Organizational process, strategic content and socio-economic resources: small enterprises in East Germany, 1990-94

Our study struck a compromise between breadth and depth. We opted for a design that went for a number of firms investigated that was not small, but that still allowed for the capturing of information about such firms' origin and formation, and was stratified according to salient sampling criteria. In addition, an important explanatory concept could be based on qualitative research methods. This combination of qualitative and standardized quantitative analysis appeared appropriate, given the conceptual impetus of the study. Its advantage is that it enables a controlled and coherent research design. This is comparatively rare in co-evolutionary research, being based on the more liberal interpretation of information historically collected beyond the control of the investigating researchers. Measures of significance obtained were mostly high or acceptable, except for the last table. But this was on the development of production and service-delivery systems within firms, rather than on more generic firm types. On the whole, therefore, the explanation we have proposed has some strength.

Needless to say, we would be happy for others to improve on what we could do. On the whole, the Hrebiniak and Joyce framework appears to offer a useful basic conceptual tool for co-evolutionary research and theory-building applied to the explanation of generically different firm types. It is a specific framework, but it opens the door for others. We are not concluding that our study shows that it is the best overarching framework for a theory of the firm. But it works well in explaining what happens at a critical juncture in the development of a population of firms. In due course, an 'unpacking' of firm types into process characteristics, initially disposable resources and how they were viewed by actors, substantive strategy and other elements would certainly be appropriate.