A Modern-Day Classic
“Pathbreaking.” That, in one word, is how HBS professor Ranjay Gulati describes the impact of Organization and Environment. The book was published in 1967, reissued by Harvard Business Press in 1987, and won the Academy of Management’s award for Best Management Book of the Year.
Gulati, whose work focuses on interfirm strategic alliances, organized “Organization Design: Current Debates and Future Opportunities” with HBS professor Michael Tushman. “The area of organization design was booming when this book was published,” says Gulati. “Then it all but disappeared about twenty years ago, with the exception of some work done on multinational corporations by [HBS professor emeritus] Chris Bartlett. It’s only recently that there’s been a resurgence of interest. We wanted to capture that moment.”
Lawrence and Lorsch’s book essentially defined a field, introducing terms such as “differentiation” and “integration” to help managers grasp how an organization is an entity made up of so many modular units, and that the ideal structure of that entity depends on its way of adapting to the features of its chosen environment. “Contingency theory” showed that changes in environment had systematic effects on the differentiation and integration needed to achieve the organization’s optimum structure.
“If you look at modern-day issues, these foundational ideas have a tremendous longevity that is very powerful,” Gulati notes. “President Obama, for example, has to solve problems that cut across government agencies, which requires integration.”
Gulati hopes to build on the conference’s momentum to continue discussion of foward-looking issues in organization design. To that end, he and Tushman are guest editing a special issue of Strategic Management Journal on organizational architecture.
