American Anti-Management Theories of Organization: A Critique of Paradigm Proliferation. - book reviews

Administrative Science Quarterly,  Sept, 1997  by Huseyin Leblebici

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In an earlier book (1985), Lex Donaldson, who teaches at the Australian School of Management, had defended structural contingency theory from the attacks by critical, radical, or Marxist organization theories developed on European shores. In this book, published in the Cambridge Studies in Management Series, he takes a new challenge: to defend and protect structural contingency theory from what he calls the anti-management theories of organizations developed on the other side of the Atlantic. He prefaces the book by stating that "much of the academic organizational analysis at present is neither valid nor suitable for management schools" (p. xi). Whether it is the population ecology, the institutional and resource dependency theories, or organizational economics, views about organizations developed in the last twenty years by the scholars in U. S. business schools, he argues, have not only fragmented the field of organizational studies but have portrayed organizations and their managers in a cynical light. Thus, Donaldson is angry. He is angry and dismayed because "the idea that the organization is a rational instrument for goal attainment which is central to structural contingency theory" is no longer considered valid (p. 3). He is also angry that the major reason for the existence of organization theory - to address managerial concerns and to have a useful dialogue with management - has been forgotten. For him, organization theory has lost its quest to be a science and ended up as a tool for getting tenure.

These strong criticisms set the tone of the book. In each chapter, Donaldson takes on each of the major theoretical perspectives developed in the last two decades, dissects their core arguments, and attempts to show why and how these theories have failed to help us understand organizational realities. The first chapter of the book provides an overview of what he calls the "anti-management" paradigms in organization theory. He evaluates each theoretical perspective covered in the rest of the book with respect to its views about organizations - the functionality of organizations for society, the adaptive capacity of organizations, and the importance of managerial role. He starts with the argument that structural contingency has always had positive views on these issues: organizations have a positive, functional role to play in a society; their managers act to further the interests of their organizations; and, as a result of managerial action, organizations can make adaptive changes. New perspectives on organizations, by contrast, he argues, fail to support these positive views. Such a failure not only produces contradictory and irrelevant paradigms but, more importantly, reduces the credibility of the whole enterprise in the eyes of those constituencies who are willing to support the field, especially the managers.

After reviewing the basic tenets of structural contingency theory as a unifying paradigm for organizational adaptation in chapter 2, Donaldson takes on each new perspective in the order of the degree to which it explicitly rejects this unifying theory. He starts with population ecology (chap. 3), then continues with institutional theory (chap. 4), then resource dependency (chap. 5), and completes his critique with organizational economics (chap. 6). All of these chapters provide both a review and a critique of each new theoretical perspective. He covers each perspective's historical origins, its theoretical arguments, and the ongoing debates within it in a well-articulated fashion. And, in each case, he provides a critique based on how divergent these ideas are from the basic tenets of structural contingency theory. He appears to be more interested in the external relevancy of these arguments, especially with respect to structural contingency theory, than in the internal consistency of these arguments themselves. Even though he sees some potentially positive features in these new paradigms, for him structural contingency theory remains a cogent body of theory that is intellectually sound and empirically valid, especially when it is compared with the alternatives available (p. 215).

The last two chapters of the book attempt to provide a unified theory of organizational structure and a specific agenda for future research. Although Donaldson is sometimes inclined to acknowledge the potential contributions of what he calls would-be theories of organizational structure, he is only willing to do so as long as organizational researchers accept the principle that they "may complement structural contingency theory by contributing to the explanation of dimensions of organizations other than internal structure, such as strategy and inter-organizational relations" (p. 213). With respect to future research, Donaldson is not really sure if a joint unified effort is really attainable as long as the U. S. researchers are concerned more with the novelty than the validity of their ideas. Thus, he concludes his book by suggesting a new institutional infrastructure for academic research that can reform the research and publication process.