The Structuring of Organizational Structures

Author(s): Stewart Ranson, Bob Hinings and Royston Greenwood

Source: Administrative Science Quarterly , Mar., 1980, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 1-
17
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of
Management, Cornell University

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The Structuring of Or- The study of organizations is rife with competing vocabu-
ganizational Structures laries and perspectives. Taking a specific and traditional
focus - organizational structure - the authors argue for
a more unified theoretical and methodological analysis
Stewart Ranson, Bob that is adequate at the levels of meaning and causality.
Hinings, and Royston They break with the typical conception of structures as a
Greenwood formal framework counterposed to the interactive pat-
terns of organizational members. Drawing upon Bourdieu
and Giddens, they stress the way structures are continu-
ally produced and recreated by members so that the
structures embody and become constitutive of their-pro-
vinces of meaning. Such an analysis must incorporate
not only relations of meaning and power but also the
mediation of contingent size, technology, and environ-
ment. The creativity of members in the face of contextual
constraint can only be assessed by setting the analysis in
a temporal, historical dimension.

The gradual specialization of tasks is a characteristic of intel-

lectual labor as much as any other, and the study of organi-
zations has been no different in pursuing the common path
of internal differentiation. Often, however, this path can lead
to a process of perpetual fission that fragments the collec-
tive enterprise of adequate understanding, each area of
study mustering its own devotees, who then set about for-
mulating a distinctive theoretical vocabulary and an appropri-
ate methodology. Any satisfactory analysis of organizational
complexity will require an attempt to articulate the latent
linkages that exist between such paradigms or problematics.
This article examines the problem of explaining how organi-
zational structures change over time. In that sense its focus
is both specific and traditional. Yet in identifying what a
structure is and in developing a theoretical model that will
account adequately for variations in organizational structure,
the article argues that description and analysis must work
out from, and beyond, both the "structural" perspective of
specifying abstract dimensions and contextual constraints,
and the "interactionist" perspective of symbolic mediation
and negotiated processes. These procedures and perspec-
tives which, until now, have tended to be regarded as in-
compatible, must be incorporated in a more unified method-
ological and theoretical framework.

The article begins by conceptualizing what an organizational

structure is; formulates a unified theoretical framework; and
develops analytical propositions about structural change. It
concludes that the production and recreation of structural
forms through time should be conceived as the outcome of
a complex interaction of interpersonal cognitive processes,
power dependencies, and contextual constraints.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
The concept of structure is usually understood to imply a
configuration of activities that is characteristically enduring
and persistent; the dominant feature of organizational struc-
ture is its patterned regularity. Yet descriptions of structure
? 1980 by Cornell University. have typically focused on very different aspects of such
0001-8392/80/2501-0001$00.75 patterned regularity. Some have sought to describe structure

March 1980, volume 25 1 /Administrative Science Quarterly

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 as a formal configuration of roles and procedures, the pre-
scribed framework of the organization. Others have de-
scribed structure as the patterned regularities and processes
of interaction. This article preserves that analytical distinc-
tion, but argues that the continual counterposing of
framework and interaction is unhelpful because of its im-
plicit and inaccurate opposition of "constraint" to "agency."
The recent works of Bourdieu (1971, 1977, 1979) and Gid-
dens (1976, 1977) suggest a more fruitful perspective,
focusing upon the interpenetration of framework and in-
teraction as expressing a relationship that is often mutually
constituting and constitutive.

The notion of organizational framework focuses on the dif-

ferentiation of positions, formulation of rules and proce-
dures, and prescriptions of authority. Interest in these for-
mal dimensions of structure has been heavily influenced by
Weber's (1946) work on bureaucracy, which depicted pre-
cise and impersonal structures of tasks, rules, and authority
relations as central to the rationalizing of the modern world.
The extension and replication of Weber's work on structure
has been the preoccupation of Hall (1963), Hage and Aiken
(1967), Pugh et al. (1968, 1969), Blau and Schoenherr
(1971), Meyer (1972), and Child (1972, 1977), among others.
While such research has observed considerable variation in
the extent to which structural dimensions correlate, the ex-
plicit purpose of such formally circumscribed frameworks
remains, as Weber expressed it, to achieve more calculable
and predictable control of organizational performance. The
properties of structural frameworks have important conse-
quences for the organization's effectiveness: the extent of
functional differentiation, the degree of integration, connec-
tedness, and "coupling," the centralization and concentration
of authority, the formalization of rules and procedures, etc.
will influence the effectiveness of control (cf. Ouchi, 1977),
adaptability, and member motivation (cf. Hage, 1965; Aiken
and Hage, 1966, 1971).

