Environment

Definition
Hall and Fagen (1956) state that "for a given system, the environment is the set of all objects a change in whose attributes affect the system and also those objects whose attributes are changes by the behavior of the system." In other words, "every organization exists in a specific physical, technological, cultural and social environment to which it must adapt" Scott p. 20

Organizations hire people from outside their organization, get technology from external sources. The social structure of the organization will reflect environmental influences.

Environment Typologies
The socio-technical perspective (Emery and Trist, 1965) has classified environments by the time of interlocking relations that have developed: They define four fields:
* Placid, randomized environments (resources unchanging, random distribution)
* Placid, clustered environments (resources unchanging, but location becomes important for survival)
* Disturbed, reactive environments (org. strategy to get resources important for survival)
* Turbulent environments (all actors are interconnected, and overall field becomes an important force)

Another typology based on decision making structure is proposed by Warren (1967). He also sees four types of fields:

* social-choice context -- no inclusive structure exists -- autonomous decision making
* coalitional context -- some orgs collaborate informally and ad hoc with others
* federative context -- orgs have indiv goals but also work with others on inclusive goals
* unitary context -- decision making at top of hierarchy of organizations

Meyer and Scott (1983) define two types of organizational environments -- technical and institutional. More discussion of environments is found in Scott Chapter 6.