Organization-environment Relations Research Articles

Structural Correspondence Between Organizational Theories

Organizational research constitutes a differentiated, complex and fragmented field with multiple contradicting and incommensurable theories that make fundamentally different claims about the social and organizational reality. In contrast to natural sciences, the progress in this field can’t be attributed to the principle of truthlikeness where theories compete against each other and only best theories survive and prove they are closer to the truth and thus demonstrate scientific knowledge accumulation. We defend the structural realist view on the nature of organizational theories in order to demonstrate that despite the multiplicity of isolated and competing explanations of organization-environment relations these theories are still logically compatible and mutually consistent which, in turn, assures theoretical progress in the field. Although postulating different and incompatible ontologies, three most successful organization-environments theories, namely, contingency theory, new institutionalism and population ecology share the same explanations of the relations between organizations and environments at the structural level. Without this principle one would say that what occurs in the field of organization theory is a change rather than a progress.

The strategic impetus for social network ties: reconstituting broken ceo friendship ties

Research on organization–environment relations has focused primarily on formal linkages between organizations such as board interlock ties as a strategy for managing resource dependence. This study examines whether top corporate executives may maintain more informal ties to executives of other firms in order to manage uncertainty arising from resource dependence. Our point of departure is prior research on boards of directors that has examined whether so-called ‘broken board ties’ (i.e., ties that are disrupted due to executive turnover) tend to be reconstituted, and whether resource dependence explains the likelihood of reconstitution. These studies have generally provided little evidence that corporate board ties are used to manage resource dependence. We draw from theory and research on social embeddedness and friendship to suggest that, as a strategy for managing dependence, the maintenance of friendship ties between top executives provides benefits that are comparable to the supposed benefits of board cooptation, while imposing fewer constraints on the organization. Our theory leads to the contention that, despite limited prior evidence that resource dependence determines the formation of formal board ties, corporate leaders may nevertheless reconstitute informal (i.e., friendship) ties to leaders of other firms that have the power to constrain their firms' access to needed resources when those ties have been disrupted (e.g., due to turnover of the CEO's friend). We test our hypotheses with a unique dataset that includes survey data from U.S. corporate leaders collected at two points in time, thus permitting an assessment of whether top executives reconstitute broken social ties to leaders of other firms, and whether various sources of resource dependence predict the likelihood of reconstitution. We discuss implications for strategic perspectives on inter-organizational relations and the sociological literature on embeddedness. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From King to Court Jester? Weber’s Fall from Grace in Organizational Theory

While the work of Max Weber was an omnipresent guiding force in the early development of organizational theory, contemporary scholars have seemingly little connection to that heritage. In this paper, we probe the dynamics of Weberian organizational theory scholarship from mid-century to the present and examine how shifts in research orientation have facilitated Weber’s apparent fall from grace. We draw on a dataset of all articles published in the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1956 to 2002 to track shifts in Weber citation patterns and three streams of Weberian-inspired organizational research: intraorganizational, social organization and organization-environment relations. We show how the shift from the early bureaucracy and social organization studies of the 1950s and 1960s to the more instrumental, resource focus of the organization-environment tradition in the 1970s and 1980s went hand-in-hand with the marginalization of Weber in organizational theory. We also show that Weber has increasingly been cited in a ceremonious way over this time period. However, we also examine contemporary trends and identify opportunities for more direct engagement with Weber’s scholarly corpus in organizational theory.

Organization-Environment Relationships

The article discusses lessons for executive directors in human service organizations, for managing organization-environment relationships. The first section reviews the three main theories of organization-environment relations: ecological theories, institutional theories, and adaptation theories (with emphasis on the political-economy and resource-dependency perspectives). Following this presentation, the article discusses the lessons derived from each of the theoretical approaches for executive directors in human service organizations. Emphasis is placed on several types of organizational behavior: passive and reactive organizational behavior, accepting environmental constraints; strategic behavior that conforms to the demands of the government and funding sources; and, alternatively, proactive strategies as expressed in new initiatives and attempts to identify threats and opportunities that will change the power-dependence relations between the organization and its environment. As regards the lessons for executive directors in human service organizations, given the rapid changes in their environments, it is important for them to develop an external organizational orientation and manage the environment just as they manage the organization's internal environment. In this way, they attain the legitimacy and resources needed for the organization's survival.

