Explicitly Articulated Strategy and Firm Performance Under Alternative Levels of Centralization
研究95家美国制造企业发现，战略表述的明确程度与企业绩效呈曲线关系，且受集权程度调节：分权企业需明确表述以协调执行，而集权企业则不然。
Firms are too often unsuccessful due to poor strategy implementation, even when they have developed a sound strategy. Executives searching for guidance on implementing strategy are faced with a dilemma: some researchers argue that explicitly articulating strat-egy to organization members leads to organizational inertia; others say that strategy must be explicitly articulated for a coordinated implementation effort. We introduce structural centralization as a third variable that may be helpful in resolving this dilemma. We argue that, for more decentralized firms, explicit articulation of strategy may improve perfor-mance by increasing the likelihood of coordinated and motivated strategy implementa-tion. Strategy articulation is not necessary, however, for coordinated implementation in centralized firms. The empirical results of our field study of 95 US manufacturing firms generally support this contingency view. Our results also indicate, however, a curvilinear explicitness–performance relationship. Very high and very low explicitness are associated with higher performance, while moderate explicitness is linked to lower performance. These results have important implications for both researchers and practitioners, in part because they help to integrate the previously contradictory viewpoints.