External Perspective of Organizations: Basic Concepts for a Contextual Perspective

We have spent the first part of this chapter discussing the importance of a contextual perspective for understanding organizations and for making them more effective. In the remainder of this chapter, we will briefly describe a number of key concepts that develop this perspective. These concepts will assist in bringing coherence to the large

External Perspective of Organizations: The Role of Management

We have emphasized the importance of contexts, or situational contingencies, as determinants of organizational behavior. We have attempted to question the internal perspective of organizational functioning and the concomitant belief in the omnipotence of individual administrative action. We have not, however, defined the role of the manager out of existence. It is important to

Interest Groups and Coalitions: Organizations as Markets for Influence and Control

Parsons (1956) argued that legitimacy was an important concept for understanding organizations and their relationships to their social environments. Parsons noted that since organizations used resources which, presumably, could find alternative uses elsewhere, organizations were continually being assessed on the appropriateness of their activities and the usefulness of their output. In other words” since

Competing Demands in External Perspective of Organizations

That different people, groups, or organizations may have different criteria for evaluating an organization creates problems for the organization. The problems derive from the fact that the criteria may be incompatible. Faced with conflicting demands, the organization must decide which groups to attend to and which to ignore. When the criteria are compatible, the

Organizational Boundaries and the Partial Inclusion of Participants in External Perspective of Organizations

We have argued that organizations are coalitions, maintained by providing inducements (satisfaction) to participants who support the organization. All participants and those affected by the organization can evaluate it, and because of the number and diveisity of interests in the coalition constituting most organizations, the managements of organizations face the problem of dealing with

Organizational Effectiveness in External Perspective of Organizations

From the previous discussion it can be seen that a variety of interest groups, individuals, and organizations have contact with a given focal organization; each of these evaluates the organization and reacts to its output and actions. Each has a particular set of criteria of preferences that it uses in this evaluation process, and

Interdependence of Organizations

Interdependence is the reason why nothing comes out quite the way one wants it to. Any event that depends on more than a single causal agenhis an outcome based on interdependent agents. Interpendence is the reason you cannot find the word in the American Heritage Dictionary—an outcome which depends both on your obtaining the

The Social Control of Organizational Choice

Organizations engage in exchanges and transactions with other groups or organizations. The exchanges may involve monetary or physical resources, information, or social legitimacy. Because organizations are not self-contained or self-sufficient, the environment must be relied upon to provide support. For continuing to provide what the organization needs, the external groups or organizations may demand

Empirical Examinations of Interorganizational Influence of Organizations

The concept of dependence is useful in understanding how organizational decision making is constrained by the environment. If organizations achieve their own ends by using their power to affect the behavior of other organizations, then it is possible to conceive of organizational behavior as the consequence of influences. While it is more common to

Dimensions of the Organizational Environment

Many authors have attempted to describe or dimensionalize organizational environments. One of the earliest and most influential attempts was the work of Emery and Trist (1965). Emery and Trist described four types of environments, which differed according to the source and nature of the interdependence between the environment and the organization. The first type,

The Interconnectedness of Organizations

The interconnectedness of the environment is a dimension that is attracting growing research concern as empirical investigations of organization-environment activity move from analyzing the strategic actions taken by single organizations to consider the design of networks of organizations. The concept of interconnectedness is well illustrated by the following sequence of events occurring while wage

The Enactment Process of Organizations – How Environments Are Known

One of the least discussed topics is the interface between the organization and the environment, particularly how the environment or context comes to affect the structures or decisions of organizations. We shall consider this issue in more detail in Chapter Nine. There is some evidence that the power of internal subunits varies with their relationship

Determinants of the Enactment Process of Organizations

Noting that an organization’s environment is enacted, or created by attentional processes, tends to shift theJhcusMrom-chaxactfixis,tics,of important dimensions to tins decision: some are relevant when the attentional process is considered at a point in time; and others are relevant when the attentional process is considered over time. At a given point in time, the

Problems in Environmental Enactment of Organizations

Although organizational decisions and actions are determined by the enacted environment—that set of definitions of the world constructed by the organization’s attention process—organizational outcomes can be affected by parts of the environment not noticed or heeded. There! are several types of problems that may arise in the process of enacting the environment which may

The Assessment of External Demands of Organizations

Many of the problems organizations face in attempting to adapt to their environments stem from the inability to predict or assess the potency and demands of various interest groups, how these demands conflict- or how they constrain- the^organization s actions. Operating in ignorance of its interdependence and constraints, the organization can make strategic errors.

Managing Organizational Demands: An Environment of Conflicting Interests

Awareness of the enormous concentrated power of large organizations has made them targets for many who want to control or use that power. Perrow (1972) pointedly argued that the critical question concerning bureaucracies was not whether or not they would disappear, to be replaced by some other organizational form, but rather, who would control

Managing Organizational Demands: Organizational Compliance

Management of environmental demands does not in itself imply that the organization should rush to comply with them. There are times when compliance, although important for maintaining an immediately critical exchange relationship, may not be in the long-term interests of the organization. Compliance is a loss of discretion, a constraint, and an admission of limited

Managing Organizational Demands: Avoiding Influence as an Organizational Response

Just as influencing organizations can develop prior estimates of their probable success and use these to guide their behavior, so can the focal organization. To forestall a loss of autonomy and to remove some of the contextual constraints on behavior, the focal organization may take actions to reduce the probability of being subject to

Managing the Conditions of Social Control in Organizations

While balancing conflicting demands will forestall some problems of lost autonomy, perhaps the most effective way of avoiding the constraints of external demands is to..avoid the conditions which demand compliance in the first place. In Chapter Three, we discussed a model of the social control of organizations and presented some conditions which would tend

Managing and Avoiding Dependence of Organizations

The strategies we have discussed for avoiding influence may be effective in avoiding the influence of relatively less powerful groups. Such strategies are less likely to work when dealing with powerful interests controlling critical organizational dependencies. General Motors’ power over its automotive suppliers was great enough that it could not only make demands about