J Management Studies - 2021 - Shenkar

Journal of Management Studies 59:3 May 2022
doi:10.1111/joms.12772
The Rise and Fall of Structural Contingency Theory:

A Theory’s ‘autopsy’
Oded Shenkara and Shmuel Ellisb

a
The Ohio State University; bTel Aviv University
ABSTRACT Half a century after emerging as a leading theory in the then nascent field of organi-
zation theory, structural contingency theory seems to have disappeared from the scholarly stage.
Have theoretical and methodological deficiencies predestined the theory to oblivion? Was it the
lack of empirical support or practical application? Was the theory doomed by its failure to adapt
to new conditions or was it rendered obsolete by the emergence of new theories with superior
explanatory power? Or was the decline the result of the dispersion of its research community
and the rise of strategy at the expense of organization theory? These questions and more are
addressed in this paper as part of a ‘theoretical autopsy’ seeking explanations for the theory’s
decline or demise. Repercussions for current and emerging organization and management theo-
ries are delineated.
Keywords: Structural Contingency Theory, theory’s decline, theoretical autopsy, theory’s
death
INTRODUCTION
‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away’.

General Douglas MacArthur’s farewell address, adapted from a British World War I
song
For almost four decades since its 1958 birth, structural contingency theory (SCT) has
been a lynchpin of organizational theory. United by doctrine and method (Servos, 1993),
SCT scholars formed a distinct research school whose members were among the leading
organizational scholars of the time. SCT research appeared yearly in major journals,
was prominently featured in management textbooks and curricula, and was omnipresent
Address for reprints: Oded Shenkar, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, 2100 Neil Avenue,
Columbus, OH 43209, USA (shenkar.1@osu.edu).
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The Rise and Fall of Structural Contingency Theory 783
in reviews of the field (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Donaldson, 1995). Dozens of em-
pirical applications were accompanied by theory development essays (e.g., Child, 1972;
Drazin and Van de Ven, 1985) and by methodological treatises seeking to refine SCT
instruments and design (e.g., Comstock and Scott, 1977; Pennings, 1973). Empirical test-
ing, which has started with manufacturing firms, expanded to service organizations (e.g.,
Scott et al., 1978), and became a subject of international comparative research (e.g.,
Negandhi and Reimann, 1973; Tayeb, 1987).
Then, in a span of just a few years around the mid-1990s, the theory seems to have
all but disappeared from the scholarly radar screen, with a precipitous decline in schol-
arly references and a remarkable drop in empirical research. Both scholars and editors
appear to have lost interest. SCT did not go out with a bang: Its theoretical foundations
have not been shaken by a new paradigm, nor was it brought down by a breakthrough
empirical revelation that has proven its predictions wrong. While not officially declared
dead, SCT suffered a steep decline, going out not with a bang but with a whisper, vanish-
ing into the scholarly night without much ceremony, discussion, or debate.
While the birth and diffusion of organization theories and schools have been discussed
at some length (e.g., McKinley et al., 1999), the reasons behind their decline and possibly
death are yet to be systematically explored. The reasons for the neglect are understand-
able. The death of a social science theory is rarely a discreet, visible and salient event, so
scholarly attention is unlikely to be drawn. In contrast to the excitement accompanying
the birth of a new theory and the incentives associated with scholarly pioneering, a de-
clining theory offers little by way of opportunity cost. This void is a problem, because,
as philosophy of science scholars remind us, refutation is crucial to the scientific process
(Popper, 1959) as is paradigm change (Kuhn, 1996). So, if not formally refuted, what
sealed the fate of SCT and why did it happen at the time it did? (1) Did the theory reach
a dead end? In other words, did it fail to garner consistent empirical support? Or did
shaky conceptual and methodological foundations finally catch up with it? (2) Did the
theory suffer from lack of relevance and applicability? (3) Did it decline because it has
failed to renew, reinvigorate, and incorporate new streams of thought? If the answers to
the three questions are negative, then why has SCT faded away?
As DiMaggio (1995, p. 393) writes, the answer to these questions is complex, because
receptivity to a theoretical framework involves multiple factors, many of which are not
endogenous or reducible to a theory’s scientific prowess:
‘A theory’s fate will be determined in part by factors outside one’s control. Theory’s
reception is ordinarily helter-skelter: a process of appropriation driven more by reso-
nance than by reason, in which complex arguments are reduced to slogans and related
to one another along binary dimensions more redolent of Levi-Strauss’s tribal cultures
than of graduate theory classes’.
In other words, the dominance of a theory in a particular domain is determined not only
by its internal logic and validity, but also by the characteristics of the scholarly environ-
ment in which it operates and evolves. This environment is shaped not only by scientific
rules and norms but also by researchers’ desires, motivations, personality traits, and even
location.
784 O. Shenkar and S. Ellis
In the present paper, we argue that the state of SCT in terms of validity and scope does
not provide sufficient justification for its apparent decline. Furthermore, we posit that the
explanation for this descent may not rest with the philosophy of science but rather lies in
the realm of the sociology of science, namely the dynamic relations between SCT and
its scholarly environment. It should be noted that the goal of this paper is not to provide
full answers to the above questions. Instead, we elaborate on each and draw mid-range
conclusions accordingly. Finally, while our focus is SCT theory, we look at it as a case that
can yield valuable and possibly generalizable insights about rigor, interestingness, rele-
vance and continuities in the theoretical landscape of organization and management.
Paper Structure and Method

To address those questions, we have first undertaken an extensive literature search in
all major management journals, broadly defined (e.g., Academy of Management Journal,
Management Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, Research
in Organizational Behavior, Journal of Systems Management, Organizations and Society, The
Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Management, Accounting Research,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, Management Accounting Research Accounting, International
Journal of Accounting Information Systems), starting from the very beginning of SCT and up
to its mid-1990s fading. We searched for published articles, conceptual and empirical,
and added classical books, e.g., Woodward (1958) and Burns and Stalker (1961). The
frequencies of SCT publications (per 5-year window) are presented in Figure 1.
Second, major SCT scholars, identified via the literature search were interviewed,
including (affiliations in sequence): Derek S. Pugh [deceased 2015] (University of
Edinburgh, Aston, London Business School, Open University (UK); David J. Hickson
[deceased 2016] (Aston, University of Bradford); John Child (Aston, Cambridge,
University of Birmingham); Richard Burton (Naval Graduate School, Duke), Johannes
Pennings [deceased 2015] (Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Wharton); John Slocum (Penn
State, Ohio State, Tuck, SMU); Lex Donaldson (NSW); and John M. Stopford [deceased
2011] (London Business School). The semi-structured interviews with the SCT founding
Figure 1. N of papers (per 5 year window) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
fathers enabled us to present questions relating to issues with direct bearing on SCT
decline. Specifically, we started by asking whether they agree that SCT has disappeared
from the scholarly stage. Only then we asked about their reasoning for the decline: (a)
Theoretical issues. For example: the theory tends to consider only one contingency at a
time, or the theory was quite static (in contrast to the idea of dynamic capabilities or
ambidexterity)); (b) Methodological issues. For instance: where reliability or validity issues
regarding central constructs of the theory too problematic?); (c) Empirical support. For
example, do you think that the findings were not sufficient to support the theory and
researches lost their enthusiasm about pursuing more research projects in this domain?);
(d) Scholars motivation and community. For instance, do you think that the theory began to de-
cline when the main group of scholars (most of them from the UK) retired and lost their
interest in conducting research projects and publishing papers?); (e) Competition with other
theories. For example, did the theory failure to adapt or was it rendered obsolete by the
emergence of new theories with superior explanatory power?) and so forth. Interviews
averaged an hour in length and were taped and transcribed. Interviews protocol, orga-
nized by themes, appear in Appendix 1. We also incorporated relevant quotes from these
interviews along the paper to support our arguments.
We begin this paper with an historical section in which we describe the rise and fall of
SCT. In this section we also discuss the concept of ‘theory death’ and highlight the im-
pact of SCT on other theories. In the second section, we explore the reasons for the de-
cline of SCT. We divide the various reasons into two categories: problems associated with
the validity of the theory (endogenous reasons) and exogenous explanations pertaining
to the social conditions that shape science (exogenous reasons). We conclude the paper
with an analysis of the implications of SCT’s fate for current and emerging organization
and management theories.
THE RISE AND FALL OF STRUCTURAL CONTINGENCY THEORY

