Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Organization-Set Toward A Theory of Interorganizational Relations
The Organization-Set Toward A Theory of Interorganizational Relations
The Organization-Set Toward A Theory of Interorganizational Relations
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
INFORMS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Management
Science
WILLIAM M. EVAN
B-217
2 Cf. James March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations, New York: Wiley, 1958, pp.
83-111.
I See, for example, John W. Riley, Jr. and Marguerite F. Levy, The Corporation and Its
Publics: Essays on the Corporate Image, New York: Wiley, 1963.
the comptroller departments, suggests a possible explanation for the observed dif-
ference in attitudes toward the use of contracts (Evan [7]). As the "foreign affairs"
personnel of an organization, sales department employees come into recurrent
contact with their "role partners" in other organizations-i.e., purchasing agents
-with the result that non-organizational norms develop, making for less recourse
to contracts. In contrast, the role-sets of comptroller personnel involve a higher
degree of interaction with others within the organization, thus reinforcing or-
ganizational norms-including the use of contracts. We may infer from
Macaulay's study that systematic inquiry into the role-sets of boundary per-
sonnel will shed light on inter-organizational relations as the latter bear on or-
ganizational decisions, whether pertaining to the use of contracts or other matters.
Analogous to the role-set concept is what I propose to call the "organization-
set." Instead of taking a particular status as the unit of analysis, as Merton does
in his role-set analysis, I shall take as the unit of analysis an organization or a
class of organizations and trace its interactions with the network of organizations
in its environment, i.e., with elements of its organization-set. In analyzing a par-
ticular organization-set, I shall refer to the organization that is the point of refer-
ence as the "focal organization."4 In order to avoid the danger of reifying inter-
organizational relations, the relations between the focal organization and its
organization-set are conceived as mediated by (a) the role-sets of its boundary
personnel, (b) the flow of information, (c) the flow of products or services and
(d) the flow of personnel. As in the case of the role-set, conflicting demands by
members of the organization-set may be handled by the focal organization with
the help of mechanisms analogous to those analyzed by Merton [14] (pp. 371-
379), e.g., by preventing observation of behavior and by concerted action to
counter the demands of other organizations.
An analysis of the organization-set of a focal organization (or of a class of focal
organizations), could help explain, among other things: a) the internal structure
of the focal organization; b) its degree of autonomy in decision-making; c) its
degree of effectiveness or "goal attainment;" d) its identity, i.e., its public image
and self-image; e) the flow of information from the focal organization to the ele-
ments of its organization-set and vice versa; f) the flow of personnel from the
focal organization to the elements of its organization-set and vice versa; and g)
the forces impelling the focal organization to cooperate or compete with elements
of its organization-set, to coordinate its activities, to merge with other organiza-
tions, or to dissolve. As an example of the possible explanatory utility of the or-
ganization-set concept, we shall presently consider the effects of structural varia-
tions in the organization-set on the decision-making autonomy of the focal or-
ganization.
4 Cf. Neal Gross, Ward S. Mason, and Alexander W. McEachern, Explorations in Role
Analysis: Studies of the School Superintendency Role, New York: Wiley, 1958, pp. 50-56.
With the aid of such attributes, we can formulate empirically testable proposi-
tions about interactions among organizations.
A provisional list of dimensions of organization-sets is presented below, the
principal value of which may lie in illustrating a possibly useful direction of con-
ceptual analysis. Whether these dimensions are more heuristic than others that
might be abstracted can be determined only by means of empirical research.
presumably has significant consequences for its internal structure and decision-
making. The size of the organization-set is to be distinguished, of course, from
the size of the focal organization, although the two are presumably correlated.
The focal organization may depend on few or many elements in its input or-
ganization-set for its resources. Whether the concentration of input organiza-
tional resources is high or low would probably affect the structure and functioning
of the focal organization.
Overlap in Membership
The goals and values of the focal organization may overlap with those of the
elements in its set. To the extent that this occurs, it probably affects the nature
of the inter-organizational relations that develop. For example, hostility might
be engendered between an American military base overseas and a political party
in the country in which the base was situated if the party did not share the assess-
ment that the base was performing a "protective and deterrent" function rather
than an "offensive and provocative" function.
