Title: Strategic autonomy: a step towards scale development

Authors: Harpreet Singh Bedi

Addresses: Mittal School of Business, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India

Abstract: Autonomy is a major construct in business management. It boosts innovation, increases firm's competitiveness, enhances the belongingness of employees, promotes the launch of entrepreneurial ventures and consequently improves business performance. Though the importance of autonomy is widely recognised, but, research in the field of entrepreneurship and strategic management has often been impeded due to non-availability of the firm level inventory of strategic autonomy construct. This study aims to examine the nature of the strategic autonomy construct. A battery of six items has been identified and examined for face validity, content validity, factor structure, dimensionality, internal consistency and convergent validity. The proposed inventory has also been examined in different organisational contexts and found to be valid, reliable and parsimonious. Chi-square test of independence assesses the association of strategic autonomy construct with the diverse characteristics of an organisation. Findings reveal that the strategic autonomy construct is either weakly or not significantly associated with the age, size, type and nature of an organisation. The study has practical applications and theoretical implications for entrepreneurs and academicians.

Keywords: autonomy; structural autonomy; strategic autonomy; scale development; autonomy of individuals; firm-level autonomy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2020.105165

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2020 Vol.24 No.2, pp.153 - 173

Received: 03 Jun 2017
Accepted: 19 Apr 2018
Published online: 14 Feb 2020 *

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