Deduction of Hypotheses

The classical contingency theory and its extension are the basis for the following deduction of hypotheses. These theories assume an influence of environmental uncertainty and personal attitudes on organizational design. As seen above, the process of early warning is part of organizational design and therefore is also influenced by environmental uncertainty and managerial attitudes. The hypotheses are deduced on the basis of relevant literature. Numerous studies already exist about the relationship between environmental uncertainty and scanning behavior. These studies developed hypotheses and empirically examined them.

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In order to put forth hypotheses about the relationship between managerial attitudes and design variables of early warning, psychological literature is consulted. Additionally, hypotheses already proposed by LEWIN and STEPHENS are discussed. The facts that empirical research has already been done in this area and that LEWIN and STEPHENS have already developed hypotheses on the basis of their model lead to a confirmatory procedure, i.e. first hypotheses are deduced from literature, next they are empirically examined. Otherwise an explorative procedure, e.g. a case study, would have been appropriate because this method is only based on empirical data and generates new hypotheses from them.312