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The purpose of this paper is to reveal the strategic change-related issues by examining the dynamics between external fit and internal fit, as the success of strategic change is involved in the consideration of both internal and external fit.

This paper uses regression analysis to analyze the panel data from the electronics companies in Taiwan’s stock market between 2004 and 2011.

The empirical results show that there is a relationship between internal fit and external fit, and the momentum of internal fit was found as well. Moreover, the impact of the interaction effect of external and internal fit on performance is moderated by external fit.

This research contributes to and extends the current research in both theoretical and practical ways. From a theoretical aspect, this paper considers internal fit and external fit simultaneously and has adopted the profile deviation approach to test their impacts on performance. From a practical aspect, the empirical results have derived implications for managers as to understand the dynamics such as trade-off, momentum and synergy between the two types of strategic fit, which may be helpful for making decision on strategy change.

The paper sets out to test relationships between performance improvements and the three classical manufacturing strategy paradigms of fit, best practices, and capabilities defined by Voss.

Regression analyses are carried out on an international sample of 697 manufacturers of fabricated metal products, machinery, and equipment.

The results indicate that capability learning and best practices are positively related to performance improvements in quality, flexibility, and dependability, whereas internal fit appears to be negatively related to flexibility improvements.

The study reinforces the need for research to explore the nature and role of the three paradigms jointly rather than in isolation. In particular, more research is needed to assess the merits of maintaining fit between operations structure and processes.

Improving performance in areas such as quality, flexibility, and delivery can be achieved through building capabilities and/or adopting best practices, but not apparently by maintaining internal fit between operations structure and processes.

The study validates two of the three classical paradigms of manufacturing strategy and makes the case for research to further specify and test the merits of maintaining internal fit between operations structure and processes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between internal strategic fit and business performance, propose six classifications of internal fit using the “strategic map” managerial framework and identify how firms should best move from one classification to another and the impact that these changes will have on business performance.

Empirical research was conducted in 12 service organisations. Based on these findings, two fit‐performance relationships were identified and the “fitness map” framework was developed showing six classifications of fit.

The alignment of operations strategy within an organisation is significantly and positively related to market share, whereas, the alignment of the service delivery system is significantly and positively related to return on sales. However, neither the alignment of the operations strategy nor the service delivery system appears to have a relationship with return on investment. Six classifications of internal strategic fit emerged: poorly aligned organisations are either “understanding processes” or “understanding markets”, medium‐fit companies are “managing processes” or “developing service offerings” and well‐aligned firms are “leveraging services and process capabilities” or “leveraging markets and design capabilities”.

The fit‐performance relationships show how changes in the alignment of operations strategy and delivery system impact business performance differently. Using this knowledge, practitioners can use the “strategic map” framework to identify their classification of fit and understand how it has been created, benchmark their level of fit against other businesses, understand how to move from one level of fit to another and how these decisions will impact business performance.

The paper's findings start to address the gap in the literature on internal strategic fit within service organisations and meet the need for more management tools to help businesses develop strategies, understand the level of fit they create and how they can impact business performance.

The purpose of this exploratory research paper is to present a strategic profiling managerial framework that enables businesses to show visually the level of internal strategic fit in their organisation. Using this framework, service operations managers are able to understand the level of fit that exists, how it is created and identify actions for improving it.

Case‐based research was conducted in eight service organisations to investigate their level of internal fit and the corresponding characteristics of their market, operating strategy and service delivery system. Based on these findings, a strategic profiling framework was developed.

The strategic profiling framework allows a service organisation to compare the characteristics of its market, operating strategy and service delivery system and determine the level of internal strategic fit. This enables it to see more clearly where conflicts exist and to start to understand the steps required to improve the level of fit in its organisation.

The research used the Heskett strategic service vision and Hill's order‐winner and qualifier technique to investigate the level of internal fit. It looked at how they can be applied and the insights they reveal rather than whether the elements they contain are correct. The research focused on developing and presenting a method of visualizing internal fit, rather than investigating the link between fit and performance. The strategic profiling framework developed needs to be tested on a wider sample of organisations to see whether high‐fit profiles have high performance and whether the insights it reveals are true for other businesses.

Service organisations can use the strategic profiling framework to understand their level of internal strategic fit, and why it exists, in order to understand how to improve it.

The strategic profiling framework presented in this paper starts to address the gap in the literature around research into the field of internal strategic fit. It also meets the need for more management tools to help businesses develop strategies and understand the level of fit they create.

Outsourcing is recognized as one of the critical factors for efficient execution of pharmaceutical supply chain management (PSCM), and many pharmaceutical companies engage in international outsourcing of services (IOS) to survive in global highly competitive business. Since the key success factors for both domestic & international alliances are partnership characteristics and strategic fit management, but there is no empirical research on this issue in Thai pharmaceutical partnership offshore outsourcing. Therefore, this survey of Thai and foreign companies, both contract providers (CPs) and contract manufacturers (CMs), seeks to indicate significant relationships among both outsourcing strategic fit and partnership types, including outsourcing performance outcome. This research is two-fold. First, the partnership types (Type I, II, & III), the strategic fit types (low fit, moderate fit, and good fit), and their correlations are analyzed. And second, their outsourcing performance (company revenues and growth rates) are presented. The results showed that the most of the Thai pharmaceutical outsourcing manufacturing are classified as the partnership Type II, as well as the moderate strategic fit, and strongly support the relationship between the two models. Both of the companies’ revenue and growth rate could predict the companies’ performances outcome for each of partnership and strategic fit types. However, it is not necessary that the most integrative type of partnership, Type III, will be always the best, because it depends also on the strategic fit between each pair of partners as well.

