The PIMS and the Policy Perspective: A Rebuttal

The thoughtful responses by McCabe and Chussil to a previously published article entitled “PIMS: Fact or Folklore?” by Lubatkin and Pitts have intensified the controversy that surrounds the PIMS program. At issue is the claim of the Strategic Planning Institute (SPI) that it has uncovered universal laws of the marketplace through a cross‐sectional analysis of over 2,000 varied businesses. We contend that the primary source of controversy surrounding the PIMS project arises from the differences between two prevailing perspectives of the marketplace. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to one as the “PIMS perspective” and the other as the “policy perspective.”