What Bandwagons Bring: Effects of Popular Management Techniques on Corporate Performance, Reputation, and CEO Pay

This paper examines some of the important organizational consequences of popular management techniques. Using informational reports on quality, empowerment, and teams, as well as a measure of the implementation of total quality management programs, we found that companies associated with popular management techniques did not have higher economic performance. Nevertheless, these same companies were more admired, perceived to be more innovative, and rated higher in management quality. Higher pay was also given to chief executives when their companies were associated with these management trends. These results provide strong support for institutional theory, demonstrating how both internal and external legitimacy can be gained by using popular management techniques. They also extend institutional theory from its usual emphasis on organization-environment relations to new within-firm dynamics.

AAACE: Its Legacy and Future Direction

In a 1982 issue of Lifelong Learning: Adult Years, Howard Y. McClusky, the first president (1951-52) of the Adult Education Association, reflected on the early condition of adult education in the United States. He observed that it was largely an ad hoc scattered, amorphous, and segmented phenomenon. There was no dominant and pervasive ideological theme to give it substantive identity and no networks or institutional structures to guide its implementation and development. This condition laid the groundwork for what ultimately became the definitive role for AAACE and its antecedent organizations -- its role as the organization. Membership would provide the means for agencies, institutions, and individuals to develop a primary identification with the field. umbrella organization has taken many forms and structures over the years starting with the American Association for Adult Education, founded by the Carnegie Corporation in 1926. Change continued with the merger of the Adult Education Association of the USA and the National Association of Public and Continuing Education into the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education in 1982. Since organizations can be thought of as organisms, as living systems existing in a wider environment that they depend upon for the satisfaction of various needs, we would expect such adaptation. In fact, if organisms don't change with the external open systems, they become extinct. AAACE is currently in such a process of adaptation and transformation. Predictive of an organization trying to adapt to a turbulent, rapidly changing environment and in a stage of its life cycle, attention has been placed on general issues of survival, on organization-environment relations and on organizational effectiveness. While examination of such issues can become contentious to some and unsettling to many, these discussions and modification have long been a part of the adult education democratization. Curiously, although the context has changed radically, some of the organizational issues have not. We will highlight four that have been pervasive through the years. Importance of Volunteers In his 1982 article, Dr. McClusky stressed the role of volunteers by stating, The loyalty, service, and expertise of dedicated volunteers ... will be equally important for the viability of the new AAACE. From the beginning, a highly significant portion of AEA's work has been contributed as a voluntary service. This may account for AEA's ambitious program ... despite a modest budget with limited staff, he said. In looking back at our writings as presidents, both of us called for -- and put in place -- mechanisms for widespread enthusiastic volunteer participation. However, such efforts typically fell short of their promise. Like many volunteer professional membership associations, AAACE and other such organizations in recent years have noted a significant change in the pattern of volunteer service to shorter term, highly task-specific assignments that enhance career and individual positions. Further, volunteers often lack the resources or other support mechanisms such as graduate student assistance, travel dollars, mailing budgets, or release time that were, at one time, more available from agencies or base institutions. Given the more specialized and limited role of current volunteers, AAACE, like AEA, has had a very ambitious program of membership services and advocacy despite a modest budget with limited staff. Affiliation with a private association management firm was tested for nearly eight years. Such an arrangement decreased operating costs but led to a feeling of elitist and centralized external control -- interestingly, an indictment noted by McCluskey about AEA in years past. Realistic Goals with Sound Fiscal Controls Due to a global, grand agenda serving a large, diverse, decentralized constituency (many of whom do not have organizational underwriting), organizational finances have been a historical concern for adult education associations. …

Exploring the Limits of the New Institutionalism: The Causes and Consequences of Illegitimate Organizational Change

While the new institutionalism has emerged as a dominant theory of organization-environment relations, very little research has examined its possible limits. Under what circumstances might the neoinstitutional predictions regarding organizational inertia, institutional isomorphism, the legitimacy imperative, and other fundamental beliefs be overshadowed by more traditional sociological theories accentuating organizational adaptation, variation, and the role of specific global and local technical environmental demands? We analyze longitudinal data from 1971 to 1986 for 631 private liberal arts colleges facing strong institutional and increasingly strong technical environments. Our findings reveal surprisingly little support for neoinstitutional predictions: (1) Many liberal arts colleges changed in ways contrary to institutional demands by professionalizing or vocationalizing their curricula; (2) global and local technical environmental conditions, such as changes in consumers' preferences and local economic and demographic differences, were strong predictors of the changes observed; (3) schools became less, rather than more, homogeneous over time; (4) schools generally did not mimic their most prestigious counterparts; (5) the illegitimate changes had no negative (and often had positive) performance consequences for enrollment and survival. Our results suggest that current research on organization-environment relations may underestimate the power of traditional adaptation-based explanations in organizational sociology

