Environmental Context and Organizational Aspiration Determination
研究了环境丰裕性、动态性和复杂性如何影响组织在确定销售抱负时对过去抱负、过去绩效和社会参照组绩效三个参考点的注意力分配，基于美国上市公司数据。
Abstract This research develops an attention‐based, environment‐inclusive model of organizational aspiration determination. The behavioural view embraces that organizations determine aspirations based on three reference points: past aspiration, past performance, and social reference group performance. We build hypotheses to explain how environmental munificence, dynamism, and complexity shape organizational attention allocation among these three reference points. Using data on US publicly traded firms (2006–16), we find that organizations, when determining sales aspirations, allocate (1) more attention to past aspiration and social reference group performance but less attention to past performance in more munificent environments; (2) more attention to past performance and social reference group performance but less attention to past aspiration in more dynamic environments; and (3) more attention to past performance but less attention to past aspiration and social reference group performance in more complex environments. Overall, we contribute to aspiration research by explicitly theorizing a previously understudied contingency, using direct aspiration measures from a wide range of industries, and providing evidence that organizations’ attention allocation rules are regulated by the external environment when determining aspirations.