The relationship of internal versus external orientations to financial measures of strategic performance

Abstract

Field research involving 137 respondents in eight organizations was conducted to study the relationship between alternative measures of the internal/external orientations of sociometrically identified dominant coalition members and their firms' financial performance. Results showed that attitudinal measures were more often correlated with financial measures of strategic performance than were traditional ‘insider’ to ‘outsider’ measures based on descriptive categorizations. The significant findings were related to four performance indicators of company profitability, namely, profit margin, return on average assets, net interest spread, and return on average equity.