Strategies in a changing environment perspective of management strategies for corporate resources are in desperate need of review in the business literature. Strategies are of vital importance in business management since they include decision-making as regards shaping the future of organizations and managing both opportunities and threats. Organizational culture, which is improved and supported by the risk culture as a fundamental skill, can be transformed as a resource that provides competitive differentiation by using enterprise risk management applications. Strategies, which are improved by the help of enterprise risk management for competitive differentiation are vital (Yilmaz, 2014).

Resource dependence theory characterizes the corporation as an open system, dependent on contingencies of the external environment (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). The power owned by individuals or departments affects the critical resources entering the organization. According to this approach, organizations are not passive in their environment. They are active. They make decisions that affect the future (Koçel, 2012).

According to Goll, Johnson and Rasheed (2008, p. 210), "the environment is a key variable that helps explain strategic behavior but has largely been ignored in studies examining the relationships between management, strategy, and organizational outcomes." Apart from that, it has been determined that studies linking organizational capacity and company performance have been carried out in the past half-decade with the emergence of the discussion involving the resources of a company in the industry. Various studies appeared to debate organizational capacity and the importance of resources to company performance (Bhatnagar, 2006; Adjaoud, Zeghal, & Andaleeb, 2007).

For Mintzberg (1987), the strategy has been dealt with in several ways: as a maneuver, standard, position, and perspective. The strategy as a plan refers to the purposely made choices of general courses of action to apply in an ongoing situation, evidencing the role of the leaders who are assigned the establishment of a course for the organization, and in this strategy, there are two important characteristics: strategies are established before actions are taken; strategies are deliberately developed.

Strategy as a perspective refers to issues related to collective intention and behavior. It looks for the complete view of the organization, considering the influences in the internal processes and its external relations, like clients, suppliers, government.

Adaptive organizational change occurs through strategic planning, whereby Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) interpret the external environment and adapt to changes in it to achieve a competitive advantage. Institutions of higher education characterize the corporation use of strategic marketing concepts during strategic planning by surveying the environment, learning about the needs of the segment of the population that it serves, and developing a plan that positions them to serve the needs of the target population better than their competitors (Bess & Dee, 2008). In addition, resource dependence theory and institutional theory differ in terms of predicted outcomes on firm performance. Whereas resource dependence theory argues that to prosper or survive organizations need to obtain resources from external sources, the institutional theory argues that actions leading to isomorphism are not necessarily efficient (Hessels & Terjesen, 2008).

Corporate strategies help firms generate value through any of the six following options: reducing risk, maintaining growth, balancing cash flows, sharing infrastructure, increasing market power, and capitalizing on core competencies. A finding by Comlek, Kitapci, Celik, and Ozsahin (2012) show that two dimensions of organizational learning capacity (system orientation and knowledge acquisition-utilization orientation) positively affect firm innovative performance.

These factors are best used as parameters/criteria for evaluating any corporate strategy decision—forward or backward integration, related or unrelated diversification, mergers/acquisitions, joint ventures, or strategic alliances— as they measure the extent of value added by these corporate strategies (Gupta, Gollakota, & Srinivasan, 2007). Organizations improve on all forms of collaboration (customer, supplier, and competitor) to secure the dependence for crucial resources. Strategic planning is an iterative process that forecasts the future and develops a response plan to the forecast based upon an analysis of the relationship between the organization and the environment (Allison & Kaye, 2005).

There are several definitions of strategic organizational adaptation. In the view of Child and Smith (1987), it refers to the ability of decision-makers to recognize, interpret and implement strategies according to perceived needs and changes in their environment (cognitive arena) to ensure the survival of the organization. They also affirm that for the company's strategic innovation refers to the main decisions and their implementation regarding the choice of products and markets, production processes and technologies, and work organization.

