Environmental Selection and Organizational Structuring (Classic Reprint): Steps Toward a Theory of Inertia and Adaptation in Organizations: Steps ... Adaptation in Organizations (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from Environmental Selection and Organizational Structuring: Steps Toward a Theory of Inertia and Adaptation in Organizations

Empirical studies have found support for both inertia and adaptation in organizations. This paper provides a set of boundary conditions for explaining both organizational inertia and adaptation in organizational structures. We derive a set of testable proposition on (1) how the frequency and variability of environmental change affects the long-run survival advantages of structurally inert versus structurally transformable structure and (2) how under conditions of coercive environments, organizational slack and the costs of change affect inertia and adaptation of organizations. In the case of ambiguity, economic, political, and cultural factors all affect organizational structuring and the determinants of inertia, change, and adaptability.

One of the principal unsolved problems in organization theory is the determination of inertia, change, and adaptation. The population ecologists (harman and Freeman, 1977, 1984, 1989) have successfully challenged the once-dominant view that organizations continually adapt themselves to their environment (lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967) and have established the concept of organizational inertia as a common characteristic of organizations. According to the population ecologists, (harman and Freeman, 1984, organizations are relatively inert: organizational changes in its core features occur at a much lower rate than the corresponding changes in the environment. In the theory, structural inertia is a consequence of selection pressures, rather than a precondition (harman and Freeman, Environmental conditions are assmned to favor accountability and reliability of performance in organizations. Hannan and Freeman argue that these characteristics require high reproducibility of structures and that high reproducibility leads to structural inertia.

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