2018 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 117-122
Research on traditional and long-established enterprises (Shinise) in Japan had appeared in 1990’s and most of the studies in this realm have long been preoccupied with inductive examination of long-term survival factors. In contrast to most of the extant literature, the purpose of this study is to clarify what kind of causal configurations lead to firm’s longevity. Reorganizing the existing propositions for the long-term survival from strategic perspective, I conduct the fuzzy-sets qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) by using 22 cases of listed companies which are divided into two groups; and I use condition variables derived from the propositions. The findings indicate that vertical integration or diversification without changing firms’ main business from their original one, may not be a proper strategy to overcome environmental difficulties. Thus business development as antecedent provision for pivotal strategic change is vital to remarkably prolonged prosperity of a company. Yet, additional analysis shows that lacking such strategic decisions is significantly affected by keeping firm’s head office in its hometown.
