Task environments

See also Diversification (corporate)

Dess and Beard’s (1984) organizational task environments

Dess and Beard (1984) proposed that there were three elements of task environments which contributed to the level of environmental uncertainty faced by firms:

Munificence: Resource availability and capacity to support growth Dynamism: Extent of unpredictable change Complexity: The density and concentration of firms within an industry Dess, G. G. and Beard, D. W. (1984) Dimensions of organizational task environments, Administrative Science Quarterly, 29: 52-73.

Both survey and archival measures have been used in work to date. Some studies have used the full set of elements (i.e., munificence, dynamism and complexity), while a larger pool of articles have used only a subset of these dimensions

Studies using archival measures of all three dimensions

Bamford, C. E., Dean, T. J., and Douglas, T. J. (2004). The temporal nature of growth determinants in new bank foundings: implications for new venture research design. Journal of Business Venturing, 19(6), 899-919. Bamford, C. E., Dean, T. J., and McDougall, P. P. (2000). An examination of the impact of initial founding conditions and decisions upon the performance of new bank start-ups. Journal of Business Venturing, 15(3), 253-277.

Bergh, D. D. (1998). Product-market uncertainty, portfolio restructuring, and performance: An information-processing and resource-based view. Journal of Management, 24(2), 135-155.

Berman, S. L., Wicks, A. C., Kotha, S., and Jones, T. M. (1999). Does stakeholder orientation matter? The relationship between stakeholder management models and firm financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 42(5), 488-506.

Boyd, B. (1990). Corporate linkages and organizational environment - a test of the resource dependence model. Strategic Management Journal, 11(6), 419-430. Boyd, B. K. (1995). CEO duality and firm performance - a contingency-model. Strategic Management Journal, 16(4), 301-312.

Castrogiovanni, G. J. (2002). Organization task environments: Have they changed fundamentally over time? Journal of Management, 28(2), 129-150.

Harris, R. D. (2004). Organizational task environments: An evaluation of convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Management Studies, 41(5), 857-882.

Jarley, P., Fiorito, J., and Delaney, J. T. (1997). A structural, contingency approach to bureaucracy and democracy in US national unions. Academy of Management Journal, 40(4), 831-861.

Karimi, J., Somers, T. M., and Gupta, Y. P. (2004). Impact of environmental uncertainty and task characteristics on user satisfaction with data. Information Systems Research, 15(2), 175-193. Keats, B. W., and Hitt, M. A. (1988). A causal model of linkages among environmental dimensions, macro organizational characteristics, and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 31(3), 570-598.

Lawless, M. W., and Finch, L. K. (1989). Choice and determinism: A test of Hrebiniak and Joyce framework on strategy-environment fit. Strategic Management Journal, 10(4), 351-365.

Lepak, D. P., and Snell, S. A. (2002). Examining the human resource architecture: The relationships among human capital, employment, and human resource configurations. Journal of Management, 28(4), 517-543. Lepak, D. P., Takeuchi, R., and Snell, S. A. (2003). Employment flexibility and firm performance: Examining the interaction effects of employment mode, environmental dynamism, and technological intensity. Journal of Management, 29(5), 681-703.

McArthur, A. W., and Nystrom, P. C. (1991). Environmental dynamism, complexity, and munificence as moderators of strategy-performance relationships. Journal of Business Research, 23(4), 349-361.

Pagell, M., and Krause, D. R. (2004). Re-exploring the relationship between flexibility and the external environment. Journal of Operations Management, 21(6), 629-649. Palmer, T. B., and Wiseman, R. M. (1999). Decoupling risk taking from income stream uncertainty: A holistic model of risk. Strategic Management Journal, 20(11), 1037-1062.

Sharfman, M. P., and Dean, J. W. (1991). Conceptualizing and measuring the organizational environment: A multidimensional approach. Journal of Management, 17(4), 681-700.

Snell, S. A., Lepak, D. P., Dean, J. W., and Youndt, M. A. (2000). Selection and training for integrated manufacturing: The moderating effects of job characteristics. Journal of Management Studies, 37(3), 445-466.

Studies using survey measures of all three dimensions

Baum, J. R., Locke, E. A., and Smith, K. G. (2001). A multidimensional model of venture growth. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 292-303. Bensaou, M., and Venkatraman, N. (1995). Configurations of interorganizational relationships: A comparison between U.S. and Japanese automakers. Management Science, 41(9), 1471-1492.

Camison, C. (2004). Shared, competitive, and comparative advantages: a competence-based view of industrial-district competitiveness. Environment and Planning, 36(12), 2227-2256.

Chen, C. J., and Lin, B. W. (2004). The effects of environment, knowledge attribute, organizational climate, and firm characteristics on knowledge sourcing decisions. R & D Management, 34(2), 137-146.

Hart, S. L., and Quinn, R. E. (1993). Roles executives play - CEOs, behavioral complexity, and firm performance. Human Relations, 46(5), 543-574. Hart, S., and Banbury, C. (1994). How strategy-making processes can make a difference. Strategic Management Journal, 15(4), 251-269.

Luo, Y. D. (1999). Environment-strategy-performance relations in small businesses in China: A case of township and village enterprises in southern China. Journal of Small Business Management, 37(1), 37-52. Luo, Y. D., and Peng, M. W. (1999). Learning to compete in a transition economy: Experience, environment, and performance. Journal of International Business Studies, 30(2), 269-295.

Panayotopoulou, L., Bourantas, D., and Papalexandris, N. (2003). Strategic human resource management and its effects on firm performance: an implementation of the competing values framework. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 14(4), 680-699.

Studies using a subset of all three dimensions

To date, there have been more articles which have used a subset of the Dess and Beard dimensions than those using all three dimensions. Boyd and Gove (2006) provide a content analysis of these articles, including measurement schemes used in respective studies.

Boyd, B.K., & Gove, S. (2006). Managerial constraint: The intersection between discretion and organizational task environment. In, D. Ketchen & D. Bergh (Eds.) Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, Volume 3. New York: Elsevier 57-95.