W. Graham Astley

Central perspectives and debates in organization theory.

We appreciate the helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper from Charles Fombrun, John Bryson, William Gomberg, and anonymousASQ reviewers. We also appreciate the support of the Center forthe Study of Organizational Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for release time to prepare this paper. The diverse schools of organizational thought are classified according to micro and macro levels of organizational analysis and deterministic versus voluntaristic assumptions of human nature to yield four basic perspectives: systemstructural, strategic choice, natural selection, and collective-action views of organizations. These four views represent qualitatively different concepts of organizational structure, behavior, change, and managerial roles. Six theoretical debates are then identified by systematically juxtaposing the four views against each other, and a partial reconciliation is achieved by bringing opposing viewpoints into dialectical relief. The six debates, which tend to be addressed singly and in isolation from each other in the literature, arethen integrated ata metatheoretical level. The framework presented thus attempts to overcome the problems associated with excessive theoretical compartmentalization by focusing on the interplay between divergent theoretical perspectives, but it also attempts to preserve the authenticity of distinctive viewpoints, thereby retaining the advantages associated with theoretical pluralism.*

Administrative Science as Socially Constructed Truth

(?) 1985 by Cornell University. 0001 -8392/85/3004-0497/

The Two Ecologies: Population and Community Perspectives on Organizational Evolution.

1 .00. This paper argues that the body of knowledge that constitutes administrative science is a socially constructed product. Because empirical observations are inevitably mediated by theoretical preconceptions, our knowledge of organizations is fundamentally shaped by the subjective world views through which we perceive data. Truth is defined in terms of the theoretical constructs and conceptual vocabulary that guide research and mediate access to organizational phenomena. The chief product of research is, consequently, theoretical language, rather than objective data. The knowledge of administrative science is not built from objective truths but is, instead, an artifact-the product of social definition. Institutional mechanisms reinforce these social definitions of truth by investing them with the stamp of scientific authenticity.

Book Reviews : Howard Aldrich: Organizations and Environments 1978, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall:

W. Graham Astley This paper distinguishes between two ecological perspectives on organizational evolution: population ecology and community ecology. The perspectives adopt different levels of analysis and produce contrasting views of the characteristic mode and tempo of organizational evolution. Population ecology limits investigation to evolutionary change unfolding within established populations, emphasizing factors that homogenize organizational forms and maintain population stability. Population ecology thus fails to explain how populations originate in the first place or how evolutionary change occurs through the proliferation of heterogeneous organizational types. Community ecology overcomes these limitations: it focuses on the rise and fall of populations as basic units of evolutionary change, simultaneously explaining forces that produce homogeneity and stability within populations and heterogeneity between them.*

Collective Strategy: Social Ecology of Organizational Environments.

we analyse total ’populations’ of organizations in their environments, since organizational existence is regarded as an attribute of the population, not of its constituents. This focus allows us to largely disregard internal organizational and managerial factors because knowledge of how finely tuned individual organizations are within the confines of their own niches can tell us little about the nature and distribution of societal resources, which generate niches in the first place, induce the creation of ’waves’ of new types of organization, transform the nature of whole species of organizations, or force the extinction of whole industries. The value of the book’s perspective is perhaps best seen in an exciting chapter on interorganizational networks: ’multiorganization fields of