ENVIRONMENTAL FIT VERSUS INTERNAL FIT

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: MILLER, D
• 署名单位: Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.3.2.159
• 发表日期: 1992
• 页码: 159-178
• 关键词: Organizational design; fit; adaptation

摘要

Many contingency researchers have argued that organizations must tailor their structures and decision making processes to fit the demands of their external environments-the exigencies of their markets. They claim, for example, that uncertain environments-those with high degrees of change and unpredictability in technology and in customer and competitor behavior-require more delegation of authority to highly trained specialists and quicker, more responsive decision making. However, such experts usually favor a slower, more analytical approach. Here, internal and external requirements appear to be inconsistent. These and similar inconsistencies indicate that the alignment among structural and process variables needed for good environmental fit seems sometimes to violate the dictates of internal consistency. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that where such inconsistencies occur, organizations will choose between achieving internal match and external match: firms that closely match the demands of their environment will lack internal complementarity, and vice versa. The empirical research reported here demonstrates exactly this: organizations that achieve the best fit with environmental uncertainty have the weakest linkages among structural and process variables. An exploratory taxonomy supports these results. However, internal and external fit are not always incompatible. We found, for example, that fit with environmental diversity did not have any implications for internal fit. One of the implications of this research is that managers may have to perform their adaptive tasks sequentially striving for a harmonious alignment among their internal variables in order to achieve smooth functioning, but periodically disrupting this harmony to adjust to a changing environment.