Organisations and environments

Abstract

The previous chapter provided plenty of evidence that the contexts in which organisations operate, whether they be the rise of monopoly capitalism, the ups and downs of the trade cycle, or political circumstances such as the American New Deal in the 1930s, profoundly shape their nature and development. But does this figure prominently in conventional organisational theory? Salaman argues that it does not:

The society in which these organisations occur, and its relation with these organisations, has been very little studied. To the extent that the outside world does impinge on the structure and functioning of organisations, it is conceptualised not in terms of interests, values, class loyalties, ideologies, market developments etc., but as the organisation’s ‘environment’. (1979: 32)