Alignment and results: Testing the interaction effects of strategy, structure, and environment from miles and snow

Theory and evidence has grown on the role of strategy in public organizations. Miles and Snow suggest that strategy’s impact on organizational success will be greatest when external and internal factors are in alignment—when, for instance, managerial prospectors in decentralized organizations operate in a turbulent environment. This study examines three of the Miles and Snow factors—strategy, structure, and the environment—with an appropriate set of statistical tests in several hundred public organizations over a 6-year period. The results suggest that at least for this set of organizations, the contingency relationships proposed by Miles and Snow do not hold.