Relationships Between Miles and Snow Strategic Types and Organizational Performance in Polish Production Companies

Abstract

Purpose: Miles and Snow’s conception of strategic types is the most popular and extensively studied typology of strategic choices. Consequently, in recent years it has been related to organizational performance measures. Despite numerous studies conducted in different environmental and organizational settings, the research results of relationships between strategic types and organizational performance are ambiguous. In this paper, we seek to advance the knowledge regarding how a chosen strategic type affects organizational performance measures in the transition economy of Poland.

Methodology: Using quantitative research results, on the basis of data from 96 organizations we statistically test four research hypotheses.

Findings: Research results reveal the existence of “clear” strategic types in majority of companies but highlight moderately strong relationships between declared strategic type and organizational performance. In turn, they suggest that Prospector and analyzer strategic types promise slightly higher performance than Reactor and Defender types.

Originality: This research project on strategic types in SMEs in a transition economy is one of few dealing with this topic that have been conducted in Eastern European countries to date.