Some have argued, however, that prescribed frameworks

stand in a rather superficial relationship to the day-to-day
work of an organization, that only by examining the pat-
terned regularities of interaction, the "informal structure" or
the "substructure" of what people actually do, can we arrive
at a more fundamental understanding of organizational struc-
ture. Much research has indicated the way in which emer-
gent patterns of interaction are not prescribed by structural
frameworks. The early critique of Weberian bureaucracy by
Merton (1940), Selznick (1943, 1949), Gouldner (1954, 1955),
Blau (1955), and Crozier (1964) lucidly demonstrated the
possibility of organizational members displacing goals, sub-
verting roles, and amplifying rules. The works of Bittner
(1965), Garfinkel (1967), Douglas (1971), and Zimmerman
(1971) suggest that the "rational" panoply of roles, rules,
and procedures which make up organizational design is not
pregiven in the organization but is the skilled, practical, and
retrospective accomplishment of members. Weick (1976)
and March and Olsen (1976) suggested that positions and
activities are "loosely coupled," while the interrelationship
of problems, solutions, participants, and issues often seems
to be quite arbitrary and to make little structural sense. Yet,

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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

stability is acknowledged. A conceptualization of structure

should accommodate such emergent and realized patterns
of interaction within organizations, describing how actors ac-
tually transact their work, formulate policy, and allocate re-
sou rces.

Blau (1974: 14) argued that the study of structural frame-

works on the one hand and of interactive patterns or infor-
mal structures or substructures on the other, although com-
plementary, are quite incompatible: any "sociological inquiry
... seeking to encompass both is unlikely to produce a
systematic empirical or theoretical inquiry of either." This
article denies those claims and seeks to continue the work
of Rice and Mitchell (1973), Bacharach and Aiken (1976),
and especially Benson (1977) in making distinctions between
the two kinds of structure while at the same time striving to
analyze their interdependence. The unhelpful contrasting of
framework and interaction can be overcome by conceiving
of structure as a complex medium of control which is con-
tinually produced and recreated in interaction and yet shapes
that interaction: structures are constituted and constitutive.

This suggests a way of connecting framework and interac-

tion as mutually embodying common categories, a way of
seeing structures as a vehicle constructed to reflect and
facilitate meanings. Structural frameworks systematically
embody normative expectations and prescriptions for com-
petent operation and satisfactory performance. The
framework of rules, roles, and authority relations seeks to
facilitate prescribed purposes by differentially enabling cer-
tain kinds of conduct, conferring support for forms of com-
mitment, as well as constraining and obligating those who
reject the claims entailed by the framework. The framework,
rather than being removed from organizational working, is
intrinsically involved in shaping the actual operation of rules
and the real working of authority, sustaining the distribution
and conception of the division of labor. Having generated an
appropriate structure, the aim of organizational decision
makers is for the framework to become forming, for it to
become the medium of its own constitution. Organizational
structure, therefore, describes both the prescribed
frameworks and realized configurations of interaction, and
the degrees to which they are mutually constituted and
constituting.

A THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURING

The task of explaining how organizational structures take
shape and change over time requires a more unified theoret-
ical framework than has typically been formulated. Such a
theory presupposes that we identify the integrated modes
of analysis which might underpin an adequate explanation,
and then conceptualize the bases and conditions of the con-
stitutive structuring of organizational structures, illuminating
the social mechanisms that determine the process of struc-
turing and shape the ensuing structural forms.
A cogent theory of organizational structuring should be ade-
quate at the analytical levels of meaning and of causality (cf.
Weber, 1949). Adequacy at the level of meaning presup-
poses certain phenomenological procedures which provide
an interpretive account of the meanings that actors create to

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 make sense of their worlds (cf. Silverman, 1968, 1970). This
level of analysis sets out to make explicit the way reality is
experienced from the point of view of the actor and, by
dissolving "factual reality" as the skilled accomplishment of
members, sustains the agency behind much organizational
working: actors reflexively monitor their experience and thus
remake and recreate that experience. Yet if an adequate
explanation is to be developed we must break with this level
of experience to begin a causal analysis that will involve a
more detached abstraction and systematization of events in
order to reveal underlying regularities and connections of
which organizational actors may be unaware. This level of
analysis begins the process of illuminating much of the
opacity of experience the way events are neither wholly
intended nor comprehended. The "micro" studies of Gould-
ner or Blau, Strauss or Garfinkel, are perhaps methodologi-
cally bound to a conclusion which gives explanatory weight
to the discretionary strategies and interactions of organiza-
tional members. The extent to which we can assert that
these influences are decisive requires us first to undertake a
comparative analysis of the contextual constraints upon or-
ganizational decision makers, to examine the regularities of
size, technology, and the environment. If, however, we are
to establish clearly the degree to which actors in fact con-
struct their worlds, if we are to provide a causal explanation
that goes beyond statistical uniformities, we must conserve
but transcend both the previous levels of analysis, and lock
our explanation into a temporal mode which focuses on the
historical development of structures. The derived proposi-
tions at this level are neither day-to-day negotiated practices
nor reified uniformities, but the discovery through time of
underlying structures of social relationships whose constitu-
tive political processes account for the structural arrange-
ments that we wish to explain.