Resource Dependence-Based Perceived Control: An Examination of Canadian Interuniversity Athletics

Organizational autonomy of the interuniversity athletic department, university responsibility for athletics, and pressure from nonuniversity individuals, groups, and organizations are all concerns related to the department's dependence on various sources in its environment for financial support. The Emerson (1962) power-dependence theory of social exchange relations, and its adaptation to the study of organization-environment relations (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Thompson, 1967), guided an examination of funding and control in Canadian university athletics. This study examined whether athletic departments are perceived to be controlled by the funding sources in their environment according to their relative resource dependence upon those sources. Financial resource dependence and perceived control data were obtained from athletic directors (ADs) at 34 Canadian universities. Significant Spearman rank order correlations reveal the resource dependence-based perceived control of the university central administration, corporate sponsors, and provincial/federal sport organizations and ministries (p < .05). Of these, however, only central administration was perceived to have considerable control over the departments. Nevertheless, ADs should be aware of the resource dependence-based control potential of these other sources.

Organizational Environments and the Multinational Enterprise

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) serve as catalysts for reconceptualizing organization-environment relations because they operate simultaneously in multiple nations. We argue that subsidiaries of MNEs face dual pressures: They are pulled to achieve isomorphism with the local institutional environment, and they also face an imperative for consistency within the organization. We develop hypotheses regarding the factors that influence the structures and processes of MNEs. Based on an examination of the pressures imposed on MNEs. We offer a refined concept of organizational environments as complex and fluid, and we suggest implications for future research in organization theory.

The Suppression of Technology As a Strategy for Controlling Resource Dependence

For their helpful comments and suggestions, thanks are due to Stewart Clegg and three anonymous ASQ reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Australian and Pacific Researchers in Organization Studies, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1986. The resource dependence approach to organization-environment relations concerns in part the strategy and tactics whereby organizations seek to control aspects of their environment. This study utilizes and extends the resource dependence perspective and establishes the existence of a strategy that the corporate strategy literature ignores. Data from United States antitrust law is used here to sustain the argument that suppression of technology is one strategy used to control resource dependence. Specific tactics and their characteristics are identified, along with their objectives and the processes whereby these may be achieved. The paper shows that the selection of specific tactics is likely to depend on both the particular objective sought and the current judicial interpretation of these areas of law. Recent changes in the latter are producing a situation conducive to the utilization of patent-based tactics.'

Managing the environment: Strategies for executives in human service organizations

This paper delineates strategies for executies in human service organizations, which enable them to effectively manage the turbulent environment in which the organizations act. The administrative strategies are derived from a conceptual framework of organization-environment relations, and are intended to present executives with an overall scheme of the various linkages. Based on this framework, the paper suggests ways for executives to learn, scan and map the opportunities and risks inherent in the environment.

Ecology and Society: a Lesson for Organization Theory, from the Logic of Economics

Recent work on organizational ecology has helped to clarify the discussion of organiza tion-environment relations by providing a precise analytical distinction between the organization and its environment. However, the clarity of the distinction also exposes serious problems in the population perspective on organizations. The fact that ecology has been wedded to evolutionism cripples it in dealing with some of the central issues of organizational analysis. This paper looks at ways in which the precision of ecology may be combined with social and economic theories other than evolutionism to provide a powerful analysis of the organization in its social environment. Neoclassical economics serves as a model for the sort of theory that can be used to replace evolutionism. The paper concludes by examining the underlying axiomatic structure of neoclassical economics and outlining the general logic required to link ecological and social theories for the purposes of organizational analysis.

Toward an Appreciation of Collective Strategy

The field of business policy has variously characterized the task of managing organization-environment relations as: (a) responding to exogenous environmental threats and opportunities, (b) negotiating resource interdepen-dencies with outside stakeholders, and (c) strategically maneuvering vis-avis competitors in industrial arenas. An alternative way of characterizing the task of managing organization-environment relations is offered. This focuses on the notion of collective strategy: the joint formulation of policy and implementation of action by the members of interorganizational collectivities.

Specifying External Relations: Definition of and Actors in an Organization's Environment

Organization-environment concerns have become an increasingly important topic for both academic researchers and organizational practitioners. Unfortunately, some of the academic perspectives on organization-environment relations have emphasized the study of constructs within an organization's environment more than specific activities that an organization may adopt with actors in its environment. This paper proposes a three-step process for bridging academic research and organizational practice around organization-environment relations. First, distinctions between environments as nonmanipulable elements and niches as manipulable elements can be made. Resource dependence, efficiency, and uncertainty perspectives on environments have particular application at organization-niche interfaces. Ecology and uncertainty perspectives have relevance at the organization-environment interface. Second, niches can be at least partially identified through methods used to define strategic groups or populations. Classification and evolutionary analyses are two promising techniques that can be used to define populations and niches. Third, once niches are defined, actors within a niche can be identified and specific relationships between an organization and actors examined.

