Contingency Theory

A contingency theory is a theory of the firm that claims that there is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) upon the internal and external situation. Contingent leaders are flexible in choosing and adapting to succinct strategies

The Organization as a System

At the most general level we find it useful to view an organization as an open system in which the behaviors of members are themselves interrelated. The behaviors of members of an organization are also interdependent with the formal organization, the tasks to be accomplished, the personalities of other individuals, and the unwritten rules

Differentiation and Integration and the Organization’s Environment

It is on the states of dillrirnil*ttlon and integration in organizational systems that this  xludy places major emphasis. As organizations deal with ilirii ext mini environments, they become segmented into units, rach of which has as its major task the problem of dealing with a part of the conditions outside the firm. This is

Conflict Resolution to Achieve Integration

While the early theorists did not explicitly recognize the relationship between the states of differentiation and integration, they did emphasize the need for integration in the organization. Their view, however, was that integration is accomplished through an entirely rational and mechanical process. If the total task of the organization was divided up according to

Environmental and Task Attributes

These are some of the essential ways in which our approach differs from the ideas of the classical theorists and from those of many of the human relations researchers. There is, however, one other difference—to us the most important of all. Until very recently, as we have suggested, organization researchers and theorists have tended

The Effective Organization and the Individual

While the matter of systemic differentiation and integration is our central interest, we are not ignoring the consequences of different organizational and administrative patterns for the satisfaction and development of individual managers. In fact, there seems to be an important connection for the individual between working in an organization structured to deal effectively with

Organizations in a diverse and dynamic environment: The Plastics Industry Environment

The plastics industry could be defined as extending from the basic bulk chemicals from which the plastics compounds are developed to the final product in the multitudinous forms in which it reaches the hands of the consumer. For the sake of better comparability among organizations, we limited our study to firms that produced and

Organizations in a diverse and dynamic environment: Departmental Differentiation

1. Basic Departments in Six Organizations Each of the six plastics organizations studied was a major product segment of a large, diversified chemical company. While there were some differences in their products, they all competed in the manufacture of basic plastics materials for sale to industrial customers. Each organization was a self-contained entity, carrying

Organizations in a diverse and dynamic environment: Differentiation and Performance in Six Organizations

1. Organizational Performance We did not, we must stress, pre-select these organizations on the basis of their performance, since the required information was not public. We did, however, try to choose organizations with a general reputation for being either highly successful or somewhat less effective. As it turned out, based on the measures of

Organizations in a diverse and dynamic environment: Departmental Differentiation and Integration

So far we have focused on the fact that the functional de- partments in these six organizations had developed differentiated attributes that seemed to be related to their overall effectiveness. There is, however, another side to these differences in orientations and organizational practices. They also mean that when it becomes necessary to make joint

Organizations in a diverse and dynamic environment: Differentiation, Integration, and Performance

To find an answer to this question we computed and compared the average amount of differentiation between departments in each of the six organizations and the average quality of integration achieved in each organization. The results were highly intriguing. The two organizations with the most successful performance records had, in fact, achieved the highest

The Requirements for Interdepartmental Conflict Resolution

The varying degrees of uncertainty in the three major parts of the organization’s environment (market factors, techno- economic factors, and scientific factors) meant that personnel at different levels within each department dealing with these different factors had the knowledge necessary to help make joint decisions on innovation issues with other departments. We found in

Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution: Intermediate Position of Integrators

The first factor that we predicted might enable the integrators to be more effective in their jobs had to do with their own orientations and the structure of their departments. If the integrators had developed goal, time, and interpersonal orientations equidistant among those of the managers in the various departments they were linking, we

Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution: Influence of Integrators

The second factor that we predicted might help to determine how effective the integrators would be in resolving in- terdepartmental conflict was how much influence they appeared to have in making the relevant joint decisions.2 We predicted that the integrators would need to be seen by others in their organization as having an important

Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution: Reward System for Integrators

The extent to which integrators felt they were evaluated and rewarded in accordance with the overall performance of their product group was the third factor that we expected could be related to their effectiveness in resolving conflicts.4 If the integrators felt that their superiors were evaluating them on the basis of the profitability of

Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution: Total Level of Influence

The first of these factors is the amount of influence managers in all the departments felt that they had over decisions. If the various functional specialists and the integrators all felt that their own departments had great influence in the decision-making process, they would all be likely to feel that their point of view

Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution: Influence Centered at Required Level

Another way in which influence seemed to be tied to the process of resolving interdepartmental disputes was in the requirement that within each functional department influ-ence be concentrated at the managerial level where knowledge to make decisions was available. When the managers who had the requisite knowledge also felt that they had the necessary

Modes of Conflict Resolution in Organization

The final factor that distinguished the conflict-resolving effectiveness of the two high-performing organizations from that of the others was perhaps the most obvious one—differences in the mode of behavior typically used to deal with conflict. When faced with an interdepartmental conflict, managers can and do respond in several ways. We anti-cipated that the most

Comparative Pattern of Determinants of Effective Conflict Resolution

SO far we have compared these organizations separately in each determinant of effective conflict resolution, both those that affected the behavior of the integrators only and those that had an impact on all managers. As we have done so, certain differences between the highly effective and the less successful organizations have become noticeable. As

Environmental Demands for Organization

To learn more about the demands of these two environments, we will follow the same practice that we did in the plastics industry, using data from both questionnaires and interviews with top executives. We will focus on four aspects of these environments as compared to the plastics environment. Were we correct in assessing the