Together, these modes of analysis allow a comprehensive

theoretical conceptualizing of the bases of structural gen-
eration. Three abstract and interdependent conceptual
categories are integral to a theoretical model that seeks to
articulate the way in which the process of structuring itself
defines and mediates organizational structures: (1) Organiza-
tional members create provinces of meaning which incorpo-
rate interpretive schemes, intermittently articulated as values
and interests, that form the basis of their orientation and
strategic purposes within organizations. (2) Since interpretive
schemes can be the basis of cleavage as much as of con-
sensus, it is often appropriate to consider an organization as
composed of alternative interpretive schemes, value prefer-
ences, and sectional interests, the resolution of which is
determined by dependencies of power and domination. (3)
Such constitutive structuring by organizational members has,
in turn, always to accommodate contextual constraints
inherent in characteristics of the organization and the envi-
ronment, with organizational members differentially respond-
ing to and enacting their contextual conditions according to
the opportunities provided by infrastructure and time.

Provinces of Meaning

Structuring is a process of generating and recreating mean-

ings, one in which organizational members wish to secure
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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

their "provinces of meaning" (Schutz, 1967) within the very

structure and working of the organization. Such provinces,
we argue, embrace two intersubjective forms: on the one
hand, interpretive schemes that enable us to constitute and
understand our organizational worlds as meaningful; on the
other hand, the intermittent articulating of elements of in-
terpretive schemes as purposive values and interests that lie
behind the strategic implementing or warranting of structural
frameworks.

Interpretive schemes, to follow Schutz (1972), are intrinsi-

cally related to the creation of provinces of meaning. They
refer to the indispensible cognitive schema that map our
experience of the world, identifying its constituents and rel-
evances and how we are to know and understand them.
Interpretive schemes - recalling Gouldner's (1971) "domain
assumptions," Cicourel's (1973) "cognitive organization,"
Goffman's (1974) "frames" - reveal deep-seated bases of
orientation which operate in every encounter in organizations
as shared assumptions about the way to approach and pro-
ceed in the situation. Such frames typically remain taken for
granted and incorporate both evaluative sentiments about
the relative worth of things, as well as implicit "stocks of
knowledge" and systems of belief "which serve as the ref-
erence schema for my explication of the world" (Schutz and
Luckmann, 1973: 7). It is this shared background of mutual
understandings that constitutes, as Brown (1 978: 374) ar-
gued, "the 'agreement' between members that enables the
orderly production" of roles and rules.

In this way interpretive schemes may help us to understand

the structuring of interactive patterns (interaction structure)
within organizations. As intersubjective creations, interpretive
schema enable us to generate some continuity of under-
standing in changing interactive circumstances: "they enable
the actor to generate appropriate (usually innovative) re-
sponses in changing situated settings - to sustain a sense
of social structure over the course of changing social set-
tings . . ." (Cicourel, 1973: 27). The deep structure of
schema which are taken for granted by members enables
them to recognize, interpret, and negotiate even strange and
unanticipated situations, and thus continuously to create and
reenact the sense and meaning of structural forms during
the course of interaction. Prescribed roles, rules, and author-
ity relations are drawn upon retrospectively to locate and
validate the emergent action within the wider context of
meaning.

Such an analysis may allow us to incorporate the ambiguous

organizational worlds of Weick (1976) and March and Olsen
(1976), in which the framework and interactive patterns
seem to make little structural sense: structural positions,
means and ends, intentions and actions seem "loosely
coupled" while the interrelationship of problems, solutions,
participants, and issues seems quite arbitrary. Yet there are
patterns and there is stability which may lie, they acknowl-
edged, in "consensual anticipations, retrospections, and un-
derstandings" (Weick, 1976: 14), or in the organizationally
developed myths, fictions, and legends which assign mean-
ing, relevance, and priority (March and Olsen, 1976) to or-
ganizational experience. Structural frameworks do not pre-

