管理者认知视角的环境动态性与组织战略变革关系研究

A Study on the Relationship between Environmental Dynamism and Strategic Change Based on the Perspective of Managerial Cognition

对于组织战略变革的研究一直以来存在两种观点,分别为产业结构观和管理者认知观。本文试图将这两种观点结合起来,形成一个对组织战略变革更完整的解释。本文从管理者有限理性的角度引入管理者认知作为中介变量,研究管理者认知在环境动态性和战略变革之间的中介作用机制,并引入组织惯性概念探索其对战略变革的影响。研究发现:(1)环境动态性会显著影响管理者认知,其中正向影响管理者认知的集中性,负向影响管理者认知的复杂性;(2)管理者认知会影响战略变革,其中管理者认知复杂性会显著促进战略变革;(3)管理者认知在环境动态性与组织战略变革之间起到中介作用;(4)组织惯性会弱化管理者认知复杂性对战略变革的促进作用,但对管理者认知集中性与战略变革之间的调节作用不显著。

The study on mechanism of strategic change is the core question of strategic management.There are currently two perspectives explaining what trigger the occurrence of strategic change,which are prospectively industrial structure view and managerial cognition view.The industrial structure view believes the characteristics of industrial structure,such as industrial concentration,industrial competition and technical orientation,can directly contribute to strategic change,while the managerial cognition view believes managers are limited rational and they cannot develop comprehensive understanding about industrial change.Even though firms are performing business in same industrial,managers have different cognition about environmental change leading to differentiated corporate decision.There are recently researches paying attention to the limitation of either view explaining the reason of strategic change and attempting to combine industrial structure and managerial cognition view.Industrial structure view demonstrates the impact of characteristics of industrial structure on strategic change,but it ignores the impact of top management team on strategic decision making.In contrast,the managerial cognition view based on the limited rational consider the impact of the diversity of personal traits on the process of decision-making,but the characteristic of industrial structure indeed influences strategic change.Therefore,this paper attempts to use the above two views to develop a comprehensive explanation of strategic change.Based on the above thoughts,this paper attempts to solve the following three issues:First,how industry characteristics affect the formulation of enterprise strategy.This paper mainly explores its impact on strategic change from the perspective of environmental dynamics;Second,from the perspective of bounded rationality and information processing,it explores how managers’cognition affects strategic change;Third,it explores whether managers’cognition is an inner influence mechanism of environmental dynamic on strategic change;Fourth,it explores how organizational factors,such as organizational inertia,moderate the impact of managers’cognition on strategic change.This paper has the following conclusions:Firstly,environmental dynamics will affect managers’cognition.Environmental dynamism has a significant positive impact on managerial cognition focus and a significant negative impact on cognition complexity.This paper indicates that in a rapidly changing environment,due to the limited attention,cognition inertia,selective cognition and cognition stagnation,managers will actively refuse to embed new concepts into their cognitive knowledge structure and rely more on the original knowledge structure,which will enhance the managerial cognition focus and weaken the cognition complexity.This issue actually has made a response to a proposal put forward by some scholars that cognition has the characteristics of path dependence.Secondly,managers’cognition will influence strategic change.The complexity of managers’cognition has a significant positive impact on strategic change,while the cognition focus has a significant negative impact on strategic change.Thirdly,managers’cognition plays a mediating role between environmental dynamism and strategic change,that is,environmental dynamism affects strategic change through influencing managers’cognition.Fourthly,organization inertia weakens the promoting effects of managerial cognitive complexity on strategic change,but has no significant moderating effects on the relationship between managerial cognition focus and strategic change.This paper has the following contributions:First,this paper deeply explores the influencing mechanism of environmental dynamism on firm strategy,and finds that with the enhancement of environmental dynamism,the degree of enterprise strategic change is increasing,and enterprises are more active in responding to environmental changes.In addition,this paper further studies the affecting mechanism of environmental dynamics on strategic change.Previous studies have studied the influence of the characteristics of industry structure on strategic change from the perspective of industry,or the influence of the characteristics of top management team on strategic change from the perspective of top management team.This paper introduces the concept of managers’cognition to study how environmental dynamism affects managers’cognition and strategic change.It is found that managerial cognition plays a mediating role between environmental dynamism and strategic change.Environmental change firstly changes managers’knowledge structure and then affects strategy formulation.Secondly,this paper deeply studies the moderating effect of organization inertia between managers’cognition and strategic change.In previous studies,most scholars directly studied the impact of managers’cognition on strategic change,while ignoring the role of organization inertia.However,if the organization inertia is too strong,leading to managers’not being able to effectively play their autonomy,then even if managers realize that strategic change should be carried out,strategic change will be difficult to occur actually.Therefore,it is not comprehensive to study strategic change without organization inertia.The practical implications are mainly reflected in the following three aspects:firstly,enterprises should pay attention to the impression management of managers in real business operation,that is,managers attribute the strategic failure to environmental factors,and the strategic success to management excellence.From this study,we can see that environmental change affects strategic change through managers’cognition.Therefore,when enterprises carry out strategic change,they should face up to the influence of managers’personal cognition ability on strategic results.Secondly,in a dynamic environment,managers need to be aware of the importance of improving the cognitive complexity and reducing the cognitive focus.From this study,we can see that managers’cognitive concentration will inhibit strategic change,and managers’cognitive complexity will promote strategic change.With the continuous improvement of environmental dynamics,enterprises need to constantly carry out strategic changes to respond to the environment.Therefore,in order to effectively carry out strategic change,managers need to consciously accept the stimulation of the environment,actively learn new knowledge,increase the complexity of managers’cognition,reduce the cognition focus,so as to quickly and accurately identify the information in the environment for strategic change.Thirdly,enterprises should pay attention to size control,or set up a reasonable mechanism to avoid the inertia caused by the increase of firm size.