Yundong Huang
Purpose This viewpoint argues that during paradigm shifts corporate outcomes can be understood less through stated strategy alone than through the fit between strategy and organizational structure, especially a firm’s capacity to recognize and escape path dependence. Design/methodology/approach Using purposively selected, illustrative cross-national cases from the global automotive industry between 2024 and 2026, the paper compares firms exposed to the same external shock and interprets their divergent outcomes through five organizational-inertia gates. Findings Performance divergence tracks structural readiness across five interacting gates: cognitive recognition, structural unbundling, cash-cow cannibalization, ecosystem reconfiguration and geopolitical repositioning. Start-ups clear many of these by default, whereas legacy incumbents must work through each as a distinct organizational ordeal. Practical implications The framework offers strategic leaders a diagnostic tool for identifying inertia traps and for evaluating whether transformation efforts are organizationally executable rather than merely strategically announced. Originality/value The paper reconnects strategy and disruption debates while relocating explanation to the internal structural layer; its contribution lies in sequencing and operationalising established inertia mechanisms into a practitioner diagnostic rather than in proposing new theory.