Participative decision making as a strategic response to decline: Flexibility, rigidity or a mixture?

The 'rigidity' versus 'adaptation' ('flexibility') approaches in organizational response to decline are challenged in this paper. Re-analysis of studies reporting on participative decision making (PDM) responses suggests that organizations respond not with flexibility, as could be expected, but with a mixture of both flexible and rigid elements. A 'mixture model' is advanced, postulating three critical organizational concepts that need to be considered: predecline institutionalized PDM, PDM information, and PDM internal inconsistencies.