The beginnings of SCT can be traced to Joan Woodward’s pioneering work, first
published in a book form in 1958. Woodward came across ‘the contingency equa-
tion’, stipulating a relationship between ‘technology’ and structure, by accident, when
seeking an explanation for a perennial challenge for organizational theoreticians and
practitioners alike, that is, the differential performance of firms. After some trials and
errors, she discovered that her sample firms could be grouped by the ‘technology’
(that is, the nature of the production or transformation process) they used, namely
craft (single unit)/small batch, mass production, or a continuous process, and that
these, in turn, correlated with such structural features as span of control and central-
ization. The closer the ‘fit’ between structural features and the production system, the
higher the firm’s performance was.
Separately, in 1961, Burns and Stalker published The Management of Innovation that
was to become a second dominant albeit separate stream in SCT. Studying British
firms in the aftermath of World War II, they found that firms facing a more turbu-
lent environment, where market and technology changed often or were uncertain,
tended to have a more ‘organic’, flat structure, whereas those facing a more stable
environment, tended to be ‘mechanistic’ and hierarchical. The better the ‘fit’ between
organizational structure and environment, so defined, the better performance was.
A parallel effort, touching on both technology and environment, was Thompson’s
(1967), who tied the two to the task uncertainty faced by organizational decision mak-
ers. Around the same time, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), like Thompson, extended
the contingency argument to the sub-unit level while adding integration mechanisms
to the fit-to-performance equation.
A third thrust, removed from the main streams of ‘technology’ and ‘environment’
yet still falling within the broad contours of the SCT approach is associated with the
work of Chandler (1962; see also Donaldson, 1995). Chandler postulated a relation-
ship between environment and strategy on the one hand and structure on the other
hand, and was especially interested in the relationship between industry diversifica-
tion and the divisional structure. He argued that a product-based divisional structure
was more likely to occur under high product diversity, and that a fit between those
yielded better performance.
The two streams of SCT, which in this paper are termed ‘technology’, and ‘environ-
ment’, based on their labelling of the independent variable in the contingency equation,
have all sought to predict the shape of organizational structure. While using different
terms and measures for the independent variable, the two main streams of ‘technology’
and ‘environment’ generally chose centralization, specialization and formalization as the
underlying dimensions of organizational structure (Ellis et al., 2002; Pugh et al., 1969),
while Chandler’s (1962) used the ‘M’ form as the main structural variation. The two
streams articulated the SCT argument at two levels: the first focused on the relationship
between the respective independent variable (technology or environment) and organi-
zational structure, the second positing a ‘fit’ between the independent and dependent
variables as a precursor of ‘performance’.
Following their respective launches, the two parallel streams of ‘environment’ and
‘technology’ settled into a comfortable though separate existence, each generating its
own stream of studies primarily in the form of empirical testing in a variety of organiza-
tional contexts, but also offering sharpened methodologies as well as recursive attempts
at conceptual clarification, refinement and reconfiguration. As SCT continued to evolve
and trigger further research, other contingency factors, e.g., organizational size (Blau
et al., 1976), have surfaced, however most became control variables within the SCT
framework which solidified its prominence as one of the dominant theoretical lenses in
macro-organizational research.
Establishing ‘Death’
Research in the SCT tradition continued for roughly a generation, yielding dozens of
published articles, books, and chapters, but by the mid-1990s, SCT appears to have
been rapidly losing steam. From an average of several articles a year in major outlets,
publications have declined precipitously, eventually reaching zero (see Figure 1). Not less
importantly, the theory seems to have disappeared without leaving as much as a trace. So
fast and swift was its fall from grace that an Academy of Management Review article on
organization design choice, traditionally the main application ground for SCT (Roberts
and Greenwood, 1997) lacks any reference to the theory, instead drawing on transaction
cost economics and institutional theory.
Both Derek Pugh and David Hickson, leaders of the Aston effort that has gener-
ated a multitude of SCT publications, agreed that the theory was dead or mostly so.
Johannes Pennings, a team member and early adopter, also agreed. John Slocum was
not sure. Surprisingly, however, other interviewees have not conceded SCT’s death.
Richard Burton argued that while the term ‘structural contingency’ was not used
much anymore, the theory survived under other headings, e.g., configuration and
modularity. John Child said that the theory has simply entered a new phase, where it
is discussed under such terms as ‘ambidexterity’ (Lavie et al., 2010) and as a ‘hybrid
approach’ (Claver-Cortés et al., 2012). John Stopford aired a similar opinion. The
strongest voice arguing SCT’s survival was that of Lex Donaldson, perhaps its most
visible defender.
What we can learn so far is that, first, as suspected, a theory’s death is not a clear
cut, discreet event, and, second, that part of the problem may be terminology, that
is, using different terms to describe a similar phenomenon, and or evolution, namely
whether a theory has evolved in a way that has solved or reduced some of the prob-
lems associated with its decline. For instance, to counter criticism of its static and
deterministic nature, Child (1972) and Donaldson (1987) developed the SAFRIT
(Structural Adaptation to Regain Fit) model to bring the decision-maker into the
contingency equation. Still, while the effort was consistent with the rise of strategy,
it has surfaced with the theory already in decline and failed to take hold. According
to McKinley et al. (1999), this ‘neostructural contingency theory’ suffered from its
own ‘relative infancy’, that is, from its newness –an ironic state of affairs for a theory
whose roots reach back half a century and which has been associated, at least in the
Burns and Stalker’s (1961) vocabulary, with innovation.
More recently, Ellis et al. (2002) have tried to consolidate the ‘technology’ and ‘envi-
ronment’ streams of SCT around the unifying concept of uncertainty, following on the
early but largely discontinued insights of Child (1972). They offered that for both of
those streams, the independent variable was the level of uncertainty faced by decision
makers. For instance, unit and small batch production involved a higher level of uncer-
tainty since decision makers had to deal with each case anew, not being able to draw on
precedent and routine response. This effort too did not generate continuity, and the work
was published in Emergence, a journal of the Complexity Society and well outside the
mainstream organizational outlets.
A THEORY’S ‘AUTOPSY’: WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR SCT’S DECLINE?

