Strategic Reorientation and Responses to the Asian Financial Crisis: The Case of the Manufacturing Industry in Singapore

Taking the Asian financial crisis as a base model that triggers decline among manufacturing firms in Singapore, this paper identified two main strategies taken: offensive strategic reorientation and defensive strategic shift. We hypothesized that firms that adopt the offensive strategic reorientation strategy attributed decline to controllable factors, have a higher level of slack, and are bigger in size. On the other hand, firms that adopt defensive strategic shift attributed decline to uncontrollable factors, are under greater severity of decline, have a lower level of slack and are smaller in size. We found significant relationships for the defensive strategic shift strategy.