Shifting gears: Enabling change in corporate aggressiveness
将多业务公司的企业战略视为资源在业务间功能部署的模式，分析企业激进程度变革的抑制与诱导因素，发现先前绩效和行业波动性对变革倾向有曲线影响，规模和先前资源部署则抑制变革。
Abstract This paper interprets the corporate strategies of multi‐business firms as patterns in their aggregate deployment of resources to functional uses across businesses. By integrating business and corporate levels in the study of strategy‐making, such a perspective facilitates analyzing aggressiveness in corporate posture as a concept distinct from, but complementary to, competitive strategy and diversification. Changes in aggressiveness, we argue, result from the interplay of two sets of forces: (1) inhibitors that create inertia; and (2) inductors that stimulate redeployments. Specific hypotheses are tested using data drawm from a random sample of 352 firms in ten economic sectors between 1977 and 1984. Results support the view that prior performance and sector volatility have a curvilinear impact on the propensity of firms to change their corporate aggressiveness. Change in corporate posture is significantly inhibited by size and prior resource deployments. However, the inductive forces of prior performance and volatility act to stimulate change.