The literature offers a number of reasons for a theory’s decline, ranging from its ref-
utation to a narrow or misplaced scope. In the following pages, we apply those and
other explanations to the SCT’s case and assess their adequacy. We divide these ac-
counts into two categories: endogenous and exogenous. The first category deals with
problems associated with the validity of the theory itself. This is what philosophers
of science are interested in, namely –the foundations, methods, and implications
of science: what qualifies as scientific theory, the reliability of scientific theories, and
the ultimate purpose of these theories (Malisoff, 1934). The second category of ex-
planations pertains to what sociologists of science are concerned with –the analysis
of science as a social activity, namely the social conditions that shape science, and the
social structures and processes of scientific activity (Ben David and Sullivan, 1975).
Among the various issues they are involved in, we can find issues such as the devel-
opment of scientific fields from various perspectives such as politics, history, culture,
and economy.
Endogenous Explanations
Theoretical deficiencies. Is SCT really a theory? This question is the first that may need
to be asked, since it would have obvious ramifications for a theory’s staying power.
Sutton and Staw (1995) write that there is a lack of agreement in the organizational
literature on what a theory is. Weick (1995, p. 385) observes that most efforts at
building organizational theories result not in actual theories but rather in ‘substitute
for theory’ which at best ‘approximate theory’. The problem is not exclusive to
the organizational science. Merton (1973) comments that ‘a large part of what is
now described as sociological theory consists of general orientations toward data
and suggestions regarding the types of variables which must be taken into account
rather than clearly formulated, verifiable statements of relationships between specific
variables’. He defines theories as ‘logically interconnected sets of propositions from
which empirical uniformities can be derived’. Bacharach (1989, p. 498) defines a
theory as ‘a statement of relationships between units observed or approximated in the
empirical world’.
SCT appears to meet the above criteria. Its underlying equation consists of a set of
interconnected testable propositions pertaining to empirical phenomena, namely an in-
dependent variable (‘environment’/ ‘technology’) and a dependent variable (organiza-
tional structure) whose ‘fit’ presumably predicts performance. The theory also meets
Bacharach’s (1989) evaluation gages (following Popper) of being falsifiable (that is, refut-
able) and showing utility (being useful in its ability to explain and predict). What is pos-
sible, however, is that the lack of consolidation of the various streams embedded in the
independent variable deprived the theory of a development opportunity that could have
ignited greater interest. As Davis (1971, p. 314) argues, showing that different theoretical
arguments ‘are in fact all saying the same thing about the same general social phenome-
non’ is the sort of contribution that garners interest not only in the phenomenon but also
in the underlying argument.
Is SCT a complete theory?

Kaplan (1964) and Bacharach (1989) propose that incomplete theories provide predic-
tive power without the accompanying ability to explain the underlying prediction. This
arguably applies to SCT, which expects variations in organizational structure based on
an independent variable but does not clearly explicate the relationship between the two.
For instance, SCT scholars do not explicate why technology and structure should be cor-
related, what is the precise nature of ‘fit’ between the two (Schoonhoven, 1981), and why
the said fit should enhance performance. SCT may provide timing or sequence of events
but may not adequately answer what Sutton and Staw (1995) call the ‘why’ question, that
is, the requirement that a theory explain causal relationships. In that, the theory may
have sacrificed explanation for parsimony, features that are both necessary for a theory
(Bacharach, 1989).
It may be argued that detailed explanations are essential when a theory is launched
(note, for instance, the relatively detailed explanation in Burns and Stalker, 1961), but
become less necessary when a theory is no longer novel as scholars are presumed to
be familiar with and accept the underlying logic. The long reign of SCT may have
meant that new users did not recognize the classical work that attempted to explicate
the underlying cause and effect logic. It is also fair, however, to ask if we hold other
theories to the same standard. Mitchell and James (2001) observe that most organiza-
tional research does ‘little more than say that one event will be followed by another…’
(p. 532). For instance, the concept of fit is utilized in a number of theories, whether
explicitly or implicitly, where it suffers from similar problems to those identified for
the SCT (Schoonhoven, 1981). Consider, for instance, the transaction cost economics’
treatment of the fit between the nature of transactions and governance mode, or the
fit between strategy and human resources in human resource management theories
(Wils and Dyer, 1984).
Lack of attention to change

In our interviews, Pugh mentioned lack of attention to change as a problem that
has rendered the theory vulnerable to criticism of being rigid and static, an unfair
critique in his opinion. He explained that members of the Aston group wanted first
to understand how organizations function at present and that change was on ‘the
to do list’ for later. Child agreed that being static was a key weakness of what he
termed ‘old style SCT’, which contrasted with today’s interest in dynamic capabilities:
‘modern conditions of hyper-competition, turbulence, complexity and the like render
such limitations more serious’. Stopford expressed a similar sentiment: ‘mostly it is
formulated and tested as cross-sectional; too little on temporal research and path-
dependency. Maybe there are too many independent variables to allow clarity for
causality’. Pennings argued that labelling SCT as ‘too static’ was a ‘key indictment’
at a time the field was becoming ‘increasingly obsessed with time’ and looked for dy-
namic theories. ‘We need to consider time in whatever length between variables … so
all the empirical work in structural contingency that’s been cross-sectional has been
static and that in itself is the reason it’s petered out or died’. Per Pennings, developing
a longitudinal approach to STC was possible but ‘very challenging, and most people
have neither the resources nor the intelligence or time to do that. Lawrence Mohr
has tried to do something in the direction but didn’t get much traction’. Burton noted
Donaldson’s and his own work on ‘dynamic fit’ as efforts to rectify that, but ‘there’s
still a lot of work to be done when you look at what happens over time’.
A related argument was that we were living in a time of radical economic change that
produced a fundamental shift from ‘paradigm driven work’ to ‘problem driven work’
(Davis and Marquis, 2005). SCT would probably be classified as ‘paradigm driven’ which
would explain its relative decline. There are a number of problems with this explana-
tion, however. First, a reading of Burns and Stalker (1961) would show that many of the
British companies they studied were in the midst of a radical change as the economy
transitioned from centralized wartime production to civilian commerce. Second, SCT, as
framed, was designed to deal with the uncertainty of change. Third, SCT was supposed
to serve as a tool for resolving the structural dilemma organization faced, and in this
sense was problem-driven as much as paradigm-driven.
Ellis et al. (2002) discussed the challenge posed by change to SCT and proposed ways
to deal with it. They argued that a perfect fit between organizations and their environ-
ments is unattainable, not because fit is akin to a ‘ideal type’ which cannot be realistically
achieved in the real world (Weber, 1947), but rather because of the basic sequence of
events governing organizational adjustment to changing circumstances. In other words,
that organizations are always engaged in a process of change warrants that a perfect
fit is unattainable. A time lag between the environmental or technological change and
the structural response is thus inevitable, leading to a misalignment paradox, whereby
organizations can never fully adjust to their environment or technology. Information pro-
cessing by decision-makers results in strategic choice and a new organizational structure
presumably better adjusted to new system’s demands. However, by time information pro-
cessing and decision-making have been finalized, the system has changed again. Thus,
even when first introduced, the newly adopted structure will already be removed from
the demands of the environment or the technology it was set to meet. As we also find
elsewhere, however, some of the criticism of SCT here seems much in line with social
science theories in general, that are only an approximation of the real world and that
our expectations from a theory, e.g., to be both generalizable and specific are conflicting
(Weick, 1995b).
Theoretically, a perfect fit may be attained between environmental demands and
decision-makers’ intentions to change the organizational structure, but this fit is impaired
when decisions regarding structural changes are delayed and cannot be readily imple-
mented. Thus, organizations that want to approximate fit must continuously adjust their
processes and fine-tune their structure. Ellis et al., (2002) suggested incorporating orga-
nizational learning mechanisms (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Dodgson, 1993; Huber,
1991; Lee et al., 1992; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) within the SCT model. When orga-
nizational decision-makers experience rapid environmental changes, information gath-
ering and processing becomes a key strategic tool, facilitating the fast responses necessary
for survival and growth (Bennet and O’Brien, 1994). Systematic data gathering, analysis
and the drawing of the right lessons from past experience endow organizations with the
capability of adapting to current as well as future changes (Daft and Huber, 1986; Levitt
and March, 1988). In sum, a longitudinal approach to STC can be developed and the
time lag issue can be resolved.
Treating one contingency at a time

