Learning from praxis: How high-profile winners and losers inform business's extant theories on longevity, environment, and adaptation

Abstract

Purpose

This paper uses a number of current examples from a variety of industries both regional and global, to explore the relationship between business longevity, environment, and adaptiveness to argue that only adaptive responses contingent on a proper classification of external circumstance will result in productive efficacy for the business. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

There is compelling evidence that businesses have limited life spans. Management and economic theories of creative destruction, argue that this is salutary for markets and economies. Yet as a counterpoint there are significant benefits to business longevity. Such longevity, however, is predicated on the business's dimensionalised understanding of its task and contextual environment and its deployment of an adaptive response contingent on such understanding.

Findings

It is mandatory in prevailing times that adaptive responses ensure that the overall business has external fit and alignment with its environment and internal congruence and consistency between organisational subsystems and their internal subenvironments.

Originality/value

The calculus of limited and unpredictable business life spans is justified by theories of creative destruction and hypercompetition. Yet there are intrinsic and extrinsic advantages to business longevity. A causative flow is proffered that predicates business longevity on its ability to; first, classify its prevailing environment, and thereafter deploy contingent adaptive responses for productive efficacy.

Citation

Murthy, V. (2014), "Learning from praxis: How high-profile winners and losers inform business's extant theories on longevity, environment, and adaptation", World Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 33-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/WJEMSD-03-2013-0024