Overview

When Organizations and Environments was originally issued in 1979, it increased interest in evolutionary explanations of organizational change. Since then, scholars and practitioners have widely cited the book for its innovative answer to this question: Under what conditions do organizations change? Aldrich achieves theoretical integration across 13 chapters by using an evolutionary model that captures the essential features of relations between organizations and their environments. This model explains organizational change by focusing on the processes of variation, selection, retention, and struggle. The ""environment,"" as conceived by Aldrich, does not refer simply to elements ""out there""-beyond a set of focal organizations-but rather to concentrations of resources, power, political domination, and most concretely, other organizations. Scholars using Aldrich's model have examined the societal context within which founders create organizations and whether those organizations survive or fail, rise to prominence, or sink into obscurity. A preface to the reprinted edition frames the utility of this classic for tomorrow's researchers and businesspeople.

Full Product Details

9780804758291

Table of Contents

Reviews

With this book Howard Aldrich changed how we think about change in organizations and environments. It is the seminal explanation of evolutionary processes of organizational change. With the growing interest in evolutionary models of change, this classic becomes increasingly relevant and influential. --Andrew H. Van de Ven, University of Minnesota

Organizational scholars of my generation cut their doctoral teeth on Organizations and Environments, My copy sat proudly on my bookshelf between Weick's Social Psychology of Organizing and Pfeffer and Salancik's The External Control of Organizations, But my delight in seeing it reprinted extends well beyond nostalgia. Aldrich's flair for putting organizations in their contexts provides a model of theorizing that is as relevant today as it was when the book was first published. Now future generations are assured the benefit of its many insights. --Mary Jo Hatch, University of Virginia

Author Information

Howard E. Aldrich is Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Management in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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