Organizational Adaptation: Strategic Choice and Environmental Determinism

Abstract

Lawrence G. Hrebiniak and William F. Joyce The prevailing assumption in recent literature is that strategic choice and environmental determinism represent mutually exclusive, competing explanations of organizational adaptation. The present paper, in contrast, argues that choice and determinism are independent variables that can be positioned on two separate continua to develop a typology of organizational adaptation. The interactions of these variables result in four main types: (1) natural selection, with minimum choice and adaptation or selection out, (2) differentiation, with high choice and high environmental determinism and adaptation within constraints, (3) strategic choice, with maximum choice and adaptation by design, and (4) undifferentiated choice, with incremental choice and adaptation by chance. These types influence the number and forms of strategic options of organizations, the decisional emphasis on means or ends, political behavior and conflict, and the search activities of the organization in its environment.