Not complacent but scared: another look at the causes of strategic inertia among successful firms from a regulatory focus perspective

While complacency is the most commonly offered explanation for the lack of strategic change among successful firms, research in management psychology suggests otherwise. Based on regulatory focus theory, we propose that competitive success prompts an increased sense of responsibility in managers, ca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of strategic marketing Vol. 19; no. 6; pp. 501 - 516
Main Authors Rusetski, Alexander, Lim, Lewis K.S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Taylor & Francis Group 01.10.2011
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
decision making
Employee attitude
Innovations
Management theory
Managers
marketing strategy
Markstrat
Organizational behavior
regulatory focus
strategic inertia
Studies
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Summary:While complacency is the most commonly offered explanation for the lack of strategic change among successful firms, research in management psychology suggests otherwise. Based on regulatory focus theory, we propose that competitive success prompts an increased sense of responsibility in managers, causing them to assume a defensive attitude and to concentrate on preserving the status quo instead of becoming complacent. Data collected from the Markstrat simulation support our predictions. The findings imply that efforts to encourage strategic change by pressurizing managers will backfire, because they will aggravate managers' defensive attitude. Instead, firms should loosen the pressure on managers and allow them to experiment with innovative strategies.
ISSN:0965-254X
1466-4488
DOI:10.1080/0965254X.2011.557743