An organization’s environment has a huge impact on organizational performance. Of paramount importance to all organizational managers is the achievement of the necessary resources and clients in a timely and efficient manner. The distribution of organizational factors, that is, those individuals, groups, or organizations that buy the organization’s goods or services, provide raw materials, new technologies, capital, labor, information, and competition, will greatly affect how that an organization operates. Managers have the opportunity to respond to environmental factors in a variety of ways. Efforts related to changing organizational activities are known as adaptation. Managers can also choose to control factors by establishing favorable links with them or by influencing their activities.
Depending on organizational circumstances, managers may choose to adapt the organization, control the environment, or both. The decision to adapt the organization or control the environment will depend on the domains in which the factors are located. For example, a shoe manufacturer can accommodate customers’ style demands by collecting information about consumers’ tastes in footwear. At the same time, the company may be active in lobbying Congress to restrict the importation of shoes from abroad.
Organizational adaptation implies that part or all of the organization is transformed to make its activities more compatible with existing conditions. The greater the amount of uncertainty arising from the environment, the greater the need for managers to seek a variety of ways to adapt the organization.
To be successful when uncertainty is high, managers must develop strategies and structures to protect the technical core of the organization. The technical core is the internal operations of an organization, which must be carried out in a predictable and orderly manner to be efficient. Therefore, mechanisms must be established that will “seal” the technical core from environmental factors that may disrupt the organization’s internal operations. These mechanisms can be seen as coping strategies because they are designed to deal with uncertainties. The five coping strategies are buffering, smoothing, foresight, rationing, and boundary stretching.