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Adapting to Unfamiliar Environmental Events: A Look at the Evolution of Interpretation and Its Role in Strategic Change
Abstract
This paper argues that a key component in a firm's strategic response to unfamiliar environmental events is the interpretations managers develop about the event itself and about key dimensions of their strategy. Using historical data from the pharmaceutical industry, the revealed interpretations of top management from six firms over a ten-year period are analyzed and are compared to the timing and content of the changes in strategy each firm undertook following a significant change in regulation. The results reveal two distinct patterns of interpretation development that appear to be linked to whether or not the target of interpretation is familiar. Further, interpretations appear to be linked both temporally and in terms of content to the strategic change undertaken by each firm. Both sets of results suggest that the interpretations of managers are linked to organizational actions.
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Citations
Cited by
Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward
Maitlis, S., & Christianson, M. (2014) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520.2014.873177 · Cited by 1,764
Eggers, J. P., & Kaplan, S. (2009) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1080.0401 · Cited by 774
Thinking about technology: Applying a cognitive lens to technical change
Kaplan, S., & Tripsas, M. (2008) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2008.02.002 · Cited by 661
Sarta, A., Durand, R., & Vergne, J.-P. (2021) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/0149206320929088 · Cited by 264
Metadata
- Authors
- Barr, P. S.
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 1998-12
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 644-669
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W1966436053
- Cited by
- 269
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 5.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Adapting to Unfamiliar Environmental Events: A Look at the Evolution of Interpretation and Its Role in Strategic Change. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1287/orsc.9.6.644
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- Barr, P. S. (1998). Adapting to Unfamiliar Environmental Events: A Look at the Evolution of Interpretation and Its Role in Strategic Change. Organization Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.9.6.644
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
