Organization-environment Relations Research Articles

Organizational Differentiation in Urban Communities: A Study in Organizational Ecology

Ecological theory suggests that growth in the density of a population of organizations should give rise, through the mechanism of competition, to functional differentiation and within functions, size differentiation. Such theory also predicts that size differentiation will increase as a consequence of functional differentiation. Tests of these hypotheses based on measurements for 206 SMSAs support these propositions with the exception that no direct effect of organizational density on size differentiation is observed. Secondary hypotheses about the influences of community age, urbanization, and economic function are also advanced and empirically evaluated. This study is conceived as an exploration in the ecology of organizations and confronts issues identified as important by other recent writers on these topics. The concept of an aggregate or population of organizations has caught the interest of sociologists pursuing various problems. Thinking of the urban community in such terms has led a number of writers to formulate propositions linking structural properties of the local organizational field to patterns of community integration and collective action (Aiken and Alford; Coleman; Turk). These efforts treat such properties as independent variables, however; hence are less helpful in explaining the composition of urban places in terms of them. One approach having this explanatory potential, as two recent papers suggest, is ecology. Hannan and Freeman and Aldrich and Pfeffer treat populations of organizations as an approach to the broad problem of organization-environment relations; and conclude that ecological models are best suited to a population-level analysis. Curiously, neither article gives more than passing attention to communities as systems supporting organizational populations, although human ecological theory addressing these topics has developed mainly in the course of a treatment of community structure (Hawley, a, Ch. 7). The present investigation, however, uses the urban community as the unit of analysis and *This paper has profited from critical readings by Michael Hannan, Barbara Laslett, and Kingsley Davis. Errors which remain are entirely my responsibility.

The Population Ecology of Organizations

A population ecology perspective on organization-environment relations is proposed as an alternative to the dominant adaptation perspective. The strength of inertial pressures on organizational str...

Organizational influences on access to health care

This paper argues that organization-environment relations in health and related fields have a significant impact on patterns of referral and rejection. Two separate areas of research, i.e. basic research on organization-environment relations and research on two aspects of access to health care (referrals and rejections) are reviewed and integrated. Within an exchange framework propositions are developed concerning organizational resources, autonomy, and domain consensus. Finally, it is suggested that organization-environment relations and organizational structures influence the production of treated rates of various personal problems, rates which are often used in research as well as in program and policy decisions.

Environments of Organizations

The relationship between organizations and environments has drawn increasing attention in the recent literature of the sociology of organizations. We consider the subject of interorganizational relations to be a special case of the more general study of organizations and their environments. Dimensions of interorganizational rela­ tions have been listed (Marrett 1971), and partially developed paradigms for analyz­ ing organization-environment relations have been proposed. The natural selection model, developing the strongest argument for an environmental perspective, posits that environmental factors select those organizational characteristics that best fit the environment (Hannan & Freeman 1974, Aldrich' 1971b). A complementary model, variously called a political economy model (Benson 1975, Wamsley & Zald 1973), a dependence exchange approach (Jacobs 1974, Hasenfeld 1972), and a resource dependence model (Pfeffer 1972b), argues for greater attention to internal organiza­ tional political decision-making processes and also for the perspective that organiza­ tions seek to manage or strategically adapt to their environments. The two models agree on the importance of organizational environments for understanding organizational decisions and structures, but differ in their evaluation of the importance of the role of environmental selection. Current literature has elements of both incompletely developed perspectives and the shape of organiza­ tional sociology will be determined by the implicit debate taking place. As it is impossible to ascertain the ultimate resolution of this argument, we have chosen to examine both perspectives in this chapter, and to include literature from industrial organization, and administrative science and organizational behavior, as well as from organizational sociology.

People Processing Organizations: An Exchange Approach

This paper sets forth a framework for analyzing the role of organization-environment relations in defining the classification-disposition functions of people-processing organizations. People processing organizations are defined as attempting to achieve changes in their clients not by altering basic personal attributes, but by conferring on them a public status and relocating them in a new set of social circumstances. The paper's basic proposition is that people-processing organizations employ classification-disposition systems that reflect, in part, organizational adaptations to the constraints of their exchange relations with various market units receiving the processed clients. Using a power-dependence paradigm, variables which increase or decrease the organization's dependence on its market units are identified. The consequences of these exchange relations on the organization's classification-disposition system are then explored.