According to our interviews with Pugh and Child, and confirmed by Burton, SCT was
hampered by treating contingency factors one at a time, forfeiting the opportunity to cre-
ate a comprehensive and integrated framework. Pennings likewise claimed that limiting the
number of factors opened SCT to criticism that ‘you should have also included …’, but
of course it was impossible to include everything. Burton thought that looking at one con-
tingency at a time was ‘a good, initial first step’, and dynamics were dealt with later, for
instance, by Donaldson, who, in turn, maintained that ‘most of these kinds of criticisms
were wrong or have been dealt with by revisions in the theory’. Burton proposed that given
multiple contingencies, internal integration became a key requirement and this was largely
ignored by SCT; but, he added, integration has been treated by successors to the original
SCT, in particular, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967).
The last effort to improve the internal integration of SCT was made by Ellis et al. (2002),
who proposed a system-oriented approach that encompasses various aspects of environment
and technology and relates to the system in which the decision-maker operates as a whole.
The model can be viewed in terms of complex system theory, which views organizations as
‘fixed entities having variable attributes’ that interact to create diverse outcomes (Emirbayer,
1997, p. 286). The Ellis et al.’s approach was presented figuratively as a matrix with two
axes: The first axis, system properties, represents aspects of the system in which the decision-
maker operates; it is divided into four categories: the number of relevant factors, factor di-
versity, factor connectedness, and the proportion of unpredictable factors. The second axis,
changeability, represents changes in the various system properties over time; it is divided into
three categories: the degree of change, the pace of change and the consistency of change.
Analysing all factors embedded in the environment as uncertainty triggers makes it
possible to not only consider their influence on organizational design but also their im-
pact on organizational processes such as learning and knowledge transfer, serving as a set
of mechanisms through which contextual impact is channelled. Unfortunately, though
the model eliminated the need to consider multiple independent variable and paved
paths for further research, it came, as already noted, during a precipitous decline in
SCT’s standing, and so fell on deaf ears. On a broader level, this suggests the possibility
of a ‘death spiral’, where a theory reaches a threshold of decline beyond which it cannot
be redeemed, improvements and refinements notwithstanding.
Width of Scope
McKinley et al. (1999) posit that in order to survive –theories must have a relatively wide
scope, i.e., cover a wide range of phenomena, be novel (new, unique or different), and rele-
vant to other theories. While novelty and uniqueness may be less expected from a reigning
theory, it is possible that once the novelty wears off, the theory will lose its appeal and ‘excite-
ment value’. A focal theory may also decline if it fails to elicit continuity by way of linking
with other theories, whether familiar or emerging, or because its scope is too narrow (Servos,
1993), that is, the range of the phenomena it covers is too limited to sustain interest to
scholars, and relevance to practitioners. While these conditions apply to SCT, they probably
apply to surviving theories, some of which persist despite, and perhaps because, they are less
developed and less stated, as Knoble (2003, p. 96) notes re-modernization theory:
It rather seems to be that modernization theory often was not much more than a bun-
dle of hidden, but decisive assumptions in the minds of social scientists who tried to
link empirical research to various large-scale historical and social processes diffusively
called ‘modernization’.
So, has STC declined due to failing to link with other, especially emerging theories?
While a few of our interviewees pointed out that some elements of the theory live on,
there seems to be no direct inter-theory links. SCT concepts were tacitly incorporated in
other theories but without credit, which pre-empted opportunities for establishing SCT
as a unifying theory with an expanded scope. Donaldson (1995) attempted to do just that,
but, alluding to the aforementioned ‘death spiral’, it came as ‘too little too late’ to change
the negative momentum even if other theories did not cover the same ground. Overall,
the lack of a unified paradigm in organization theory (McKinley et al., 1999), further
fragmentation associated with the entry of other theoretical bases from fields such as
economics, and, finally, benign neglect on the part of SCT scholars may have doomed
the prospects.
Lack of empirical support