For Miles and Snow (1978), organizational adaptation is the consistent alignment of decisions about the expertise, technology, and organizational structure, whether proactively or reactively. The model proposed by these authors classifies organizations into four types, according to the strategies used to respond to the environment: defenders, prospectors, analyzers, and reactors. Furthermore, regarding the influence of organizations and the environment, they define the determinist and voluntarist approach.

Hrebiniak and Joyce (1985), however, developed a new approach to organizational strategic adaptation. The central argument is that strategic choice and environmental determinism can be positioned as interdependent variables in the adaptation process, contrary to the main approaches in the relevant literature, that both are mutually exclusive variables. The complexity and dynamics of the environment often require companies to use strategies dynamically, adopting an intermediate stance, where none of them is followed, or an integrated stance, in which the advantages are gathered (Mintzberg, 1988; Chrisman, Hofer, & Boulton, 1988).

The classical school of management asserted that a unique organizational structure would be highly effective for the various types of organizations, but this theory was superseded by the contingent paradigm, in which the influences and uncertainties provoked by the environment are considered, showing that there is no highly effective and unique structure which may apply to any type of organization. It depends on many factors. Thus, the environment has a determinant role, because it causes pressure that ends up influencing these contingency factors, which in turn will influence and determine an excellent structure for each type of organization (Donaldson, 1999).

The authors assert that the interactions of these variables result in four main types: 1) natural selection, with the minimum of choice and adaptation or selection; 2) differentiation, with high choice and high environmental determinism and adaptation with constraints; 3) strategic choice, with maximum choice and adaptation by design; and 4) undifferentiated choice, with incremental choice and adaptation by chance.

For Evans (2011), the adaptation strategy is based on scenario planning as a process driven by theory and practice through the incorporation of evolutionary theory into the narrative process of the scenario and subsequent phases of implementation in response to environmental change. Scenario planning reflects the modes of variation and selection at the organizational level, evolutionary theory is a useful approach to assess the plausibility of scenario narratives and to strengthen the theoretical foundation of scenario planning as a process. By using an evolutionary framework throughout the scenario planning process, this method has a better chance of encouraging exploratory strategic thinking without reinforcing non-blind variation or inertial practices.

This approach, according to the authors, follows the logic of the open system theory of organizations, according to which this system tends to a state of dynamic balance with the environment through the continuous exchange of materials, data, and energy. Both the system and its environment can affect this process of exchange and transformation, suggesting its independence and the importance of its interactive effects. The choice, therefore, can be logically separated from environmental determinism, as if it were a defining and necessary characteristic of the organization as an open system.

The effective use of resources and organization of knowledge are key factors for the best performance in the industry. Thus, practices should be promoted for better organizational communication, which must include internal communication networks and the creation of a focused internal environment autonomy and freedom of employees in the transformation of ideas into innovation. In the case of the performance of small and medium Brazilian IT companies in the domestic and international market all these actions will contribute to overcoming barriers in the external environment, might them be laws, norms, or the strength of Global companies (Moré, Telles, Marinho, & Correa, 2016).

Another aspect addressed by Palma, Gomes, Kneipp, and Rosa (2014) is environmental strategies and economic prosperity; the percentages of incidence of the strategies, however, differ greatly in the percentage. What is worth mentioning is that the sector, although it does not make conscious use of the concepts of sustainability for the planning of strategies, has inserted its practices in the actions of the companies. Thus, there is the optimization of its resources, making the companies become competitive and present products that add value to the market served. Thus, it is clear that the model of Placett, Anderson, and Fowler (2005) applies to the analysis of the deterministic behavior of the sector.

Placet, Anderson and Fowler (2005) define a strategic model for sustainability that addresses the interaction of economic, social and environmental aspects, with a perspective of innovation, with repercussions in the company and society. The economic base aims to maintain the enterprise with the generation of profit, attending the interests of the stakeholders and providing the development of the local community, through the generation of jobs.

