a firm's resource allocation decisions with its articulated concept of corporate strategy. Large-scale empirical analysis of 11,406 resource allocation decisions of twenty-five publicly listed, multi-national and multi-business European firms indicates that decision type, operational and divisional manager involvement in decision making and structural context changes exert a significant influence on strategic divergence. Importantly, results further suggest that firms’ levels of strategic divergence tend to increase over time and that the antecedents of strategic divergence have a differential impact as time passes.

Suggested Citation

  • Brauer, Matthias & Heitmann, Mark, 2013. "Antecedents and temporal dynamics of strategic divergence in multinational corporations: Evidence from Europe," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 110-121.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:worbus:v:48:y:2013:i:1:p:110-121
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2012.06.012
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