Theories sometimes decline when they remain at the conceptual level, and ‘no contact
is made within a reasonable time with experimentally verifiable phenomena’ (Harnard,
2008, p. 69, commenting on theory in physics). This is not the SCT case, which rather
fits Meehl’s (1990, p. 195) statement concerning personology theory –that ‘the empirical
evidence on this theory has now accumulated to a considerable mass of factual reports
and associated theoretical inferences’.
A more relevant reasoning might be that empirical testing of SCT refuted the the-
ory or, at least, failed to provide solid support, resulting in its eventual abandon-
ment. Some discount the role of empirical support in determining a theory’s standing.
Anderson et al. (1980, p. 1037) write that ‘even when initially based on weak data,
social theories can survive the total discrediting of that initial evidential base’ and
that ‘such unwarranted theory perseverance may be mediated in part, by the cogni-
tive process of formulating causal scenarios or explanations’. McKinley et al. (1999,
p. 636) state that empirical validity is ‘only one of several determinants of the attrac-
tiveness of current organization theory schools of thought’. They cite Miner’s (1984)
study of 32 organization science theories that shows little evidence that a theory’s
estimated validity is correlated with its perceived importance. A 2001/2 Academy of
Management Review Call for Papers on motivation theory notes that many theories that
have been discredited in the empirical world have managed to survive, at least in
current management textbooks if not as a research platform. Still, empirical support
seems a reasonable gauge for the probability of a theory to retain its position as repet-
itive rejection or at least lack of such support signal refutation and invites alternative
explanations and eventually other theories.
Miller et al. (1991) performed a meta-analysis on the technology stream in SCT. They
found support for the association between routineness and three structural variables,
namely centralization (depending on industrial sector heterogeneity and the average size
of the unit of analysis), formalization (depending on sector, definition of routineness,
and work force professionalization), and specialization (depending on unit heterogeneity
in the sector and the average size of the units of analysis).
In a broader study encompassing both the environment and the technology streams,
Yaari (1992) used the same structural variables of centralization, formalization, and spe-
cialization, combined with a more elaborate, integrated list of environmental features
(changeability, complexity and dependence), producing nine cells, each of which repre-
senting a major hypothesis of the SCT (see Table I). Complexity is the number of factors
in the internal and external environment to be taken into consideration by the decision-
maker (Tung, 1979) and/or the degree of differentiation between environmental factors
(Smith et al., 1979). Changeability is the ability to accurately predict the environmental
changes (Koberg, 1987) and/or the number of unexpected or novel events that occur in
the transformation process (Fry and Slocum, 1984). Dependence is the reliance of a focal
organization on other organizations (e.g., suppliers, customers) (Horvath et al., 1976;
Marsh and Manari, 1981). The higher the environmental (or technology) changeability,
the lower the degree of specialization, formalization and centralization. The higher the
complexity, the higher the specialization and formalization and the lower the degree of
centralization. The higher the dependence, the higher are the formalization and central-
ization. No specific prediction was proposed for the association between dependence and
specialization. Yaari (1992) gathered all the empirical studies that tested one or more of
the above 3 × 3 matrix. From 61 empirical studies, 32 directly tested the nine predictions
(See Table II).
The figures in Table II support the nine predictions stated above (a positive Z score
denotes that the prediction and the effect are in the same direction). It should be
noted that the higher effect means correlations are between changeability and formal-
ization, between complexity and specialization, and between dependence and central-
ization and formalization, respectively. As expected, the lowest mean correlation was
found between dependence and specialization. How promising are these accumulated
findings, is in the eyes of the beholder. On the one hand, each of the environmental
characteristics significantly impacts at least one structural characteristic. The rest of
the effect sizes are in the predicted direction but are insignificant (note that two effect
sizes are based on very few correlations). These findings by no means justify giving
up on proceeding with work on refining and validating the theory. On the contrary,
the findings should be considered encouraging, intriguing, and worth pursuing (see
Davis, 1971).
A potential problem related to apparently inconsistent findings has been the very
different context in which studies have been conducted, and the reality that SCT,
like any social science theory, could not capture all contextual variations (Weick,
1995b). Still, Donaldson (1995, p. 217) observes that SCT ‘enjoys a considerable de-
gree of empirical validity, more so than is generally believed’ (see also Donaldson,
1987; Gerwin, 1979; Miller, 1987). Empirical support has also been obtained for the
strategy-structure thrust of SCT (Donaldson, 1987, 1995). While producing modest
inter-correlations, those are in line with if not superior to other theories that have
managed to survive so far. Neither does one see the ‘decline effect’, namely that em-
pirical support trends down over time (Lehrer, 2010; Rhine, 1941) observed in a num-
ber of unrelated subject matters.
794
Table I. Number of SCT studies as a function of organizational structure and organizational characteristics according to Yaari (1992)
Centralization Formalization Specialization
Division of labor (work specialization)

Chain of command, span of control verti- Reliance on formal rules and procedures departmentalization horizontal complexity,
cal complexity, vertical linkages standardization horizontal linkages
Complexity 29 studies 22 studies 19 studies

Number of factors in the internal and 39 characteristics (6 environment, 32 characteristics (4 environment, 27 characteristics (2 environment, 25
external environment to be taken 23 technology) 28 technology) technology)
into consideration by the decision-
maker (Tung, 1979)
The degree of differentiation between 39 correlations 32 correlations 27 correlations
environmental factors (Smith et al.,
1979)
Changeability 10 studies 4 studies 4 studies
The ability to accurately predict the 13 characteristics (8 environment, 5 4 characteristics (1 environment, 3 4 characteristic (1 environment, 3
O. Shenkar and S. Ellis
environmental changes (Koberg, 1987) technology) technology) technology)

The number of unexpected or novel 13 correlations 4 correlations 4 correlations
events that occur in the transforma-
tion process (Fry and Slocum, 1984)
Dependence 16 studies 14 studies 12 studies
The dependence of the focal organi- 23 characteristics (19 environment, 21 characteristics (16 environment, 19 characteristics (17 environment, 2
zation on other organizations (its 4 technology) 5 technology) technology)
suppliers and customers) (Horvath 23 correlations 21 correlations 19 correlations
et al., 1976)
Table II. Meta-analysis of SCT studies according to Yaari (1992)
Centralization Formalization Specialization
Complexity r = −0.09 r = −0.219 r = −0.073