Natural selection is the view that the fittest companies in a particular environment will survive. According to natural selection, environmental factors are responsible for determining the organizational characteristics that best fit the environment. The natural selection model caters to the interest of the population of organizations and does not work with units of unique organizations. In this way, organizations that do not adjust to the environment are eliminated, while those that are regulated with the environment survive. Second, (Aldrich & Pfeffer, 1976; Hannan & Freeman, 1977; Aldrich, 1979; Kasarda & Bidwell, 1979), Natural selection originates from Darwin's theory of natural selection of species.

In this sense, organizational determinism states that environmental factors select the organizational actions that best fit the environment. The organization reacts according to the demands, pressures, and actions that the environment plays in the company. In this case, there are two perspectives of organizational analysis: natural selection and institutional analysis Aldrich and Pfeffer (1976); Hannan and Freedman (1977); and Mckelvey (1982).

DiMaggio and Powel (1983) called this behavior similar to institutional isomorphism. They advocated three types of institutional isomorphism: First, the coercive isomorphism that corresponds to the formal and informal pressures exerted by one organization on another that is in a state of dependence. Factors such as cultural expectations of society and the legal environment are pointed as sources of pressure. Second, the mimetic isomorphism that results from the propensity of managers to utilize successful procedures deployed in other organizations due to uncertainty and requirement of the environment. The third type is the professional isomorphism that is occasioned by the progressive professionalization of the workforce, especially the managers, and the homogeneity in the organizational requirements comes from the sharing of rules and work routines deriving from the professional specialization.

Hall (1984) criticizes the natural selection model for organizations, arguing that the strategic choices made by the organization are disregarded in conceiving that changes in the external environment determine the company's ability to survive in the environment in which it operates. The author focuses on the institutional perspective, as a non-rational process, of pressures for conformity, in which internal and external forces, lead organizations to seek similar behaviors, becoming similar to each other.

In this study, Zimernann (2001) points out that strategic management is concerned with the competitiveness of companies, since theories pay attention to isolated aspects in organizations such as power (DAVIS and COBB, 2010) or corporate culture (Acs & Terjesen, 2006). In addition, there are practical approaches such as change management and organizational development for the successful implementation of change. The reason is their focus on the behavioral elements of decision making. Structure and process are important in organizational theory, and some theories take into account cognitive elements of decision-makers.

The organizational theory approach also incorporates many aspects of strategic management (KNIGHT 2000; HOLLENSTEIN 2005), the vision of dynamic capabilities (Somaya & Teece, 2007; Zott, 2003) and research on innovation (Evans, Hagiu, & Schmalensee, 2006). This, together with elements of behavioral decision making (Redlawsk & Lau, 2013), makes it particularly suitable for analyzing changes in organization voluntarism business (Brettel & Voss, 2013).

The orientation corresponds to the capacity of adaptation concerning the environmental contingencies, and also, they exert influence in the environment in which they operate. Thus, the organization's strategic choices are made in response to environmental changes. The Resource Dependence Theory is based on voluntarist actions, since organizational actions are active about the environment, which defines a nondeterministic action. The resource dependence model states that organizational decisions are made within the internal political context of organizations (Hall, 1990).

Among the perspectives based on voluntarism, three approaches to strategic adaptation can be highlighted: The rational selection in which the executive's attribution is important in the process of organizational adaptation, like these, to maintain the organization's balance with the environment, adopt, discard and select structural components (Child, 1972, Lawrence and Lorsch, 1973 and Weick, 1979).

Second, the strategic choice that emphasizes learning and choice in the process of organizational adaptation, while the perspective of natural selection ignores the ability to adapt to the changing environment, the perspective of strategic choice reinforces the organizational will. (Child, 1972). Third, the Resource Dependence theory assumes that decision-making takes into account the influence of the environment on organizations, which depend on the provision of resources from other organizations, thus forming an Inter-organizational network of resource dependence (Thompson, 1967; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).