Human Service Organizations.

1. The Ubiquity of Human Service Organizations 2. Theoretical Approaches to Human Service Organizations 3. Organization-Environment Relations 4. Organizational Goals 5. Organizational 6. Technology 7. Structure, Power, and Control 8. Client-Organization Relations 9. Assessment of Organizational Performance 10. Changing Human Service Organizations References.

Organization and environment: The case of correctional personnel training programs

An intensive field study of 17 correctional personnel training programs was conducted to assess the organization-environment context in which these programs emerged and operated. Content analysis of site visit data revealed that correctional training programs less often served specific organization goal achievement purposes, and more often served as general strategies for coping with external environmental demands and pressures. A theoretical framework for examining organization-environment relations is described, and then used to analyze correctional training programs as a boundary-spanning activity that relates correctional organizations to environmental conditions. Organizational responses to environmental demands are placed along a continuum of adjustment ranging from survival, to adaptation, and innovation. Organizational responses to environmental demands, in turn, are related to training patterns that dovetail with the major needs of organizations and their personnel in efforts to adjust to the environment.

Implementation of Change in Human Service Organizations: A Political Economy Perspective

A political economy perspective is offered as the framework for analyzing the implementation of change in human service organizations. Change is defined as the modification of the resource-allocation rules in the organization, resulting in shifts of power among units in it. Its success or failure will be determined by the ability of the change agents to concomitantly bring about a favorable shift in the allocation of resources to support the change and the ascent to power of those within and without the organization supporting the change. Three clusters of organizational variables are identified as determinants of successful implementation of change: (a) organization-environment relations, (b) technological factors, and (c) internal power and inducement patterns.

The Chicago school and the study of organization-environment relations

The ecological perspective on organizational change represents the most significant development in contemporary organization research. The two reigning paradigms explain organizational change in terms of ‘environmental selection’ and ‘adaptation,’ respectively. What is generally unrecognized is that these developments are anticipated in the writings of the Chicago School of Sociology–specifically in their model of Ecological, Economic, and Cultural Organization. Their writings also provide a novel examination of organization-environment relations in terms of natural history, social organization and disorganization, and social control. The Chicago School investigations did not contribute directly to recent developments. Their theoretical approach was neither formalized in published work nor persistently adopted in research efforts, and at the end of Chicago's dominance it became obscured. Many elements of the Chicago model have nonetheless continued in the writings of community theorists linked to Chicago. It is from these theorists that contemporary organization research has drawn its ecological perspective.

Size in Residential Service Organizations

Data from 23 alcoholism halfway houses are analyzed to assess the relationship of four aspects of organizational size to three levels of organizational functioning. As identified by Kimberly (1976), the dimensions of size are (1) personnel, (2) inputs/outputs, (3) physical capacity, and (4) amount of discretionary resources. The three levels of organizational analysis are (1) internal (reflecting social control issues), (2) external (organization-environment relations), and (3) socio-technical (core technology issues). The amount of discretionary resources, followed closely by personnel size, is the dimension of size most relevant to all three aspects of organizational opcrations. Contrary to expectations, input-volume (or number of residential clients) was related negatively both to a more differentiated internal structure and to supportive organization-environment relations. Also unexpected, client-size had little relationship to the programming or staffing aspects of the core technology. Physical capacity (number of client beds) was the least significant aspect of size for this sample of organizations. Additional analyses of size as a multi-dimensional concept and refinement in theories relating size to the structure and operations of residential service organizations are needed.

Action and Contingency Postulates in Organization-Environment Relations

Two models of organization-environment relations are examined. One postulates organizational structure or behavior as contingent on environments; organizations are viewed as adapting to environmental changes. Conversely, the second model postulates environments as dependent upon organizations; organizations are viewed as actively manipulating environments. The two alternative models are empirically assessed and compared on a heterogeneous sample of 27 business corporations. In the contingency model, environmental manipulation is used to predict different dimensions of organizational technology. In the action model, the causal order is reversed; technology is used to predict environmental manipulation. Organizational assets are controlled in both models to eliminate the possible bias of differential resources. We find similar predictive power for both models. Explained variance was about equal, and standardized regression coefficients were similar across the models as well. It is thus concluded that a full understanding of organization-environment interaction will require simultaneous consideration of their effects upon one another.