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 scribe exhaustively for every organizational transaction:
interpretive frameworks bestow taken-for-granted provinces
of meaning upon the day-to-day structuring of interaction
and thus mediate the routine reenactment of organizational
life.
Interpretive schemes typically are taken for granted by or-
ganizational members: the assumptive frames which shape
their agency usually remain unarticulated in the routine of
action. Yet this does not preclude the possibility in principle
that members are able to unravel, sometimes at length, the
reasons that lie behind their immediate purposes and inten-
tions. Organizational actors are capable intermittently of mak-
ing explicit the bases of their conduct, and an important part
of this articulating of interpretive frames includes the ex-
pression of actors' values and interests.
Values can be said to represent standards of desired ends or
preferences, which articulate more discrete elements of the
interpretive scheme. Values stand closer to the surface of
the cognitive frame which lies behind specific purposes and
intentions. We may illustrate the interrelationship of interpre-
tive schemes, values, and purposes as follows: the broad
"mantle of professionalism" (Burns, 1977: 137) for example,
can be conceived as a general interpretive scheme constitut-
ing and recreating the routine relationships of professionals
to their clients, to colleagues, and to other professional dis-
ciplines within the same organization. In such day-to-day in-
teractive relations, the shared background of mutual as-
sumptions that make the relationships meaningful usually
remain taken for granted. Discrete elements of the profes-
sional mantle are, however, frequently articulated as value
preferences; thus the occupational value of "autonomy," or
the supporting moral values of "public service," "vocation,"
"codes of ethics," are drawn upon intermittently to legiti-
mate such specific purposes as the wish to implement a
new rule, to obtain a specialist appointment, or to secure a
seat at the table of decision making.
In this way we can illuminate the relationship between in-
terpretive schemes and structural frameworks. The more
explicit and reflective process of formulating structural scaf-
folds, of formally implementing structures of roles, rules,
and authority relations, typically draws upon the more im-
mediately accessible values of the frame to underpin and
legitimate its task. Thompson (1973) has argued that organi-
zational members tend to develop and elaborate formal
structural frameworks in ways that are "symbolically appro-
priate" to their complex values. The episcopal structure of
the Roman Catholic church, or the corporate structure of a
local authority, or the radical faculty structure of a secondary
school, have much to do with the values, underpinned by
interpretive frames, of organizational members.

Specific aspects of interpretive schemes are articulated by

members as purposive values which are drawn upon to vali-
date the elaboration of structural frameworks. Another cru-
cial element of the reflective work of members is contained
in the articulating of members' "interests." Frames of mean-
ing embody a conception of the organization and therefore a
view of the appropriate allocation of scarce resources. The
notion of interests is an "incorrigibly evaluative" one (Lu kes,

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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

1974), in that it refers both to the distribution of scarce

resources and to the ineluctable orientation and motivation
of members to maintain and enhance their sectional claims.
Within the organizational literature the notion of interests
has appeared only sporadically. Selznick (1949) and more re-
cently Pettigrew (1973), Pfeffer and Salancik (1974, 1977),
Laumann and Pappi (1976), and Benson (1977) have pointed
to the way the structure of an organization represents a
differentiation of functional tasks from which, crucially,
there flows a distribution of scarce resources. The process
of functional specialization distinguishes one set of organiza-
tional incumbents from another by differentially affording
them scarce wealth, status, and authority; built into the or-
ganization is a structure of advantage and disadvantage
(Benson, 1977).
This article suggests that the subjective and motivated na-
ture of "interested" action derives from a perceived defi-
ciency in, or a satisfacion with, a particular distribution of
wealth, status, and authority, and a motivation to maintain or
enhance one's resource position. Like values, interested ac-
tion is typically oriented toward the framework of an orga-
nization, with members striving to secure their sectional
claims within its very structure, which then operates to
mediate and reconstitute those interests.

Dependencies of Power

Organizational structures are shaped and constituted by

members' provinces of meaning, by their deep-seated in-
terpretive schemes, and by the surface articulation of values
and interests. More accurately, however, structuring is typi-
cally the privilege of some organizational actors. The mean-
ings that shape organizational structuring are as often the
source of cleavage as of consensus, bringing members into
conflict. An organization is thus better conceived as being
composed of a number of groups divided by alternative con-
ceptions, value preferences, and sectional interests. The ana-
lytical focus then becomes the relations of power which
enable some organizational members to constitute and re-
create organizational structures according to their provinces of
meaning: an organization "is a man-made instrument and it
will be made by men in proportion to their power in a given
situation" (Gouldner, 1954: 27).

