Environmental Determinism

Conceptual Overview

Environmental determinism assumes the environment is a concrete, self-sufficient phenomenon external to the organization. The environment causes or determines all internal features of organizations including how members think and act, how organizational structures are shaped, which organizational technologies are adopted, criteria of organizational effectiveness, and whether organizations stand or fall. The strong form of environmental determinism assumes there is little or no agency or free will in the choices made by organizational members. In essence, organizational choices, actions, and meanings are seen as the causally determined outcomes of environmental features. The organization thus reflects and is directly determined by the features of the environment.

Environmental determinism is consistent with the social system view of organizations that Conrad and Haynes discuss in 2001. The doctrine of the social system focuses on external constraints on organizations that determine their structural configuration. This view uses a language of objectivity and externality to depict actors' choices as severely constrained or determined by features of the situation. Constraints are strong but imperfect influences that are not equivalent to determinism. There is a tendency for theories that examine constraints or influence as key processes to employ deterministic arguments.

The social system view contrasts with a social action perspective that assumes behavior is voluntary and based in human agency. Thus, a key challenge facing organizational theories that seek to avoid being overly deterministic is to describe organizational action in ways that show how it is guided by actual pressures while avoiding the view that the situation fully determines organizational actions.

Early organizational theory was characterized by a closed system perspective that addressed internal organizational features and neglected how the environment influences organizations. However, later organizational theories adopted an open systems perspective to examine how organizational components are imported into the organization and how the organization is influenced by the environment. John Child, writing in 1997, notes that key organization perspectives including ecological, institutional, and contingency theories assume organizational characteristics are determined by environmental conditions.

Three forms of determinism are evident in these theories. One form is natural determinism, which assumes natural selection determines organizational features. This is evidenced in population ecology theory, developed by Michael Hannan and John Freeman, that examines the population of organizations to understand why certain types of organizations survive. Survival is based on the fit between the environment and the organization. This theory is highly deterministic because it assumes that environments select or determine which organizations will survive by providing or failing to provide essential resources. Management has little influence on organizational outcomes. Hannan and Freeman modified their approach into a less deterministic view in 1989 that they referred to as organizational ecology. Organizational ecology emphasizes adaptability rather than selection: where a particular variant or form does not fit its environment, managerial skills can help an organization to adapt.

...