This paper answers the question, "Why do organizations process information?" Uncertainty and equivocality are defined as two forces that influence information processing in organizations. Organization structure and internal systems determine both the amount and richness of information provided to managers. Models are proposed that show how organizations can be designed to meet the information needs of technology, interdepartmental relations, and the environment. One implication for managers is that a major problem is lack of clarity, not lack of data. The models indicate how organizations can be designed to provide information mechanisms to both reduce uncertainty and resolve equivocality.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2631846.pdf

Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design

The primary purpose of this article is to clarify the nature of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct and to propose a contingency framework for investigating the relationship between EO and firm performance. We first explore and refine the dimensions of EO and discuss the usefulness of viewing a firm's EO as a multidimensional construct. Then, drawing on examples from the EO-related contingencies literature, we suggest alternative models (moderating effects, mediating effects, independent effects, interaction effects) for testing the EO-performance relationship.

Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking It To Performance

This article applies the convergent insights of institutional and resource dependence perspectives to the prediction of strategic responses to institutional processes. The article offers a typology of strategic responses that vary in active organizational resistance from passive conformity to proactive manipulation. Ten institutional factors are hypothesized to predict the occurrence of the alternative proposed strategies and the degree of organizational conformity or resistance to institutional pressures.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/258610.pdf

Strategic responses to institutional processes

Marketing managers must know the time orientation of a customer to select and use marketing tools that correspond to the time horizons of the customer. Insufficient understanding of a customer's ti...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1252265.pdf

Determinants of Long-Term Orientation in Buyer-Seller Relationships:

This paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate the effective strategic responses to environmental hostility among small manufacturing firms. Data on environmental hostility, organization structure, strategic posture, competitive tactics, and financial performance were collected from 161 small manufacturers. Findings indicate that performance among small firms in hostile environments was positively related to an organic structure, an entrepreneurial strategic posture, and a competitive profile characterized by a long-term orientation, high product prices, and a concern for predicting industry trends. In benign environments, on the other hand, performance was positively related to a mechanistic structure, a conservative strategic posture, and a competitive profile characterized by conservative financial management and a short-term financial orientation, an emphasis on product refinement, and a willingness to rely heavily on single customers.

Strategic management of small firms in hostile and benign environments

? 1991 by Cornell University. 0001 -8392/91/3603-0333/$1 .00. The research reported here explores how institutional practices change over time in an interorganizational field, in the historical context of the U.S. radio broadcasting industry. It identifies three endogenous mechanisms of change: analogies that are used to make sense of and manage new phenomena, private agreements between identifiable parties, and conventions, the practices adopted by some constituents to solve coordination problems. The use of each mechanism is associated with the nature of the goods transacted within a field and triggers change in established practices as actors attempt to realize value from their transactions. After describing each mechanism as found in the radio broadcasting industry, we focus our historical analysis on conventions. It reveals that conventions were introduced into the broadcasting field by fringe players to deal with shifting coordination problems and competitive pressures. Once they were adopted by the central players, these conventions transformed the organization of the industry by changing the basis of transactions and became its new institutional practices. We conclude that the organization of a field is not permanent, but is contingent upon institutionalized definitions of what is being transacted.

Institutional Change and the Transformation of Interorganizational Fields: An Organizational History of the U.S. Radio Broadcasting Industry

The Effect of Uncertainty on the Use of Social Influence in Organizational Decision Making.

The authors appreciate the thoughtful comments of Howard Aldrich, William Evan, and Mayer Zald on an earlier version of this article. This study develops a general model of the relationship between variables measuring organizational environments and executive succession within organizations, with particular emphasis on the role of executive movement in developing stable patterns of interorganizational interaction.1 Such factors as (1) the number of organizations in the industry, (2) the difference in industry concentration from a median value, (3) the growth rate in industry sales, (4) the rate of technological change, (5) the average debt to equity ratio, and (6) the average firm size are related to characteristics of executive recruitment for 20 manufacturing industries. It is found that the movement of executives between firms, which is one form of interorganizational communication, is consistent with hypotheses dealing with the possibility of developing coordinated structures of interorganizational behavior.

Executive Recruitment and the Development of Interfirm Organizations

This research was partly supported by a grant from the Bank Administration Institute. The effect of environmental diversity and volatility on decision-making strategies is examined for 41 independent banks. Uncertainty is defined and measured in terms of an entropy equation, which combines environmental and probabilistic sources of decision uncertainty. Uncertainty was associated with loan managers' perceptions of the uncertainty of loan repayments and the information they collected before deciding on a loan application. The normal operations procedures used by the banks to process loans varied with the diversity, but not the volatility, of their environment. Volatility was associated with the uncertainty experienced for particular decisions. A theoretical framework with the implication of the two sources of uncertainty is discussed.e

Effects of Environmental Uncertainty on Information and Decision Processes in Banks.

Examination of organizational structure as a dependent variable has become increasingly frequent in the literature on formal organizations. Three theoretical positions have been advanced by those seeking to explain structural variations. Some researchers have focused on organizational size as the principal determinant of structure (Blau, 1970; Blau and Schoenherr, 1971; Meyer, 1972a), while others have noted the effect of the organization's environment (Bums and Stalker, 1961; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Duncan, 1972). And the third perspective has emphasized technology as a determinant of organizational structure (Woodward, 1965; Hage and Aiken, 1969; Zwerman, 1970). The emphasis on technology as a factor affecting organizational structure has, however, tended to deal only with the production technology used in the organization.

Huseyin Leblebici

Papers

Institutional Change and the Transformation of Interorganizational Fields: An Organizational History of the U.S. Radio Broadcasting Industry

The Effect of Uncertainty on the Use of Social Influence in Organizational Decision Making.

Executive Recruitment and the Development of Interfirm Organizations

Effects of Environmental Uncertainty on Information and Decision Processes in Banks.

Information Technology and Organizational Structure