Adapting to environmental jolts.

This paper examines organizational adaptations to an environmental jolt--a sudden and unprecedented event (in this case, a doctors' strike)-- that created a natural experiment within a group of hospitals. Although adaptations were diverse and appeared anomalous, they are elucidated by considering the hospitals' antecedent strategies, structures, ideologies, and stockpiles of slack resources. Assessments of the primacy of the antecedents suggest that ideological and strategic variables are better predictors of adaptations to jolts than are structural variables or measures of organizational slack. Although abrupt changes in environments are commonly thought to jeopardize organizations, environmental jolts are found to be ambiguous events that offer propitious opportunities for organizational learning, administrative drama, and introducing unrelated changes.

[1]  William H. Starbuck,et al.  CONGEALING OIL: INVENTING IDEOLOGIES TO JUSTIFY ACTING IDEOLOGIES OUT , 1982 .

[2]  Barry M. Staw,et al.  Threat-rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis. , 1981 .

[3]  J. Pfeffer.  Management as symbolic action: the creation and maintenance of organizational paradigms , 1981 .

[4]  L. Bourgeois.  On the Measurement of Organizational Slack , 1981 .

[5]  R. Billings.  A Model of Crisis Perception: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. , 1980 .

[6]  C. C. Snow,et al.  Strategy, Distinctive Competence, and Organizational Performance. , 1980 .

[7]  P. R. Sanday.  The Ethnographic Paradigm(s). , 1979 .

[8]  Gerald R. Salancik,et al.  Field Stimulations for Organizational Behavior Research. , 1979 .

[9]  M. Miles.  Qualitative Data as an Attractive Nuisance: The Problem of Analysis , 1979 .

[10]  A. Pettigrew.  On Studying Organizational Cultures , 1979 .

[11]  B. Hedberg,et al.  Responding to Crises , 1978 .

[12]  John W. Meyer,et al.  Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony , 1977, American Journal of Sociology.

[13]  M. Hannan,et al.  The Population Ecology of Organizations , 1977, American Journal of Sociology.

[14]  N. Denzin.  The research act: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods , 1977 .

[15]  Chris Argyris,et al.  Leadership, learning, and changing the status quo , 1976 .

[16]  D. Maddox.  Doctors' slowdown: lower the premiums and call me in the morning. , 1976, Modern healthcare. [Short-term care ed.].

[17]  Johan P. Olsen,et al.  Ambiguity and choice in organizations , 1976 .

[18]  B. Clark,et al.  The Organizational Saga in Higher Education. , 1972 .

[19]  J. Child.  Organizational Structure, Environment and Performance: The Role of Strategic Choice , 1972 .

[20]  R. Normann,et al.  Organizational Innovativeness: Product Variation and Reorientation , 1971 .

[21]  Donald T. Campbell,et al.  Reforms as Experiments , 1969 .

[22]  K. Weick.  The social psychology of organizing , 1969 .

[23]  James D. Thompson.  Organizations in Action , 1967 .

[24]  M. Shubik,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. , 1964 .