2 2
χ (k−1)= 93.575 χ (k−1) = 343.837 χ2(k−1)= 79.059
2 2
p(χ ) = 0 p(χ ) = 0 p(χ2) = 0
z(p) = 3.235 z(p) = 5.049 z(p) = 1.205
p(p) = 0 p(p) = 0 p(p) = 0.114
Changeability r = −0.054 r = 0.077 r = 0.230
2 2
χ (k−1)= 27.305 χ (k−1)= 6.454 χ2(k−1)= 3.641
2 2
p(χ ) = 0.006 p(χ ) = 0.091 p(χ2) = 0.302
z(p) = 3.783 z(p) = 2.259 z(p) = 2.793
p(p) = 0 p(p) = 0.011 p(p) = 0.002
Dependence r = 0.316 r = 0.218 r = 0.026
2 2
χ (k−1)= 120.539 χ (k−1)= 237.371 χ2(k−1)= 17.760
2 2
p(χ ) = 0 p(χ ) = 0 p(χ2) = 0.471
z(p) = 9.325 z(p) = 1.028 z(p) = 1.933
p(p) = 0 p(p) = 0.151 p(p) = 0.026
r = effect size; k = n of rs; χ2 (k−1) = degree of heterogeneity of rs; p(χ2) = heterogeneity significance level; z = standard
score defining the effect direction (positive or negative); p(p) = significance level of effect size (degree and direction).
Practicality
According to Kuhn (1996, p. 23), ‘paradigms gain their status because they are more suc-
cessful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners
has come to recognize as acute’. Mintzberg’s (1990) added: ‘conclusion about the design
school is not that the model is wrong but only that it has limited applicability (p. 116)’. He
believes that ‘the school’s proponents should have heeded their own prescription about
fit’ because their approach will work best in ‘machine bureaucracies’ and that their major
contribution to strategy has been that of vocabulary rather than a model. In an earlier
paper, Mintzberg (1973) offered a number of considerations that would make the pro-
cess of strategy-making more practical, e.g., taking into account variations in routineness
between the different organizational functions (consistent with Lawrence and Lorsch,
1967) and between organizations in different life cycle stages, e.g., entrepreneurial versus
established.
Derek Pugh saw impracticality as crucial for SCT’s decline. ‘Consultants’, he said,
‘didn’t find inspiration in SCT’ and therefore didn’t use and promote it’. ‘The theory’,
he added, ‘was not flexible enough’ and did not provide a framework for them to work
in. Neither did practitioners receive much help from the academics, as the latter lacked
practical experience, were disconnected from the real world, and were familiar with
only one peculiar organization –the university, which became their primary reference
point. This is consistent with Murray Davis’ (1971, p. 309) view that ‘… non-interesting
theories are those which affirm certain assumptions of their audience’.
According to Child, that the environment has changed (e.g., became hypercompet-
itive) has made the theory less practical, though the theories that replaced SCT ‘were
even less practical’. As an example, he noted the concept of ‘empowerment’ that can
be operationalized any which way but seems appealing. ‘The academic critics were
replacing contingency theory with things that were even less possible for managers to
do anything about or want to do anything about … you take population ecology and
essentially it’s telling managers just wait and see whether the environment kills you or
not’. Hickson also saw it as a key reason for the theory’s decline: ‘People could not see
how to use it, could not translate what to do with it’. Slocum tied lack of practicality
with weak empirical support: ‘given the platform of confusing results, there are few
practical implications. As such, professional practitioner-oriented journals, such as
HBR, CMR, Organizational Dynamics, and Sloan Management Review, have not published
many of these research pieces. It is hard to recommend actions when the research
results are few and contradictory’.
Pennings mentioned Donaldson as someone who argued that SCT was very prac-
tical, as managers have the discretion to adapt. To Donaldson, SCT has numerous
practical applications, including, but not limited to, organizational design. Other the-
ories do not fare better when it comes to their application and relevance for ‘the real
world’. For instance, in an article subtitled ‘bad for practice’, Ghoshal and Nohria
(1989) criticize transaction cost economics for failing to produce applicable lessons.
Donaldson insisted that SCT ‘does reflect reality. It is practical in providing broad
guidance and sound principles. But exact prescriptions are not really forthcoming
unless the contingencies are actually measured for an organization, and the structures
that fit are known exactly, mathematically, from research across organizations, that is
not well established yet. The rival, newer organization theories are mostly less practi-
cal’. Stopford agreed: ‘(SCT) could be of enormous utility for organizational design.
Gold et al. were near this in the book a few years ago and McKinsey picked it up. But
they provided no formal mechanism or tests’. Burton argued that latter SCT authors
tried to deal with the issue.
In sum, while the founding parents of SCT are divided on how practical the theory
is, they are all in agreement that it is, at the least, not less practical than rival theories.
In other words, practicality does not appear to be a major reason for the decline of
SCT.
Methodological deficiencies
Hickson was adamant that their pioneering SCT research was ‘methodologically su-
perb, not only by the standards of the time but by any standards’, but added that
quantification made the theory difficult to understand for some people, which was a
factor in its eventual decline. Burton thought that methodological weaknesses ‘rested
with early authors’ and were improved upon later. Pugh noted that some SCT re-
searchers came into the social sciences from such fields as philosophy, and ‘had little
knowledge of empirical research… they criticized SCT without fully understanding
the methodology’. Still, Pugh did not think this was a dominant reason for the theo-
ry’s decline. Stopford said that SCT ‘cannot be adequately tested on a cross-sectional
basis, and few researchers seem to have the patience to do longitudinal work.’ Slocum
offered that ‘structural equation modeling should have been a methodological break-
through to test these relationships, but the constructs still seem “fuzzy” and there is a
myriad of them to explain any dependent variable. Many of the dependent variables
are still subject and therefore do not represent salient constructs that can be aligned
with performance, such as ROI or ROA’. Donaldson argued that the ‘effect of fit on
performance is inherently weak because there being many fits between all the various
contingency and structural variables. They are then particularly vulnerable to the
problem of sampling error. Also, to problem of low reliability of misfits, because of
being different scored. And there is problem of range restriction due to big misfits
disappearing due to adaptation or culling of organization’.
All in all, it seems that methodological deficiencies, while prevalent, were not viewed
as a major cause of SCT’s decline, and some of them, at least, have been dealt with in
latter SCT research. The meta-analysis (of SCT’s technology stream only) by Miller et
al. (1991, p. 370) found that ‘contrary to the most common explanations of mixed results
on technology-structure relationships, the results of our meta-analytic theory testing in-
dicate that the use of different definitions of technology and variation in organizational
size generally do not affect these relationships’ (the study did find that industrial sector
heterogeneity and the size of units of analysis had an impact). In any event, it is tough
to argue that theories that remain popular today do not face similar methodological
challenges.
The analysis of the endogenous explanations leaves many questions open, however.
For instance, when does a theory cease to be novel, why and how is this threshold
determined, and by whom? Does a theory need to be the dominant player in a multi-
theory paradigm, as Donaldson suggests, in order to benefit from linkage to other
theories, or can it survive by offering secondary or complementary inputs to other
theories? And, should a theory link with currently dominant theories, which may
be even less novel, or with newly emerging theories, which may well have needed to
link with the focal, established theory in order to assure their own survival? What
role does inertia play in the process, and is there such a thing as ‘death spiral’, where
a dearth of publications leads to still further decline? Without answers to these and
related questions, it is all but impossible to explain the fall from grace of SCT and, by
extension, decipher the theory life cycle that we are likely to continue and witness as
the field develops.
Exogenous Explanations
A changing landscape. Theories, SCT included, do not exist in a vacuum. Management
scholars, perhaps better than others, know that scholarly routes, like all organizational
processes, are embedded in an organizational context where power, politics and legitimacy
pressures often trump ‘objective’ efficiencies, and where resources, or lack of, can greatly
impact the fate of a paradigm (Martin, 1981). The survival, or lack of, a theory is as
much the result of those pressures and their relative impact on competing theories, as its
ability to respond to vital problems or provide an adequate predictive ability for a given
phenomenon.
With management research turning more global (Honig et al., 2014; Wilson, 1942),
pressure to publish in top-tiered journals is evermore stronger (Honig et al., 2014;
Starbuck, 2003). Scholars must determine who are the leaders and who are the support-
ers of the various competing theories, or which of the leading schools are associated with
these theories and scholars, and from whom they can get financial and academic support
(McKinley et al., 1999). From a risk/return perspective, a declining theory whose legiti-
macy is shaky in terms of recent citations, may be akin to a sinking ship: Such a theory
is unlikely to be looked upon favourably by gatekeepers, and editors may struggle to find
reviewers familiar with it, let alone find it in their interest to see an article which does not
cite their own work.
During the first two decades of SCT, macro-organizational research was primarily the
domain of sociologists. This scholarly community (Geison, 1981) was apparent in a num-
ber of schools, especially Aston, but has started to break down in the early 1980s with
the exit of organizational scholars from sociology departments to business schools, and
with the shift of much organizational research first from Aston to other UK institutions
and then from the UK to North America. Around the same time, strategy emerged to
challenge, and eventually supplant ‘macro-organization theory’. Mounting a successful
social mobilization and political campaign, strategy managed to replace organization
theory as an AACSB requirement, dealing a huge blow to SCT’s prospects. As Child
observed, ‘organization theory as a whole was going out of fashion’. This shift, more
of a political than a scholarly nature, generated demand for new or, more often, newly
imported theories that came from economics and finance and whose champions were by
and large not even aware of SCT existence.
With its economic stance and pretension of a new paradigm, strategy had no need for
an old-time sociological theory such as the SCT. Burton agreed that strategy pushed out
organization theory although latter theories such as population ecology and knowledge
management were at best complementary. Donaldson summarized: ‘while strategy has
risen, it is potentially and in practice interested in organization design and hence SCT,
and some scholars on the strategy interface do good SCT work. Organization Theory
seems to me to continue in many parts of the world, though I hear that it has declined
in some parts of US. The strong institutional factor is that business school academics
have adopted values of more basic academic disciplines and so drifted from practically
relevant studies, e.g., conducting institutional theory studies to appeal to the values of so-
ciology. This is partly due to recruitment of PhDs from academic disciplines who control
the journals’.
Realizing the potential to expand their domain in an area underserved by econ-
omists, strategy scholars would co-opt organizational structure as part of ‘strategy
implementation’. A popular strategy text (Grant, 1991, 1995) added a chapter on
organizational structure to its third edition, in an effort to meet demand for ‘strategy
implementation’. By the 2010 edition of the Grant book, organizational structure
survived as a mere portion of a single chapter (Grant, 2010). Some SCT scholars saw
the ominous implications of such scholarly competition in the scholarly environment.
Donaldson argued that:
‘… competition hurts it badly. Many new theories eschewed integration with SCT.
They were attractive in part because of being new, in part because they were able to
gain influence in leading journals. False idea that SCT was matured out, was propa-
gated, as were other false criticisms. Now some doctoral students taught only newer
theories’.
Pugh noted that SCT is ‘in much stronger competition because there are lots and
lots of different approaches’. He saw a lack of a scientific approach –rather than
ask how we can improve a theory, we continuously come up with new paradigms.
The underlying problem, he says, is the incentive system: ‘you are rewarded more for
(coming up with a) new paradigm than for improving on an existing one; misinter-
preting Kuhn may have been the mechanism, but the incentive system was the driver
and trigger. Stopford added: indeed there is much competition, but there seems rela-