The implementation of e‐banking projects highlights the importance of digital transformation for contemporary organizations in order to survive and achieve competitive advantage in a digital economy. This paper aims to explore the development process of digital transformation through an e‐banking project based on the resource fit concept.

The qualitative method of case study is applied. In total, 17 in‐depth interviews and secondary data were collected and analyzed.

Numerous researches related to e‐banking have focused on either the resource‐based theory or strategic fit perspective, but not on both. This paper makes a unique contribution by constructing a resource fit framework that integrates these two theories. This framework offers a theoretical advancement in the resource fit literature. It includes four dimensions: external resource fit, internal resource fit, external capability fit, and internal capability fit. Through an actual empirical case examination of the resource fit framework, this study explored eight critical factors necessary for successful e‐banking project implementation.

This study fills a theoretical gap by developing an integrative framework and evaluating it via an empirical case study. Hence, examining this framework for organizational digital transformation in different industries and multiple case studies with cross‐cases comparison will be valuable for future research.

The study demonstrated that managing digital transformation can be challenging, but awareness of, and preparedness for, analysis of both the resources/capability and external demands through the resource fit perspective are necessary.

This paper offers a pioneer framework in the resource fit field and makes a practical case examination that can be useful for researchers and practitioners by taking a more detailed view of digital transformation development.

The purpose of this paper is to develop exploratory propositions and a conceptual framework on the interaction between organisational structure (decision-making centralisation and internal coordination) and the relationship between supply chain fit and firm performance.

Through a case study, two corporate groups with distinctive organisational structures were examined; both are undergoing a critical moment of changes to their top management and are reshaping their corporate and supply chain strategies. Data on decision-making centralisation, internal coordination mechanisms, supply, demand and innovation uncertainties, and supply chain strategies were collected from key respondents.

The analysis conducted suggests the need to consider the joint interaction between organisational structure and supply chain fit in offsetting the implications of a potential misfit on firm performance. Furthermore, the context sensitivity of a supply chain is often overlooked, hence simply modifying supply chain strategy does not necessarily lead to a variation in firm performance.

This research is of particular importance to most organisations in the testing times of uncertainty in the global landscape. It guides supply chain practitioners to better understand which elements of the organisational structure interact with the uncertainty of supply, demand and innovation.

This paper is one of the first to investigate the interaction between elements of organisational structure and supply chain fit and identify decision-making centralisation and coordination as the internal uncertainty factors that are most relevant to supply chain fit research. A conceptual framework has been built for future testing, in which the organisational structure moderates the relationship between supply chain fit and firm performance.

This study aims at investigating the effect of an overall fit among strategy, environmental factors and organizational resources on firm performance, and the moderating role of industry on this relationship.

This paper uses hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the nested data structure from the financial and electronics companies in Taiwan’s stock market from 2011 to 2012.

The empirical results indicate that overall strategic fit is positively related to firm performance, and this relationship varies across financial industry and electronics industry.

This study provides important implications for both academic researchers and practitioners. From a theoretical aspect, this study integrates two research streams of strategic fit (external fit and internal fit) into an overall model of strategic fit, and has explored the moderating role of industry on the relationship between strategic fit and firm performance. In addition, this study has also used hierarchical linear modeling method to test the hypotheses, which has not been used in the previous strategic fit literature. From a practical aspect, the empirical results have derived implications for managers as to understand the effects of overall strategic fit on performance in different industry, which may be helpful for making decisions in specific industry context.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the fit theory and the equity theory in order to stress the importance of retail supervisor's IMO adoption for enhancing contact employees' fit with their environment and for shaping positive employee extra-role behaviours towards their firm and their supervisor.

A hierarchical research design is employed with evidence from 89 from retail store supervisors through personal interviews and 417 contact employees.

This study contributes by suggesting IMO as a mechanism which can raise employees' fit with their organization and their supervisor. Another finding of this study lies on the role of IMO for positive employee-outcomes such as higher patronage and motivation to report service complaints.

Additional research is necessary to identify whether different individual characteristics and background influence employees' fit with their organization or their supervisor. The results presented in this study clearly suggest an important first step in understanding the importance of IMO adoption for employees' better fit with their environment.

Considering that supervisor's level of IMO accounts for a significant portion of contact employees' IMO adoption, it is imperative that top management must first sell the organization itself especially to middle level managers before implementing an internal marketing program across the whole firm. As IMO increases employees' fit with their environment, this paper departs from the view that managers can mainly achieve “fit” into their organization and avoid misfit only by carefully attracting and selecting individuals. moreover, managers should take into account that IMO increases employees' willingness to report service complaints to their supervisor.

This study is intended to be a key step in bringing internal marketing and fit research together while also formally including IMO into multilevel marketing research and providing an important shift for extant research by discussing how interpersonal interactions between different organizational groups shape IMO adoption. From a theoretical view, the paper extends fit theory by establishing IMO implementation as a key strategy for recovering or increasing employees' fit with their environment.

Many researchers and executives have viewed fit as a key to organizational survival and high performance (Summer et al., 1990). However, the type of fit and how it can be best achieved may often be in question (Venkataraman, 1989). The current study empirically examines both external and internal fit as predictors of firm performance where: (1) external fit is the alignment of, or congruence between, the organization's strategy and/or structure and the task environment, and (2) internal fit is the multidimensional matching of strategy with structure. The argument presented here is that both internal and external fit can, and do, occur simultaneously. Further, the presence of one type of fit may compensate for deficiencies in the other. Using fit in terms of both matching and moderation, hypotheses are tested to determine the nature of both internal and external fit of strategy and structure. Testing of the hypotheses is conducted using data from the medical group industry. Findings support the influence of individual strategy and structure variables on medical group performance. However, fit found between strategy and structure, be it as matching or moderation, shows little influence on performance. Implications for medical groups and the broader health care industry are discussed.