We conduct a longitudinal case study of the top five U.S. defensesystems integrators between 1998 and 2007 to examine their responseto the massive environmental change triggered by the 9/11 attacks. Wecollected and organized data around a set of fine-grained measuresto analyze, over time and across firms, top management attention tochange in the environment, discourse about firm-level change as wellas how firms actually renew their assets at multiple levels. We find thatthe process of dynamic capability (DC) deployment unfolds in three steps,from the recognition that the environment has changed (monitoringand sensing), to the decision to deploy DC (analyzing and deciding)and to the implementation of asset re-orchestration (implementing).Methodological, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