tively little of the hard work to test any of the theories against realistic performance
measures’.
In spite of their misgivings, some SCT scholars ultimately adjusted to the new
streams of thought. Child’s (1972) work, for example, could be viewed as a precursor
to the rise of strategy as a viable prism. Still, inspiration notwithstanding, SCT, and
quite possibly by design, organization theory as a whole has not become part of the
‘canon’ of the strategy field. One reason was that while SCT started with Woodward’s
(1958) search for variable firm performance, many subsequent SCT empirical studies
studied correlations between environment or technology on the one hand and struc-
tural variables on the other, with only a portion testing whether a ‘fit’ between the
independent and dependent variables produced superior performance. This made
strategy’s claim that it was the one field able to explain ‘abnormal performance’ more
credible, if ingenious.
The role of the scientific community. SCT was more than a theoretical framework. SCT was
a kind of school of thought, that is –‘… the perspective of a group of people who share
common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social
movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement… Schools are often named
after their founders such as the Linji School of Zen named after Linji Yixuan; and the
Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy, named after Abu l’Hasan al-Ashari. They
are often also named after their places of origin, such as the Ionian school of philosophy,
which originated in Ionia; the Chicago school of architecture, which originated in
Chicago, Illinois; the Prague school of linguistics, named after a linguistic circle founded
in Prague; and the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School, whose representatives lived in Tartu
and Moscow’ (Wikipedia).
Geison (1981) defines scientific schools as places where scientists and advanced stu-
dents engage in a coherent program of research and interaction-based learning. Such
schools, as Olesko (1993) writes, are sustained by community properties, which enable
the transmission of what is often tacit knowledge. An appropriate network enables not
only knowledge maximization (Bellanca, 2009) and increased performance (Friedkin,
1998), but also helps advance theories and individual scholars. Research school affilia-
tion also carries negative repercussions, however, such as lack of objectivity, rejection of
external validation and criticism and narrowness of perspective (Servos, 1993). Ironically,
those very characteristics strengthen a research school and enhance community cohesion
and resilience and ultimately the ability of the school to face external threats from rival
schools or theories.
Cohesion and resilience might be important factors for researchers to feel satisfied with
what they are doing and in what they support. Researchers in a cohesive and resilient
scholarly community feel supported by those around them, experience a sense of belong-
ing, and feel connected to their colleagues. Pravdic and Oulic-Vukovic (1986) found that
the existing connection between researchers’ frequency of collaboration and the number
of published articles depends on the strength and type of relationship that exists among
the researchers. Connections with the group’s academic stars/leaders increase personal
productivity and publishing prospects. As long as these activities are conducted within
the same theoretical framework or even the same stream of though within the theory,
they contribute to survival.
To support these arguments, we traced the network of researchers who dealt with
structural contingency theory from the late 1950s onward, in an attempt to exemplify the
connection between the structure of the SCT researchers’ network, and the theory’s po-
tential decline. Based on all (146) SCT articles from 1934 to 2007, we formed a network
where researchers are connected via published articles. Figure 2 displays the collegial
network between SCT researchers over 50 years academic work. The collegial network
was relatively fragile because of the aforementioned disconnect between the two SCT
streams (‘technology’ and ‘environment’). It reflects dispersed relations within the SCT
community of scholars. Whereas one can identify some cooperation between some of
the SCT founding scholars –Hickson, Pennings, Pugh, Hinings, Inkson and Turner, the
rest of the network is comprised of separate teams of or single researchers.
Diverse streams of thought within a theory might decrease researchers’ commitment
to support the general theory and lower their motivation to stick together in fighting its
survival battle. It is possible that a unified group of SCT scholars would have been suffi-
cient to generate support for the retention and development of the theory, with additional
inputs becoming part of the theory development process possibly deterring competing
theoretical streams. Theories of motivation and leadership survived despite theoretical
and empirical setbacks likely because their proponents remained wedded to the theory
and to the discipline of psychology. Potentially contributing to that loyalty is that OB is
the only management area whose scholars are as likely to participate in the parent disci-
pline as in the applied business area; it is also the only field with no direct representation
in corporate structure and hence less of a claim on members.
McDowell and Amacher (1986) and Laband (1985) found that the probability that an
article will be published depends not only on its inherent quality, but also on the connec-
tions between the author(s) and the editor and/or publisher. According to Piette and Ross
(1992), social networks formed in academia are an important factor in the framework of
editors’ considerations on whether to publish a paper. Gordon (1980) showed that the
probability of publication for articles written by multiple authors was higher than for
single authored papers. Another study revealed that the number of authors per article is
positively correlated with its importance/influence, as measured by its citation numbers
(Crane, 1972; Goffman and Warren, 1980; Lawani, 1986). Pravdic and Oulic-Vukovic
801
articles. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Figure 2. Map of the connections among researchers of Structural Contingency Theory, according to articles published up until 2010. Note: Numbers indicate
The Rise and Fall of Structural Contingency Theory
(1986) found that the connection between researchers’ frequency of collaboration and
the number of published articles depends on the type of relationship among the re-
searchers. Thus, connections with prolific researchers increase personal productivity and
the possibility of publishing articles, and vice versa.
These findings give rise to the idea that structural shift in the collegial network among
SCT’s researchers might have been responsible for disrupting the SCT momentum.
Around the time of SCT rise, organizational sociologists were present on several cam-
puses, mainly Aston. This community began unravelling in the early 1980s, as sociolo-
gists and other social science scholars started moving to schools of business, and from the
UK to North America (Geison, 1981). This broad shift may have harmed the network’s
structure, known to be more efficient within a given geographic area (Jaffe et al., 1993).
The Aston team was in the midst of this trend.
Hickson saw ‘the dispersion of the Aston team’ as a major factor in the decline of
the theory. With Derek Pugh moving to the London Business School and John Child
recruited away, he (David) tried to rebuild a group at Bradford, but this did not work
and in hindsight was a mistake. Pugh said that ‘groups don’t stay forever’, seeing the
dispersion of the original SCT group as also a positive, since it helped ‘spread the
word’, but that the shift from sociology to business was a negative. One problem was
the critical approach dominating sociology as opposed to the positivist tools expected
by an executive audience: ‘(We have had) a whole generation of people on the people
side of business school who didn’t accept the values of a business school’. Another
problem were the doubts SCT raised concerning the Human Relations School and
the emerging front end of organization behaviour, because rather than accepting ‘the
worship of autonomy and job enrichment at face value, SCT said it depends’. Pugh
noted that those staying in sociology departments were often avowed Marxists, and
they attacked SCT from the other flank as not being sufficiently critical and as endors-
ing blind efficiency serving the interests of owners and a ruling elite. The shift from
sociology to business to strategy did not have much impact in his opinion, though the
move from the UK to the USA may have had an impact. The dispersion of scholars
was not an issue for Slocum and Stopford. Likewise, Donaldson did not think such
mobility hurt SCT.
The facilitating role of the citation system. The citation system is basically ‘a social device for
coping with problems of property rights and priority claims’ and to ‘serve as careful and
accurate reconstruction of the scholarly precursors of one’s own contribution’ (Kaplan,
1965, p. 181). As such, citation analysis is supposed to provide a reliable reflection of
the scientific activity. Per scientific norms, scholars are expected to extend recognition
accurately and fully, regardless of personal motivation or social consideration. Authors
are expected to give credit where credit is due; that is, they are expected to quote the
work of others in an unbiased fashion, neither support close friends and colleagues nor
disregard competitors (Cozzens, 1981; Edge, 1979; Garfield, 1970; MacRoberts and
MacRoberts, 1989; Smith, 1981).
Despite the attempt to build a reliable and valid citation system, scholars warn that
this allegedly mirror of science can be faulty (Viachy, 1985) and even biased (MacRoberts
and MacRoberts, 1989). The aforementioned personal network may be at play –the
work of social psychologist Herold Kelley, one of the founding fathers of attribution
theory, is rarely cited since his death. Researchers frequently and disproportionally use
self-citations (Soares et al., 2015); they also fail to systematically cite relevant formal
(Cole and Cole, 1974) as well as informal influences (Edge, 1979) on their studies. The
citation system is not only biased by ‘obliteration’, ‘halo effect’ or ‘in-house citations’,
scholars dismiss certain citations under the excuse that they are unimportant. Although
Wilson (1942) argued that researchers should cite other papers reaching both similar and
opposed conclusions, this is rarely the case. Wilson also argued that works of others are
frequently cited without having been read carefully and that many citations are simply
lifted from the bibliography in someone else’s work without either reading or giving
credit to the person who did the original research.
In many cases, citation biases are systematic or even deliberate, targeting survival
in a hyper-competitive environment. It was found (Kaplan, 1965), for example, that
American psychologists cite only work published in the past five years or so, while the
British and French often go back to nineteenth-century authors. Sociologists, on their
part, are more likely to cite the classic works of Max Weber or Durkheim than the
psychology classics. It can be argued that the difference in citation norms is associated
with the dramatic differences in level of competition in the academic environment
between Europe and the USA. Citing only work from the past five years allows re-
searchers to promotes members of their own network. There are probably differences
in level of competition between academic domains and they also shape the citation
norms.
Further to the above, we argue that SCT might have lost the theory war to new
theories led by young researchers who were at least partially inspired by the SCT’s
ideas, adopted its basic terms, implemented them in their new theoretical frame-
work in altered names and successfully disseminated them by sophisticatedly using
their social networks and/or the citation system. The interviews we conducted with
SCT founders revealed that at least some believed this was true. Pugh said that the
theory is not really dead but is used by others without acknowledging it, presumably
to justify the newness of their offerings. He gave Bartlett and Ghoshal’s (1988) work
on the ‘transnational corporation’ as an example. Pugh saw SCT as a precursor for
other contingency frameworks, such as cross-cultural management. Burton expressed
a similar view, noting that while ‘structural contingency’ is less used as a term, its
concepts continue to be used (e.g., configuration, modularity) and ‘are more broadly
used now than they were back then’. In that sense, SCT is ‘very much alive’, Burton
said. According to Child:
‘… SCT has moved on to a new phase in which the organizational challenge of mixed
contingencies is recognized. This new phase is discussed under headings such as am-
bidexterity and the hybrid approach to organizations’.
In sum, though SCT as a theory may have ‘gone with the wind’, its ideas are
very much alive and articulated in the fashionable terminology of other theoretical
frameworks. Should one accept this premise, the question is whether the changes,
or, more accurately, the pace of change in an academic field is related to the level
of competition in the scholarly environment and, especially, the requirement that

