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148 Corporate Communications in Practice

structural, deterministic relationships between contingency factors and structure can
be found and that, as contingency factors broadly differ by classes of organizations, it
therefore also accounts for differences across different types of organizations.
This latter point distinguishes contingency theory, which argues that variation in
structures is thus dependent on mechanisms in the environment, from theories such as
‘political choice’ or ‘power-control’, which in contrast, argue against determinism and
the existence of structural relationships between an organization and its environment. 40
These political frameworks challenged the determinism inherent in contingency the-
ory, as they sought to replace contingency theory with approaches that focus often on
individual perception,belief and choice,as well as conflict and power struggles between
classes or groups within the organization.A particular example of this strand of orga-
nization theory is the ‘political choice’ theory of organizational structure, which posits
that people exercise choice rather than bowing to situational dictates. Hence, this
theory rejects the notion that a functional structure will be chosen and suggests that
organizational structure is often counter-productive and only serves the interests of certain
organizational members (i.e. powerful coalitions).Yet another theory, power-control
theory, does not go as far as to deny any form of functionalism, but stresses the impor-
tance of managerial perceptions and actions mediating between the environment and
the structures within a company.This theory, initially framed by Child in 1972, now
represents a separate and powerful school of thought in management and organization
research. Power-control theory states that organizational structures are partly deter-
mined by or related to conditions within a company’s environment, but also partly
result from managerial choices. Decisions over organizational structure are influenced
by managerial perceptions, so that the preferences, interest and power of managers also
affect which structure is chosen. Comparing these two perspectives suggests that con-
tingency theory focuses for its explanation of organizational structure on material or
‘objective’ factors such as size and technology in the company’s environment, rather
than on ‘subjective’ or political factors such as ideas, perceptions and norms, as power-
control theory does. And in terms of managerial choice, contingency theory implies
a relatively high level of determinism where managers are seen as having to adopt
the organizational structure required by a company’s environmental conditions.The
power-control theory, in contrast, assumes a larger variance in structures and hence a
friction between environment and structure possible because of the decisive influence
and variant nature of managerial perceptions and actions.

The contingency perspective on communications organization. The contingency or
environmental perspective on communications organization emerged with the work of
41
Kotler and Mindak in 1978. Observing increased dependencies and overlap between
public relations and marketing, Kotler and Mindak argued for a more contingent view
relating alternative relational concepts of public relations and marketing to factors such
as organizational size and business sector.They for instance suggested that for some
companies,particularly retail and manufacturing companies,it might be more effective
to closely align marketing and public relations so as to reduce interdepartmental con-
flict and problems of coordination. Since Kotler and Mindak’s groundbreaking work,
a number of academic researchers have since followed the contingency path for
research into communications organization including Schneider, Van Leuven and
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Cornelissen. Van Leuven, for instance, researched whether the structuring of the