An Empirical Study on the Relationships among Manager's Demographic Characteristics, Organizational Characteristics and Strategic Type

최고경영자의 인구통계적 특성, 조직특성과 전략유형의 관련성

  • Published : 1998.06.01

Abstract

According to the structural contingency theories, organizational structures are determined by such a contingency variables as organizational environment, technology, size, power and strategy. Therefore, many scholor believed that organizational effectiveness will be maximized in the condition of the fit between organizational structure and its contingency variables. But contingency theories have limitations in explaining of the manager's discretion by way of environmental determinism. In 1972, Child introduced strategic choice theory, and this perspective spurred significant, systematic studies of the influence of the managerial voluntary will on the organizational performance. Especially, the question of whether tap managers have an impact on business performance has been addressed by the strategic leadership theory that demonstrates strong associations between the characteristics of top managers, strategic orientation. Therefore, this study has investigated a theoretical literature and an empirical survey that explains the impact of top manger characteristics and organizational characteristics about strategic orientation. In order tn do that, this study develops a research model on the subjects, designed manager's characteristics, strategic typology. Managerial characteristics could be operationalized in terms of demographic measures. In this study, strategic orientation was classified using the Miles & Snow typology. This research model provides hypotheses. Hypotheses H1: The demographic characteristics of the tap manager will differ according to the types of strategic types. H2: The organizational characteristics of the firm will differ according to the types of strategic types. To test these hypotheses, this study conducted questionaire surveys on 108 firms in the Korea national wide. This study has utilized ANOVA, Chi-square analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis for testing the hypotheses. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, this study builds on the central tenent of cotingency theory in provide a comprehensive explanation of the process by which top manager's influence. Second, Manager's characteristics(demographics) are different from each other according to 4 strategic types(Prospector, Defender, Analyzer, Reactor). Third, Organizational characteristics are different from each other according to 4 strategic types. In conclusion, the major contributions of this study are to examine the development of a more comprehensive theoretical framework in the strategic leadership theory and to analyze their contingent relationships among managerial characteristics, organizational characteristics and strategic types in the context of Korea's industry.

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