Researching the dynamics of miles and snow's strategic typology/Istrazivanje dinamike strateske tipologije milesa i snowa

The research conducted on medium and large companies in the Croatian food and beverage industry confirms the presence of all four strategic types originally set by R.E. Miles and C.C. Snow. The strategic orientation of a company is determined through three periods (past, present, future), identifying also the dominant, holistic strategic type. A questionnaire designed by Conant et al. (1990) is used to reveal company's strategic type. The classification power of the questionnaire is further increased by introducing a quasi-numerical measure. The industry is dominated by the defender (34%) and analyzer (27%) strategic types of the holistic company behavior. The theoretically assumed (dominant) stability of strategic orientation of a company is confirmed with a high proportion of strategic change (44%). The dominant source of strategic change comes from companies applying the defender strategic orientation, while the dominant destination of strategic change is the analyzer strategic type. Within the companies that change their strategic orientation over the three periods, specific forms of strategic changes as well as the share of their presence have been identified.