Could somebody help me with these three questions? All in APA format and question one is a research paper and must have an outline. The outline must have a clear topic sentence, thesis, and outline of...

Literature Analysis

Literature Analysis
Synergy Between Organization and Environment
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15-Mar-13
Synergy between Organization and Environment 2
Research Outline
Organizations are simply an element or part of a larger system, the environment.
Organizations exist in societies and are created by societies. Hence, many factors impinge upon
the effectiveness of an organization within the environment. Every organization must respond to
the needs of its customers or clients, to legal and political constraints, and to economic and
technological changes and developments. Every organization must respond to such
environmental changes in order to ensure its survival over the passage of time.
In simplest terms, an organization takes resources (inputs) from the larger system
(environment), processes these resources and returns them in changed form (outputs). The
organizational effectiveness depends on the entire input-process-output cycle and it reflects the
interrelationship between the organization and its outside environment.
Leaders and managers constantly need to form coalitions and review information, ideas,
reports, gossips and so forth from the external environment. Such environmental "sound bites"
provide managers with a picture of what organizations are facing in terms of competition, new
products, regulations, and a host of environmental forces. The ultimate challenge faced by
managers is how they respond to the environmental stimuli.
Introduction
It has long been recognized that organizations do not operate in a vacuum. Organizations
have an impact on the environment in which they exist; conversely, the environmental condition
in which an organization operates affects the structure and decision-making that is made by the
Synergy between Organization and Environment 3
organization. As a result of this dynamic relationship, it is not surprising that the different
theories regarding organizations and change take different viewpoints through the years. This
paper will review different models and theories regarding the interplay between organizations
and the environment spamming from the 1950s to the 20
th
century. This exercise in itself will
illustrate the effect of the environment on the organization of academic that study organizations
and the environment by use of the era model. This model posits that organization change reflects
the changes in the environment. These changes occur in stages: there is the prevailing order,
which is preceded by periods of turbulent change, followed by the development of a new order
(Lentz & Engeltown, 1986).
Literature Analysis
The 1950s: Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety
People common thing of the 1950’s of a time when life was a bit simpler, yet it was also
a time when people had more choice about where they lived, the types of jobs they had, and the
choices they had had consumers. While organizations had to deal with more complexity than
they had earlier in the 20
th
century, the information they needed to make decisions about the
environment was readily accessible and manageable. Given they was change in the environment,
but it did not occur at the rapid pace seen during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety reflects the environment of the post-World War II in
the United States. The law states that the complexity of an organization must equal that of the
environment in which it exists. As such, organization must add multiples layers of hierarchy and
areas of specialization as a society becomes more complex (Ashby, 1958). The problems with
Synergy between Organization and Environment 4
this law is that systems and process are then forced to be standardized within the organization,
which allows little room for the flexibility to adapt during periods of rapid change in the
environment. Consequently, the organization eventually implodes due to weight of its
organizational structure and cumbersome systems and processes.
For example, if one was to think of the United States auto industry, during the 1940’s and
1950’s, they engineered and built cars that appealed to the growing middle class. As society
became more diverse and generational differences became more pronounced during the 1960s,
U.S. car manufacturers added more product lines and more divisions. During the 1970s, the oil
embargo that caused rampant fuel shortages and rapid inflation in gas prices lead consumers to
demand cars with better fuel economy than what was offered by the muscle cars and the luxury
vehicles that were the standard offering of the domestic car industry. The US car manufacturers
were too large and the production systems and processes too complex to allow the agility needed
to switch production to the types of cars that the consumers demanded. This opened the door for
Japanese carmakersto enter and dominate the market. Eventually, the lethargic pace of change in
the US car industry led to its near collapse in the 2008-2009 and led to a government takeover
and restructuring.
The 1970s: Critiquing Theories of the Dynamics between Organizations and the
Environment
During the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, challenging traditional institutional thought,
theory, and organization become the norm. This change in American culture affected
government, corporations, charities, non-profits, the family, and academia. This shift in the
environment is evident in Aldrich and Pfeffer’s critique of theories of...