Table 1 Streams within contingency... | Emerald Publishing

Table 1

Streams within contingency theory and their applications within logistics and supply chain management

Stream	Rationale	Conceptualization of fit	Representative paper(s)	Examples from logistics and supply chain management
Strategy–Structure–Performance	Rejects the “one size fits all” argument in favour of “contingency determinism”, i.e. that strategy determines structure	Static: Strategy drives the development of suitable organizational structure and processes	Chandler (1962)	Nakano (2015), Gligor (2017)
Information Processing View	Addresses deficiencies in the conceptualization of fit. Explicates fit by portraying organizations as information processing systems	Static: Fit indicates that a firms information processing requirements (determined by contingency variables) are matched by its information processing capacity (determined by organizational structure and processes)	Galbraith (1974)	Busse et al. (2017), Luo and Yu (2016), Aben et al. (2021)
Configurational View	Addresses criticism of contingency theory for being reductionist and limited to bivariate studies	Static: Fit indicates a constellation of several commonly occurring variables of contextual factors and organizational structure	Meyer et al. (1993)	Sabri (2019), Feizabadi et al. (2021)
Strategic Choice	Rejects “contingency determinism”, i.e. that contextual factors determine organizational structure. Strategic choices by a dominant coalition that influences fit	Dynamic: Dominant coalition (e.g. senior management) can make changes to contextual factors and/or organizational structure to establish fit based on personal preferences, performance, institutional factors etc.	Child (1972)	Howard et al. (2007)
SARFIT	Rejects “contingency determinism” and partially strategic choice in favour of performance as the main driver for a change of organizational structure to regain fit	Dynamic: Misfits lead to poorly functioning organizations, which in turn leads to poor performance. This puts pressure on reorganizing to regain fit to improve performance	Donaldson (1987)	Silvestre et al. (2020)
Dialectics and paradoxes	Rejects the assumption that misfits are always dysfunctional and criticise previous dynamic approaches for their lack of attention to how strategic change occurs. Misfits (or “contradictions” and “tensions” as they are called) are regarded as important drivers of strategic change	Dynamic: Organizations are everchanging and thus fit cannot be viewed as a state of equilibrium. Internal tensions always exist to some extent and these need to be deliberately managed and balanced	Farjoun and Fiss (2022)	Sandberg (2017)

Stream	Rationale	Conceptualization of fit	Representative paper(s)	Examples from logistics and supply chain management
Strategy–Structure–Performance	Rejects the “one size fits all” argument in favour of “contingency determinism”, i.e. that strategy determines structure	Static: Strategy drives the development of suitable organizational structure and processes	Chandler (1962)	Nakano (2015), Gligor (2017)
Information Processing View	Addresses deficiencies in the conceptualization of fit. Explicates fit by portraying organizations as information processing systems	Static: Fit indicates that a firms information processing requirements (determined by contingency variables) are matched by its information processing capacity (determined by organizational structure and processes)	Galbraith (1974)	Busse et al. (2017), Luo and Yu (2016), Aben et al. (2021)
Configurational View	Addresses criticism of contingency theory for being reductionist and limited to bivariate studies	Static: Fit indicates a constellation of several commonly occurring variables of contextual factors and organizational structure	Meyer et al. (1993)	Sabri (2019), Feizabadi et al. (2021)
Strategic Choice	Rejects “contingency determinism”, i.e. that contextual factors determine organizational structure. Strategic choices by a dominant coalition that influences fit	Dynamic: Dominant coalition (e.g. senior management) can make changes to contextual factors and/or organizational structure to establish fit based on personal preferences, performance, institutional factors etc.	Child (1972)	Howard et al. (2007)
SARFIT	Rejects “contingency determinism” and partially strategic choice in favour of performance as the main driver for a change of organizational structure to regain fit	Dynamic: Misfits lead to poorly functioning organizations, which in turn leads to poor performance. This puts pressure on reorganizing to regain fit to improve performance	Donaldson (1987)	Silvestre et al. (2020)
Dialectics and paradoxes	Rejects the assumption that misfits are always dysfunctional and criticise previous dynamic approaches for their lack of attention to how strategic change occurs. Misfits (or “contradictions” and “tensions” as they are called) are regarded as important drivers of strategic change	Dynamic: Organizations are everchanging and thus fit cannot be viewed as a state of equilibrium. Internal tensions always exist to some extent and these need to be deliberately managed and balanced	Farjoun and Fiss (2022)	Sandberg (2017)