The Contingent Nature of Public Policy and Growth Strategies in the Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Banking Industry

摘要: While effects of public policy are one the foundations organizational theory, less explored is how these may depend on other external environmental factors. We focus a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to understand growth banking in U.S. states, 1896-1978. Three characteristics banks—simultaneous production and distribution, pooled intra-organizational coordination, agency relationships—result trade-off between centralized dispersed strategies. Which strategy prevails depends enabling branching interacts with technological, economic, cultural environments. Our findings contribute understanding contingent organizations rise large corporations twentieth century.