Knowledge that Transforms

An integrative model of relationships among environmental dimensions, diversification strategy, firm size, structural divisionalization, and economic performance was developed and tested using environmental and organizational data from 110 large manufacturing firms. The results suggested that among those organizations, (1) higher levels of environmental instability were associated with lower levels of divisionalization and diversification, (2) strategy followed structure, and (3) size did not mediate the strategy-structure relationship. Furthermore, both environmental instability and diversification were positively related to market-determined performance, and instability was negatively related to operating performance. The results provided support for portions of each of three models, the external control, strategic management, and inertial models.

This study tested Fishbein and Ajzen's hypothesis that the behavior of some individuals will be rationally determined by personal expectancies and that the behavior of other individuals will be environmentally determined by social norms. As predicted, strong expectancy-behavior correspondence was obtained for individuals who were dispositionally aware of personal expectancies but unattuned to social norms. In contrast, we predicted and obtained strong norm-behavior correspondence for individuals who were dispositionally attuned to social norms but unaware of personal expectancies. Several methodological refinements in expectancy measures produced equivalent results.

It has been proposed that the emotions expressed by role occupants influence the behavior of others. We hypothesized a positive relationship between employees' display of pleasant emotions to customers and sales in retail stores and tested that relationship in a sample of 576 convenience stores. An unexpected negative relationship was observed. A subsequent qualitative study suggested that sales is an indicator of a store's pace, or the amount of time pressure on clerks and customers, and that pace leads to displayed emotions, with norms in busy settings supporting neutral displays and norms in slow settings supporting positive displays. Reanalysis of the quantitative data confirmed that clerks in rapidly paced stores with high sales and long lines were less likely to display positive feelings than clerks in slow-paced stores.