Toward an integrative cartography of two strategic issue diagnosis frameworks

There exist two prominent accounts of how managers make sense of and take action in relation to strategic issues. The threat–opportunity (TO) and feasibility–urgency (FU) approaches primarily emphasize automatic/affective and active/deliberative strategic issue diagnosis processes, respectively. Current research, however, does not effectively integrate or fully explore the relationship between these two frameworks. We employ theory‐building literature to develop a framework that highlights four distinct and increasingly integrative lenses through which such an exploration can be systematically carried out. Analyzing data from how firms reacted to the economic uncertainty of early 2003, the results of our study indicate that the FU approach is a better predictor of both intentions and actual responses than the TO approach. Our results also indicate that threat is positively related to urgency and negatively related to feasibility, while opportunity is positively related to feasibility and negatively related to urgency. Further, using the expectancy–instrumentality–valence (EIV) motivational theory as a framework, we factor analyze both TO and FU items, identifying three underlying constructs of favorability, urgency, and influence (which we dub FUI). FUI has a higher predictive efficacy than the TO approach alone. We highlight implications for theory building and research in the strategic issue diagnosis literature. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.