Revisiting Rumelt’s strategic categories

We propose a new—"objective“—method for the allocation of companies in Rumelt’s (1974; 1982) strategic categories. To highlight the added value of this method, we apply it to a large sample of European non-financial diversified companies for the period 1992–2007. We also apply the methodology of Hoskisson et al. (1993) on the same sample. Our empirical study highlights the role of relatedness in the growth strategies of these companies over the last two decades.