Co-evolution in Strategic Renewal Behaviour of British, Dutch and French Financial Incumbents: Interaction of Environmental Selection, Institutional Effects and Managerial Intentionality

How do incumbent firms and environments co-evolve and how are firm-level adaptation and selection at industry level interrelated? Can and do large established organizations renew themselves to adapt to their environment? Three single-lens theories, relating to environmental selection, institutional theory, managerial intentionality, and a co-evolutionary perspective are used to investigate strategic renewal of incumbent firms. We derive propositions and distinguish between three dimensions of strategic renewal and develop metrics to investigate our propositions in a multi-level, multi-country, longitudinal study of the European financial services industry. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..