The notion that the organization is an instrument of power

and intrinsically embodies relations of inequality, depen-
dence, and compliance has been the focus of a number of
recent studies in organizational analysis. Thus, Perrow (1972:
14) argued that organizations are best viewed as instruments
of power:
Organizations must be seen as tools.... A tool is something you
can get something done with. It is a resource if you control it. It
gives you power others do not have. Organizations are multipur-
pose tools for shaping the world as one wishes it to be shaped.
They provide the means for imposing one's definition of the proper
affairs of men upon other men.

Here, power is the capacity to determine "outcomes" within

and for an organization, a capacity grounded in a differential
access to material and structural resources. These bases of
power were conceived by H ickson et al . ( 1971 ), H inings et

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 al. (1974), and Martin (1977) as strategic contingencies un-
equally controlled by organizational subunits: those units that
are "central" to an organization's workflow, monopolize
scarce skills, and "cope" with key sources of organizational
uncertainty, acquire power, and create dependencies. The
works of Pfeffer and Salancik (1974), Salancik and Pfeffer
(1974), Benson (1975), and Aldrich (1976) tended to regard
the control of scarce resources as the most important factor
in the creation of power dependencies. Burns (1961; 1966),
Burns and Stalker (1961), and Pettigrew (1973), however,
argued that perhaps the crucial basis of power is the skill
which actors bring to bear in using those resources and in
the mobilizing of support for their claims.

Individuals and groups within organizations are powerful,

therefore, because they control and can manipulate scarce
resources. The distribution of these resources affords a ca-
pacity not only to determine "outcomes" but to recreate the
rules, positions, and budgetary allocations which ensure the
reproduction of those bases (cf. Greenwood, Hinings, and
Ranson, 1977). Thus the structural framework is not some
abstract chart but one of the crucial instruments by which
groups perpetuate their power and control in organizations:
groups struggle to constitute structures in order that they
may become constituting. The operation of the power sys-
tem is closely related here to strategic decision making
(Child, 1972) and thus to the clashes of interest and value
which are intrinsic to purposive activity; power is conceived
processually: issues are raised, information is called upon,
and decisions are made about roles, rules, and authority rela-
tions.

Some recent discussions of power (cf. Bachrach and Baratz,

1963, 1970; Crenson, 1971) have sought to amend the
stress upon "decision making," arguing that too little ac-
count is taken of the ability of power holders to suppress or
thwart challenges to their values and interests by confining
the scope of decision making to relatively "safe" issues.
Even here, however, the focus was very much upon "is-
sues" about which "decisions" have to be made, albeit
"non-decisions." Power, in this view, stands close to action,
using the bases of power to ensure compliance. Yet power
is most effective and insidious in its consequences when
issues do not arise at all, when actors remain unaware of
their sectional claims; that is, power is most effective when
it is unnecessary, when, as Lukes (1974, 1977) and Clegg
(1975, 1977) argued power holders have constituted and
institutionalized their provinces of meaning in the very
structuring of organizational interactions so that assumptions,
interpretations, and relevances become the generalized in-
terpretive frame, the cognitive map, of organizational mem-
bers. As Brown (1 978: 376) has recently suggested,
"Making decisions" is not the most important exercise of organiza-
tional power. Instead, this power is most strategically deployed in
the design and imposition of paradigmatic frameworks within
which the very meaning of such actions as "making decisions" is
defined.

The interpenetration of power and provinces of meaning is

of the greatest consequence for organizational structuring,
embedded not merely in the structural scaffolding of an or-

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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

ganization but bred into the routine constituting and recreat-

ing of interactive relations. This interdependence of power
and meaning is perhaps better conceptualized as an "order
of domination" (cf. Weber, 1949).
Contextual Constraints

While the analytical categories of meaning and power are

central to any adequate understanding of organizational
structure and operation, the danger of such a conceptual
perspective is to overestimate the social construction of or-
ganizational reality: "a revisioning of our symbolic structures
. . . is a revisioning of the world" (Brown, 1978: 378). If the
actor imposing his provinces of meaning upon structures is
an integral part of any adequate conceptual framework, it is
equally clear that he does not exist in a vacuum. We also
need to conceptualize the notion of actors and groups being
always located in, and limited by, some environmental and
organizational constraints which provide the milieu of prob-
lems and obstacles within which social life is carried on.
(Indeed, Luckmann, 1975, recently argued that the modern
individual is perhaps more than in any previous historical
period entrapped by his institutional and organizational sys-
tems in that they are less open to social reconstruction.)
Individuals and groups exercise their choices in the process
of coping with and trying to resolve the problems imposed
by such obstacles to their "free" will. As Pfeffer and Salan-
cik (1978: 1) firmly argued "organizations are inescapably
bound up with the conditions of their environment" and that
a complete understanding of organizations requires us to
understand the context and "ecology of the organization."

