Environment as an Influence on Managerial Autonomy

Propositions about the influence of environmental constraints on organizational behavior are rare, but they are essential in administrative science. Behavior depends on the patterns of inputs from the environment to an organization and on the interpretation of these inputs as tasks by members of the organization. A study of two Norwegian firms shows how the autonomy of managerial personnel-their decisions for and against independent action-may be influenced by the structure of the environment, by the accessibility of information about the environment, and by managerial perceptions of the meaning of environmental information.1 William R. Dill is on the faculty of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Institute of Technology.