Restructuring in dynamic environments: a dynamic capabilities perspective

Despite the assumed importance of environmental dynamism with respect to organizational decline, theory and evidence of its effect are lacking. Integrating work from firm survival and turnaround literature within a dynamic capabilities framework, we posit that dynamism positively moderates the relationship between firm retrenchment and performance. We find that dynamism positively moderates the relationship between firm performance and both asset and cost retrenchment. However, as expected from the dynamic capabilities framework, the moderating effects of dynamism differ according to the chosen retrenchment strategy.