According to these scholars, both competitive and administrative choices can be considered as typical examples of strategic choices. These choices are often characterized by the decision-makers' bounded rationality, multiple goals – which are sometimes conflicting – and several potential directions. Thus, Hambrick stated that a behavioral approach could have decrypted the rationale of these choices. Over the years, scholars from the upper echelons have focused on many relations between the socio-demographic features and different strategic outcomes, such as acquisitions, alliances, firm's innovativeness, strategic dynamism, internationalization, and diversification (Hambrick, 2007).

The roots of the dynamic capabilities construct also have indirect connections with the theoretical assumptions of both the evolutionary economics and organizational learning perspectives (Di Stefano, Peteraf, & Verona, 2010). This is why, some years later, Eisenhardt and Martin posited that “dynamic capabilities are the organizational and strategic routines by which firms achieve new resource configurations as market emerge, collide, split, evolve, and die” (2000, p. 1107).

In this view, knowledge has emerged as the most strategically relevant capability in directing the evolution of a firm, and scholars have widely argued that firms should have been contrived, governed, and managed as learning organizations that continuously explore/exploit their knowledge capabilities (Zollo & Winter, 2002).

The secondary data, in this period (1997 to 2013) were obtained directly from the company under study. It should be emphasized that of the data obtained, the vast majority is of public knowledge, since they had already been published as mandatory for corporations. Additional clarifications were obtained directly from the sectors designated by the company's senior management.

With the use of a semi-structured script, created using theoretical bases of the research, 6 interviews were carried out in-depth. The people selected for the interviews obeyed the criteria of having worked within the organization, and participated directly or indirectly in macroeconomic decisions in this period. People can be considered competent for what was sought, as they are managers who have participated in one way or another in the management of company strategies in this longitudinal period.

In this condition, the researcher interviewed the Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Industrial Director, the Industrial Manager, the Market Director, the Innovation Director, and the Product Manager. The interviews were made at the premises of the studied organization, previously agreed, in a mutual agreement between interviewer and interviewee. In the research, questions were raised about the company's evolution vis-à-vis the contextualized environment. We sought to explore in-depth the context and major strategic events. The search prioritized the power to know if the strategies were motivated by environmental pressure, by the internal initiative of the organization, or if the two components were the motivators of the strategic changes.

The material collected during the investigation (interview documents, recordings, and video) forms the basis for data analysis. The context of the environment in its movements, the dynamics of its economic situation in the various contextualized moments, of the interviews obtained will be key elements for the due analysis of the content. Thus, initially, it is important to present the context in which the study organization was inserted in order to understand better the proposals or strategic responses in the period contemplated.

The São Bento do Sul micro-region, located in the Northern plateau of Santa Catarina (in the border with Paraná), covers the municipalities of São Bento do Sul, Rio Negrinho and Campo Alegre. The system of production of carpentry in the early twentieth century was artisanal, not industrialized, and the product met the demands of the buyer whose market was essentially regional. With the increase in the flow of immigrants, the commercialization of products grew, with the corresponding improvement in the quality of products.

In the 1960s, the furniture industry was consolidated in the municipalities of São Bento do Sul, Rio Negrinho and Campo Alegre, giving rise to a furniture industry region, structured by the great availability of raw material (with emphasis to imbuia), supply of skilled labor and financial resources, when it began to market its products in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Curitiba. During the 1970s, taking advantage of the high growth of the Brazilian economy, the furniture sector of the region experienced a strong expansion of demand in the domestic market, with the incorporation of the North and Northeast Regions of Brazil as consumers of products from São Bento do Sul.

At the end of the 1970s, with the abrupt reduction of Imbuia wood (native in the region's surroundings) and with the introduction of new production technologies, most of the furniture-producing companies started to use the reforested "Pinus", destined for the domestic market. In the 1980s, the Brazilian economy went through a period of uncertainties, with the financing crisis with a strong reduction of purchasing power in general. According to Abimóvel (2003), in the case of the São Bento do Sul furniture production area, the 1980s marked a new and decisive phase in the development of the furniture industry in the region, characterized by the retraction of the domestic market, the change in the raw material of pinus) and the search of the international market. The downturn in the domestic market has led companies to produce for export.