Much comparative research in organizational analysis has in

fact examined the contextual determinants of structural vari-
ability in organizations. This has become known as the "ar-
gument from contingencies" (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967)
which suggests that the relationship of structural charac-
teristics to be found in any organization - the particular
constellation of rules, differentiated labor and hierarchy, for
example - arises because of the pressure of contingent or
situational circumstances. Contingency theory,
regards the design of an effective organization as necessarily hav-
ing to be adapted to cope with the "contingencies" which derive
from the circumstances of environment, technology, scale, re-
sources and other factors (Child, 1973a: 237).

Organizations are seen as resting on functional imperatives,

and the extent to which organizational structures accommo-
date contextual constraints determines the variability of or-
ganizational outcomes.

We conceptualize "constraint," therefore, as those situa-

tional circumstances to which some form of organizational
reaction is necessary. For conceptual clarity, two types of
constraint can be distinguished, organizational characteristics
and environmental characteristics. Organizational characteris-
tics are constraints that are features of the organization it-
self. Two of these have been consistently dealt with by
organizational analysts to examine their influence upon struc-
tural frameworks: scale of operation (size- cf. Pugh et al.,
1969; Blau and Schoenherr, 1971; Child, 1973b; Kimberly,
1976) and the mode of technical production (technology-

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 cf. Woodward, 1965; Perrow, 1967a; Hickson, Pugh, and
Pheysey, 1969; Mohr, 1971; Blau et al., 1976). A third or-
ganizational characteristic is organizational resources. While
resources are supplied by the environment, at any given
time the organization has a particular distribution of man-
power, materials, wealth, information, and skills, whose
constitution by the organizational power holders is designed
to facilitate their values and interests. Yet these resources
must be conceptualized also as a constraint independent of
those organizational actors. Only a few organizational
sociologists (cf. Pondy, 1970; Moch, 1976) have given suffi-
cient attention to the ways in which the organizational re-
source pattern constrains structural arrangements and opera-
tional developments.
The environment of organizations has received much con-
ceptual treatment (Emery and Trist, 1965; Terreberry, 1968;
Crozier and Thoenig, 1976). Here, we would like to focus
upon two characteristics of the environment which have an
important impact upon the formulation of organizational
structures: the characteristics of the socioeconomic infra-
structure into which an organization is locked and the in-
stitutionalized environment with which an organization must
deal.

All organizations are located within a broader social structure

that will constrain the forms they can develop (cf. Stinch-
combe, 1965; Burns, 1967; Kimberly, 1975). There are
important characteristics of this socioeconomic infrastruc-
ture which will limit organizational discretion: physical
characteristics (the geography of an area, the stock of hous-
ing, public utilities); economic characteristics (markets, level
of employment, types of industry and commerce); and social
characteristics (demographic patterns, class and ethnic pat-
terns). The demands and needs inherent in these charac-
teristics will suggest and condition patterns of structural ar-
rangement, specific functional specialists, particular rules
and procedures. Research has documented that if organiza-
tions wish to perform effectively their structural forms must
remain sensitive not only to these infrastructural elements
(for example, size of market or demographic pattern) but,
equally, to such qualitative characteristics as the complexity,
stability, or uncertainty of changing technologies, popula-
tions, and markets. Apart from confronting demands for its
products and services, the organization faces an environ-
ment upon which it is dependent for finance, manpower,
and materials, that is, for its resources. The infrastructure of
the environment has a certain pattern of resource availability
(wealth) to which the organization has to relate (cf.
Yuchtman and Seashore, 1967; Aldrich, 1972; Benson,
1975). The supply of resources to an organization changes
over time, forcing it to make organizational adaptations such
as merging departments, changing the location of decision
making, introducing new procedures, and so on.

Organizations also live within institutionalized environments

which prescribe and condition their emerging structures and
development (cf. Parsons, 1956; Hirsch, 1975). Here we are
especially interested in the institutionalization of ideas.
Selznick (1949) examined the way an organization is con-
strained to search for "morally sustaining ideas" from its

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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

institutional environment, ideas which lend support to its de-

cisions and structures. Bendix (1956, 1959, 1970) and Child
(1968) have pinpointed the way in which ideas about styles
of management, ways of organizing, treatment of employees
and clients form contextual ideologies which organizational
decision makers must take into account. This Weberian no-
tion that the source of legitimation for an organization's
structural arrangements and processes lies in its institutional
environment has been developed by Meyer and Rowan
(1977: 343); to understand why organizational decision mak-
ers adopt certain policies, procedures, and occupational spe-
cialists (personnel managers, econometricians, etc.), we
must look to their institutional reinforcement: "such ele-
ments of formal structure are manifestations of powerful
institutional rules which function as highly rationalized myths
that are binding upon particular organizations."

