Strategy-making Process and Firm Performance in Iranian Pharmaceutical Industry

This study investigated the relationship between main dimensions in the strategy-making process, environmental complexity, and performance in pharmaceutical companies of Iran. Results argue that pharmaceutical companies like other industries place differing emphasis on strategy-making and employ different modes of strategy-making. It offers a typology of different modes of strategy-making that most likely exist in pharmaceutical companies and hypothesizes how this typology relates to performance. It then describes the results of an empirical study of the strategy-making processes of pharmaceutical companies. The structural equation analysis of the data from 31 pharmaceutical companies indicates that there are simplistic, adaptive, entrepreneurial, participative, and SPACE (Strategy making Process According to Complexity Environment) modes of strategy-making in pharmaceutical companies; of these modes, SPACE mode exhibited a significant relationship with performance.