Page 157 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 8 ■ Sustaining organizational effectiveness

R & D
New
High product Sales
complexity development focus
Marketing and general
management

Low Cost
complexity control

Weak Strong
resource resource
base base
Figure 8.4 Functional tendencies (derived from Lawrence
and Dyer, 1983)

attuned to corporate objectives) or ways of developing people and groups to
improve the emphasis on innovation.

Criticisms of the contingency approach
Various criticisms have been made of the contingency approach:

■ In reality the design of organizations is subject to ‘political’ and ideological
factors as different interest groups come into conflict when defending their
own interests (e.g. nurses and managers in healthcare or, more accurately, dif-

ferent groupings of both ‘nurses’ and ‘managers’). Hence structures are often
the result of bargaining and compromise.
■ The environment itself is problematic and cannot be taken as a given deter-
minant of the organization. Instead it requires interpretation and is likely to
generate differences within the enterprise. In any event the structure of an
R&D department is very likely to be very different to the structure of a pro-
duction department – note, however, that contingency theory could account
for this difference.
■ Within given situations it appears that a significant degree of choice exists for
managers as to how they structure their organizations, without serious disec-
onomies being incurred.
■ At worst, contingency theory may become a trivial exercise for managers in
encouraging a sort of ‘checklist’ approach which ignores how the variables
themselves may interact, often in a complex way.

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