The fairly extensive literature on organizational and environ-

mental constraints has, however, too often described their
impact upon structural variability in terms of empirical uni-
formities, without any adequate theoretical basis (cf. Pondy,
1969; Kimberly, 1976). Such a theoretical basis is one that
seeks to conceptualize the interconnections between the
categories of social construction (meanings and power) and
the categories of contextual constraint (organizational and
environmental). The recent work of Pfeffer and Salancik
(1978) was an important attempt: they grapple with the dif-
ficult paradox that organizations are externally controlled but
that those external conditions are (following Weick, 1969)
"enacted." Two theoretical gaps persist in their arguments,
however. First, they assert that organizations are dependent
upon external resources, at the same time that they assert
that enactment is a perceptual process of attending to,
selecting, and screening "information." But the influence of
contextual constraints upon organizational structuring can be
quite independent of an individual's perception of them; for
example, the contraction in financial resources to local au-
thorities in England and the impact of demographic decline
upon school rolls are not dependent upon (enacted by) per-
ceptual processes but will nevertheless have significant re-
percussions for structural arrangements - cognitive maps
and interpretive schema will shape the kind of structural
response to such contextual change. Distinctions need to be
made between contextual pressures which have an effect
upon structuring because of the ways they are perceived,
and those that have an impact in spite of perception. The
second theoretical lacuna exists between the notion that
perceptual processes of enactment are shaped by actors'
meanings, and the idea that interorganizational relations
(which facilitate a supply of resources) are characterized typ-
ically by relations of power. In fact, the constitutive structur-
ing of relations between (as within) organizations is a dual
one in which powerful actors wish to create structures of
domination (that is, of power and meaning) that mediate
their own reconstitution: meanings are sedimented in struc-
tures as well as in perceptual processes.

The purpose of this section has been to elaborate the idea

that the social striving of organizational members is always
constrained by the problematic characteristics of organiza-

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 tion and environment. The attempt of power holders to con-
stitute structural arrangements according to their interpretive
schema is typically a process of coping with the obstacles,
the milieu within which organizational life carries on. Such
coping often consists in an organization seeking to articulate
relations and dependencies with other organizations which
ensure its survival and reproduce its structures of power and
meaning. Organizational analysis is becoming increasingly
aware of the French tradition (cf. Crozier, 1964; Touraine,
1964; Karpik, 1972, 1978; Callon and Vignolle, 1977), which
has always been sensitive to the idea that organizations are
imbedded in a wider societal context and that in their struc-
turing they generate and reenact the contextual order of
domination.

ANALYTICAL PROPOSITIONS
We have argued that we can best understand the structur-
ing of organization structures by formulating a conceptual
framework that exhibits the theoretical interrelationships be-
tween provinces of meaning, dependencies of power, and
contextual constraints. But having constructed a theoretical
model which establishes the influences upon structuring,
we need to formulate propositions which highlight more
exactly the underlying mechanisms of change, setting the
model within a temporal framework that permits an analysis
of the relative extent to which organizational members can
construct and change structures in the face of organizational
and environmental constraints.

Five important possibilities of change have been implicit in

the analysis of the structuring of organizational structures.
The first proposes that there will be a change in structuring
if organizational members revise the provinces of meaning,
the interpretive schemes, which underpin their constitutive
structuring of organizations (cf. Jarvie, 1972; Brown, 1978).
Thus when priests revise their theology, when teachers
adopt a more radical pedagogical frame of reference, or
when professional assumptions supplant managerial ones,
we may expect structural forms to be altered to ensure their
symbolic appropriateness.

A second proposition asserts that structural change can re-

sult from inconsistencies and contradictions between the
purposive values and interests that lie behind the strategic
implementing and warranting of structural features. The
managers of a large school system, if they wish to achieve
an efficient use of resources, may have to indulge in exten-
sive differentiation of functions, protecting control through
an elaborate network of rules and procedures; yet they will
be equally trying to embody in the structural framework their
educational values, perhaps the gradual erosion of traditional
disciplinary boundaries, the introduction of integrated learn-
ing and the flexible participation of teachers, students, and
parents. Contradictions between such purposive strategies
will create dilemmas and crises for organizational decision
makers that will suggest structural change, either toward
greater consistency or toward a "decoupling" of structural
principles and components.
The constitutive structuring of organizations is, we have ar-
gued, intrinsically a political process in which the provinces
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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

of meaning embodied in and mediated by structures are

those of powerful organizational members. A third proposi-
tion about change inherent in our analysis suggests the pos-
sibility of organizational "revolution." Significant changes in
resource availability and in other key sources of organiza-
tional uncertainty, can undermine the bases of dominant coa-
litions and permit the creation of new power dependencies.
Changes in relations of power and domination may entail
radical revisions in the interpretive schema that sub-
sequently shape the production and recreation of organiza-
tional structures.

