Pilgrim’s Progress: Trends and Convergence in Research on Organizational Size and Environments

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen C. Bluedorn
Keyword(s):  
Population Ecology ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Organizational Size ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
Environment Research ◽  
Review Period ◽  
Traditional Approaches

This article reviews the research conducted on organizational size and environments from 1980 through 1992. Specifically, the environmental research based on the traditional environmental contingency model is reviewed and trends over the review period are identified. The organizational size literature is reviewed in a similar fashion. Suggestions for empirical and theoretical extensions of trends identified in both research streams a represented. An especially salient finding in the review is the emerging theoretical convergence of the size and environment research streams on the topic of organizational life cycles, which seems to particularly involve the population ecology model. Possible theoretical convergence between the institutional, population ecology, interorganizational relations, and environmental enactment perspectives and other fundamental organization theory areas (e.g., culture and strategy) are then proposed. Overall, traditional organizational size and environment research continued at a steady pace over the review period, and new approaches and perspectives, especially in the area of environment research, have developed and are surpassing the traditional approaches in the volume of research they generate.

Whirling in between the personal and the impersonal

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-284
Author(s):  
Armen E. Petrosyan
Keyword(s):  
Organization Theory ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
First Time ◽  
Current Paradigm

Purpose The paper aims to present a systematic conceptual analysis of the problem of organizational goal and to reduce the insights into it provided by the main conceptions taken in their development from one to another, to break out of the ruling paradigm and outline a new solution. Design/methodology/approach The study has been carried out from the historical and critical perspective. Findings The paper discovers the logic of the evolution the approaches to organizational goals have undergone and portrays it in a matrix form in the heart of which is the “zigzag effect”: each posterior stage returns to the essential elements rejected by those preceding it, and the last stage, being diametrically opposite to the first, is, at that, as well as the latter, akin to the intermediate stages. The opportunities afforded by the current paradigm have been exhausted and it seems to run to an impasse. Instead, the author suggests a new frame of orientation: organizational goals are closely interknit with personal, but not reducible to them and bear fundamentally transpersonal character, while the mechanism of involving the preferences of individuals and groups in goal-setting is based on the self-contained interests of the organization they pertain to. Research limitations/implications The findings, conclusions and generalizations obtained can serve for a necessary ground to researchers getting deeper into the essence of what bonds organizational life and activity. Practical implications The material empowers practitioners to comprehend the difficulties of framing cohesive goal and find efficient ways to overcome them. It is of value also to the teachers seeking to present a more exact and elaborate view of teleological foundations of management and organization theory. Originality/value Both the conceptual analysis of the evolution of the approaches to organizational goals and the author’s exposition of its logic and vision of their nature are provided for the first time.

Politics and Strategic Change Across Organizational Life Cycles

1985 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Gray ◽  
Sonny S. Ariss
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Change ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Organizational Life

Organizational Life Cycles in Small New Zealand Wineries

2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Beverland ◽  
Lawrence S. Lockshin
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Organizational Life

Organizational Life Cycles in Banking

1989 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O. Metzger
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycles ◽  
Organizational Life

Management Ethics without the Past: Rationalism and Individualism in Critical Organization Theory

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 623-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Organization Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Management Ethics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral Tradition ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
Modern Mind

Abstract:Since the Enlightenment our attachment to the past has been greatly weakened, in some areas of social life it has almost ceased to exist. This characteristic of the modern mind is seen as an overreaction. The modern mind has lost the capacity to appreciate the positive contribution the maintenance of the past in the present achieves in social life, especially in the sphere of moral conduct.In the field of organization theory, nowhere is the past as explicitly distrusted as in critical organization theory. The maintenance of the past in the present is seen as a potential carrier of oppressive and unjust social relationships. Perpetual critique is advocated as a means to uncover these oppressive and unjust relations and prevent any new undemocratic relations from becoming established.I present an historical and cultural analysis of the modern attitude toward the past and develop a concept of moral tradition to analyze critical organization theory’s ethical assumptions and implications. In so doing, an effort is made to rectify the exaggerated confidence critical organization theory places in rationalism and individualism and to recognize the ineluctable role traditions play not only in organizational life, but also in the way we theorize about organizations.

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