A negative factor for the export sector is that most exporting companies did not operate their own brand in their market investments but rather depended on agents who settled in the region to collect products that interested foreign merchants. So most companies did not stop the market, only produced. The liberalization of imports of machinery and equipment by the federal government in the early 1990s allowed the São Bento do Sul furniture production region to improve the quality of the product, together with the increase in labor productivity.

The positive evolution of the furniture sector, practically everything related to exports has become dependent on the movements and factors in the economy, not only in Brazil, but in the world in the face of exchange rate variations. The result is that, from 2004 until the middle of 2014, there was overvaluation of the Brazilian currency. The market lost competitiveness and the furniture sector, which represented 60% of São Bento do Sul's economy, slowed down. The furniture pole of São Bento do Sul, will enter a crisis at the time, many companies have succumbed, but there have been those that have reinvented themselves and are active in the market.

Founded in 1959, Rudnick, a family-owned company consisting of a parent company, consisting of a carpentry specialist and his three children who entered the business, initially worked on producing regional and custom-made furniture. With commercial contacts with regional stores, soon after, began the series production, expanding its market to the southeast region.

At the end of the 1960s, the company had a considerable organizational rise, through productive technology and innovative design in the furniture sector, in order to consolidate its brand in the domestic market. Its pioneering work on furniture was recognized, according to the interviewee 4: "Rudnick lived a story too, always with a great differentiation in its technology park, for decades until the mid-90s, access to technology was somewhat restricted in Brazil ".

The environment became unfavorable at the end of the 1990s, as a result of the entry of several players into the market, with its production capacity through technologically-matched equipment, as a result of the opening of imports and credit facilities, and the economy free of inflation, with the real plan of 1994, according to the interviewee 2: "From the 90's, things got very close, access to technology was very easy and the design also very generally, the universe of factories in Brazil grew a lot coming to today's numbers around 17,000 furniture factories. "

In this context, respondent 6 reports: "Competition has always been cheaper. And we had a conversation that in fact our product was the flashy of the store plus it was not selling as much as the costs ... So we always said it is in the shop window but it ends up not selling, so at the time we opted for making a more aggressive strategy of the assembly of the stores ... The two thousand points of sales that the entity had always used our product as a marketable appeal for the store ...".

The difficulties encountered in the marketing of differentiated products through the multibrand channel are reported by respondent 3: "Differentiation has become less and less perceived, which is the truth ... so you can differentiate yourself in the details, and in the general multibrand market you cannot differentiate yourself, you cannot promote that differentiation through that channel's sales force ... ".

The rupture of its ever-increasing evolution was perceived in 1997, when competition intensified and the differentiation of the company's products, previously perceived in the sales channel, was no longer an appealing factor for that sales channel. In this context, the study covers the macro strategies, from this year in a longitudinal period, until the year 2013. In order to give a certain objective economic view of what happened with its sales and its gross results, obtained through secondary data, the Graphs I and II are presented. The first one containing the total billing, the billing for the foreign market and the gross operating profit. Graph II seeks to demonstrate the fluctuation of the Dollar against the Real, to the extent of its interference in the foreign sales of the company.

Graph I.
Graphic of gross revenue / gross profit (1997/2013)

Graph II.
Exchange rate fluctuation: Parity US $ and R $ period from 1997 to 2013

Caption:

Graphs I and II above highlight that sales have fallen since 1997, due to the competition allied to the strategies of own stores and the creation of a new brand that was not effectively accepted by the market of the line in which the company was operating. It can be seen that sales up to the year 2001 were down. From 2001 to 2004 sales recover from the export market. Starting in 2004, when the value of the dollar started to fall, the company begins a phase of retraction in the export market and, as a consequence, there are reflects in sales as a whole.