Our analysis that the active structuring of organizations al-

ways has to cope with the obstacles imposed by organiza-
tional and environmental constraints implies two further
propositions about mechanisms of change. The fourth prop-
osition argues that a major change in situational exigencies
such as size, technology, and environment will constrain or-
ganizational members to adapt their structural arrangements.
The fifth proposition argues that contradictory imperatives of
situational constraints will entail change in structural ar-
rangements. Such contradictions have received little treat-
ment: a situation, for example, where an organization is
large, and therefore constrained to become more bureau-
cratic, and at the same time is located in a turbulent envi-
ronment, and therefore constrained to become more flexible
and adaptable in its structural arrangements. Greenwood and
Hinings (1976) and Child (1977) have begun the study of
such contradictions in their respective studies of local au-
thority departments and North American airlines. As we
have argued in our model, changes implied by contextual
constraints or contradictions establish only the preconditions
and potentiality for structural change, which is only realized
and explained if we look to the social relations of meaning
and power which accommodate and mediate such con-
straints over time.

Change in the structural arrangements of organizations,

therefore, can emanate from changes in or contradictions
among meanings, power, structure, and context. Yet how
we unravel the determining influences depends much upon
how we locate our analysis temporally. The idea of change
is central to our analysis, yet the temporal dimension of
change is a strangely neglected one:
The most striking feature of the current situation in sociological
theory from our present perspective is the conspicuous absence of
temporal concerns or historical consciousness . .. (Martins, 1974:
249).

The timelessness of change is a contradiction in terms, yet

the conceptions of interactions being rooted in and mediated
by time is generally omitted (cf. Luscher, 1974). Our syn-
chronic analysis of the relative influences upon organiza-
tional structures is incomplete unless afforded a temporal
dimension: that is, the extent to which we evaluate the
creativity of actors, depends upon how we locate them
temporally.
The historian Braudel (1973) has distinguished between
three temporal modes: "tevenements," the events, inci-
dents, and episodes, the contemporaneous pieces of flot-

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 sam which "blind the eyes" and dominate the present;
Iconjunctures," the medium-term movements of population,
trade cycles, transitions in political domination; and "struc-
tures," long-term durations of geographical and cultural pat-
terns. The organizational sociologist, Perrow (1967b: 912) is
among the very few to attempt a similar approach:
When a long range view is taken, the cultural system seems de-
terminate; when a medium range view is taken, the technological
system is determinate; in the short run [the social structure of the
organization] may appear to be the most important.

Thus, we would expect actors and transactional patterns to

be determinate in the uncertain day-to-day experience of
organizations; emergent regularities and constraints of size,
technology, and environment to become apparent in the
medium term; and an order of meaning, value, and belief to
be sedimented in the long-term structuring of organizations
and their contexts. In short, the closer the "horizon," the
more visible the actor but constrained by his context; in the
longer time perspective, actors become less "visible" but
their frames of meaning, the product of their structuring,
more determinate: constituted structures have become con-
stitutive.

CONCLUSION

The point of this article has been to argue for a more unified
methodological and theoretical approach to organizational
analysis in order to explain variations in structural arrange-
ments. It has been preoccupied with what may be termed
"the Weberian problematic" of searching for the relations
between cause and meaning, between what is determinant
and what voluntary in the relation of structure and action.
This article argued that a theoretical framework for the
analysis of organizational structures should be underpinned
by modes of analysis that are adequate at the levels of
meaning and causation, and that seek to understand the
purposes which actors attach to their conduct yet preserve
the necessity of explaining the complex outcome of events
intended and unintended. Such an integration at the meth-
odological level permits the elaboration of a theoretical
model that accommodates the conceptual categories of prov-
inces of meaning, power dependencies, and contextual
constraints, whose interconnection can explain the constitu-
tive structuring of organizational structures over time. This
more unified methodological and theoretical framework al-
lows us to incorporate a number of ostensibly disparate per-
spectives: phenomenological perspectives, which typically
focus at the micro level upon the intersubjective construc-
tion of meanings; traditional, ahistorical organizational
analyses of structural regularities; and broader sociohistorical
perspectives of economy and culture. Each is necessary to
an adequate understanding of organizational construction and
change.

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 The Structuring of Organizational Structures

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