The 1993 Special Research Forum on Configurations is dedicated to the proposition that configurational theory and research can significantly advance understanding of people, groups, and organizations. In this introductory essay, we define configurational approaches to organizational analysis, trace the history of configurational thinking, distinguish the contingency approach from the configurational approach, and highlight key contributions of the five empirical articles that make up the special research forum. Most of these articles report research conducted at the organizational level of analysis, but we argue that the configurational perspective has unrealized potential at other levels as well and suggest some configurational approaches to revitalizing theory and research at the individual and group levels.

Configurational approaches to organizational analysis

Deinstitutionalization refers here to the erosion or discontinuity of an institution alized organizational activity or practice. This paper identifies a set of organiza tional and environmental factors that are hypothesized to determine the likelihood that institutionalized organizational behaviours will be vulnerable to erosion or rejection over time. Contrary to the emphasis in institutional theory on the cultural persistence and endurance of institutionalized organizational behaviours, it is suggested that, under a variety of conditions, these behaviours will be highly susceptible to dissipation, rejection or replacement.

The Antecedents of Deinstitutionalization

Recent attention in the general management literature has focused on mechanisms and processes used by organizations to respond and adapt to changes in their operating environment. There is, however, very little broad-based empirical research examining the role that management accounting control systems can play in shaping organizational change. Much of the empirical research to date has focused on the role of accounting as a diagnostic tool for assessing and rewarding managerial performance despite the recognition that accounting can serve as a dialogue, learning and idea creation machine ( Burchell et al., 1980 . Accounting Organisations and Society 5,5–27). The purpose of this study is to explore how accounting can serve this alternative role. We use (Simons, R. 1990.) Accounting Organisations and Society 15, 127–143). interactive/diagnostic classification of management control systems to capture how accounting can be used as a learning machine in the formulation and implementation of strategic change. A theoretical model is developed to examine the relationship between strategic change, style of budget use and performance. It is argued that an interactive style of budget use can mitigate the disruptive performance effects of the strategic change process. The data, collected from Chief Executive Officers in 63 public hospitals, provide results that are consistent with our expectations.

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/A/Accounting,%20Organizations%20and%20Society/Vol24.Issue3.April1999/256.pdf

The role of budgets in organizations facing strategic change: an exploratory study

Set on its current course thirty years ago by Herbert Simon's notions of bounded rationality and sequential stages, the research literature of organizational decision making is claimed in this paper to have suffered from three major limitations labeled reification, dehumanization, and isolation. In particular, it has been stuck along a continuum between the cerebral rationality of the stage theories at one end and the apparent irrationality of the theory of organized anarchies at the other. This paper seeks to open up decision making in three respects. First, the concept of “decision” is opened up to the ambiguities that surround the relationship between commitment and action. Second, the decision maker is opened up to history and experience, to affect and inspiration, and especially to the critical role of insight in transcending the bounds of cerebral rationality. Third, the process of decision making is opened up to a host of dynamic linkages, so that isolated traces of single decisions come to be seen as interwoven networks of issues. The paper concludes with a plea to open up research itself to the development of richer theory on these important processes.

Opening up Decision Making: The View from the Black Stool

Institutional theory has focused on the movement towards, and maintenance of, isomorphic institutional environments. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the forces that change institutional environments. Starting with a discussion of the implications of isomorphism on performance, this article attempts to develop a taxonomy of organizations within an institutional environment in order to develop a theory of how organizations respond to violations of institutional norms with possible implications for institutional change. Essential to this theory is the importance of organizational diversity, risk aversion, the effect of isomorphism on performance, and the role of relative performance in maintaining isomorphism and providing incentives to change.

Organizational Diversity and Change in Institutional Theory

The Dynamics of Strategic Change

The issue of how to achieve value for money from government-funded R&D has over recent years become increasingly important in all industrial nations. The findings of a study which surveys the methods and techniques used to evaluate applied research in Japan are presented. Their analysis determines what lessons can be learned from the approaches to evaluation employed in the main Japanese mission-oriented agencies, in particular MITI and the Science and Technology Agency. First published in 1988, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.

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Diane Waring

Papers

The Dynamics of Strategic Change

Evaluating Applied Research: Lessons from Japan