IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v56y2014i3p341-371.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revisiting the fit-performance thesis half a century later: a historical financial analysis of Chandler's own matched and mismatched firms

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth E. Aupperle
  • William Acar
  • Debmalya Mukherjee

Abstract

This study revisits Chandler's seminal work Strategy and Structure (1962) empirically. This work helped fashion the notion of strategic fit as well as the need for new organisational forms. Chandler's fit-performance thesis proposes that firms which match structure to their strategy will become economically more efficient than mismatched firms. The very same firms Chandler studied are analysed financially as their structure evolves through successive phases of being matched to their strategy, mismatched, and then finally matched again. Over 70 longitudinal tests are performed, yielding mostly statistically significant results. These tests surprisingly suggest that mismatched firms generally outperform firms that match structure to strategy. Such results matter in light of new conceptual approaches being introduced on the subject of 'fit'; novel plausible explanations are provided for this apparent theoretical paradox.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth E. Aupperle & William Acar & Debmalya Mukherjee, 2014. "Revisiting the fit-performance thesis half a century later: a historical financial analysis of Chandler's own matched and mismatched firms," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(3), pages 341-371, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:56:y:2014:i:3:p:341-371
    DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2013.790369
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00076791.2013.790369
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076791.2013.790369?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Singh, Deeksha & Pattnaik, Chinmay & Gaur, Ajai S. & Ketencioglu, Elif, 2018. "Corporate expansion during pro-market reforms in emerging markets: The contingent value of group affiliation and diversification," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 220-229.
    2. Arora, Punit & Gaur, Ajai, 2022. "Peer directors’ effort, firm efficiency and performance of diversified firms: An efficacy-based view of governance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 593-608.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:56:y:2014:i:3:p:341-371. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.