Strategic Response Hierarchies as Reaction to Environmental Threat

Abstract

To perform effectively, an organization must match its capabilities to its constantly
changing environment. However, little research focuses on the dynamic processes by which
organizations make these adaptive decisions. This research develops and tests a hierarchical
model of organizational response to environmental threat. It suggests that organizations
invoke preexisting sets of response programs to deal with familiar threats, and
that these programs emerge in a predictable, hierarchical order.