Summary
Contents
Subject index
Written by one of the foremost scholars in the field, this volume presents a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the theories, evidence and methodological issues of contingency theory - one of the major theoretical lenses used to view organizations. It includes both an appreciation of the coherency of contingency theory overall and a frank recognition of some of the deficiencies in contingency theory research. The coherent underlying model provides the platform from which to make good some of the deficiencies through a series of improvements in theory and method that chart the course for future research. The opening chapter presents a theoretical integration to provide the reader with an overview that makes sense of what is a large literature. It also argues that there is an underlying core paradigm that renders contingency theory coherent. The next chapters lay out the foundations of contingency theory by reviewing the pioneering contributors to theory and empirical research. This is followed by an examination of the causal models in the received bureaucracy research literature and an attempt to put them on a more truly contingency theory base. Chapters 7 and 8 examine in detail the concept of fit and its relationship with performance, including the empirical research studies. Chapter 9 presents possible new developments for contingency theory, to make it more coherent and, hopefully, valid. These new developments include the concepts of disequilibrium, quasi-fit and hetero-performance. All three are novel concepts that substantially revise and improve contingency theory. The final chapter offers suggestions on how to operationalize the ideas in this book in terms of hypotheses for future empirical research.
Causality and Contingency in Bureaucracy Theory
Causality and Contingency in Bureaucracy Theory
While bureaucracy research has established numerous empirical regularities and offers theoretical interpretations of them, there are some thorny theoretical issues pertaining to bureaucracy theory. What exactly are the causal relationships between the components of bureaucratic structure, such as formalization, decentralization, and structural differentiation? What is the theoretical reason why so many of the observed relationships between variables in the causal model are not linear? Causality is being discussed in terms of an impersonal, functionalist organizational system, but how do people actually make this happen—what is the role of human action? Is the causal model really a contingency theory? We will deal with such questions in this chapter.
By way of overview, the following several issues may be distinguished. The effect of one variable on another, ...
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