Boundary Personnel
tive to the, proportion of such personnel in the set-the greater is its decision-
making autonomy. Thus it may be seen that different mediators of the effects of
size of organization-set yield opposite consequences for decision-making
autonomy of the focal organization.
3. The greater the degree of similarity of goals and functions between the organiza-
tion-set and the focal organization, the greater is the amount of competition between
them, and hence the lower the degree of decision-making autonomy of the focal or-
ganization. In their study of health and welfare agencies, Levine and White [111
observe that:
"...intense competition may occur occasionally between two agencies offering the
same services, especially when other agencies have no specific criteria for referring
patients to one rather than the other. If both services are operating near capacity,
competition between the two tends to be less keen, the choice being governed by the
availability of service. If the services are being operated at less than capacity, com-
petition and conflict often occur. Personnel of referring agencies in this case fre-
quently deplore the 'duplication of services' in the community" (p. 598).
set and the more favorable its disposition toward amalgamation with one or more of
them. The lacademic "common market" being formed among midwest univers
ties to pool their resources in graduate education is a case in point.
6. The greater the competition between the focal organization and the members of
the output organizations in its set, the more favorable is its disposition toward
amalgamation, provided the goals and values of the respective organizations are com-
patible.
7. If the members of the organization-set exhibit a high rate of technical change,
the focal organization, in order to remain competitive, will be highly receptive to in-
novations.
Apart from the conceptual problems awaiting analysis in this area of research,
there are measurement problems of considerable difficulty. Describing and meas-
uring networks of inter-organizational relations presents a substantial methodo-
logical challenge. Some gross behavioral indicators of inter-organizational rela-
tions are number of contracts, number of clients or customers, volume of sales
or services, volume of telephone calls made and received, volume of mail sent
and received, etc. Mapping interactions of organizations would require special
attention to boundary personnel, as noted above, and to the patterns of inter-
action of organizational decision-makers. Such mapping operations of the be-
havior of boundary personnel and decision-makers could also yield sociometric
data on which of the elements in an organization-set are perceived by different
categories of members of the focal organization as "comparative reference or-
ganizations" or as "normative reference organizations." Two theoretical and
methodological tools that may prove useful in the mapping of inter-organiza-
tional relations are graph theory and input-output analysis.
Graph Theory
10 See, for example, Dorwin Cartwright, "The Potential Contribution of Graph Theory
to Organization Theory," in Mason Haire, ed., Modern Organization Theory, New York:
Wiley, 1959, pp. 254-271; Frank Harary and R. Z. Norman, Graph Theory as a Mathematical
Model in Social Science, Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1953; Claude Flament,
Application of Graph Theory to Group Structure, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1963.
I. Wheel
\SD
A.,
III. Chain
*( * -* ( 4 -* 4 .
A B C D
pect that IA ranks first in autonomy, IIA ranks second, and IIIA ranks third.
In the automobile industry, the supplier-manufacturer-dealer sequence of or-
ganizational relationships would suggest that the supplier is in a position com-
parable to IIIA and that the manufacturers are in a position comparable to IA.1"
Can we construct an index that would yield a "coefficient of inter-connectedness"
of elements in an organization-set-and hence decision-making autonomy-that
would discriminate not only among the three simplified organization-sets shown
in Figure 1 but also among other possible configurations?
Input-Output Analysis
One input-output model that may prove useful in the study of inter-organiza-
tional relations is that developed by Leontief [10]. In the study of the structure
of the American economy, Leontief and his associates have, of course, concerned
themselves with economic parameters such as prices, investments, and incomes.
Is this mode of analysis applicable to non-economic parameters of inter-organi-
zational relationships with which sociologists, social psychologists, and political
scientists are concerned? Are the obstacles to an input-output analysis of inter-
organizational relations insuperable because the data most social scientists work
with do not take the form of ratio scales, as is true of the data of economists?
In most cases, the data used by social scientists studying organizations-other
than economists-frequently take the form of nominal or ordinal scales and,
A.M. 10 5 15 30
A.M. 40 15 5 60
The matrices shown in Figures 2 and 3 involve one point in time. Assuming
that data are available for two or more time periods, can we apply a Markov
chain model to analyze the processes of change in inter-organizational relations?
Conclusion
References