research be novel. We can also argue that whenever a new term emerges, citation of
works using the old terminology tends to fade, and citation of publications using the
new terminology increases. In other words, the citation curve of academic work is
curvilinear: It ascends until that point in time when a new term emerges, and then
begins its descent. The range of these oscillations is contingent on environmental
competitiveness, among other factors.
DISCUSSION
The ‘autopsy’ conducted here yields a number of observations. First, scholarly rigor,
while improvable, is hardly a significant factor behind SCT’s demise. The theory was
on a trajectory of conceptual clarification and methodological advancement and in
many ways remains superior on those accounts to competing theories that have survived.
Second, the theory’s empirical support has been well within the standards of the field if
other theoretical frameworks are used as a benchmark. Third, while SCT’s domain re-
mained narrow, this has not been much different from other theories. Nor was SCT any
less practical than contemporary theories.
A number of explanations showed up to be more feasible. First was the failure to link and
hence integrate across the two competing streams of technology and environment. This
has not only reduced scale but also pre-empted theory development opportunities. Second
was the failure to link with other theoretical frameworks. When ‘neo SCT’ scholars such as
Donaldson have tried to establish such linkages, it was too late to halt the theory’s decline.
Third, SCT fell victim to the field’s affection for fashion and fads, being perceived as old and
rigid in a world that incentivize newness. All of these explanations would not be sufficient
however without the addition of an institutional factor. The dismantling of the research
school associated with SCT following the exodus of organization studies from sociology
to business schools and the dispersion of the Aston group appears as quite a dominant ex-
planation for the theory’s decline (even though a few saw a silver lining in the ‘missionary’
dispersal). Nor was there an outside event to revive SCT, akin to what the rise of Asian tigers
did for modernization theory, e.g., revive the notion that economic progress may take differ-
ent routes than that offered by Western precedents (Knoble, 2003).
It is interesting to see how other theories facing similar predicament did not disappear.
Cohen and Eichenbaum (1991, p. 267) write about a theory dealing with impaired mem-
ory following hippocampal damage:
‘Why does the spatial mapping theory refuse to die? … First, the finding of place cells
was among the most compelling examples ever reported of a behavioral correlate
brain activity. Second, space is so pervasive in both laboratory tasks and real-world
functioning… that it is difficult to ignore in theory development or test construction.
Third, limited-domain accounts have the appeal of providing an explanation of (their
limited domain of) phenomena in language that is very clearly and closely tied to the
data; predictions are easy to make within the restricted domain’.
While it is challenging to compare, it seems that much of the same would apply to
SCT: The theory has been criticized for having a limited, narrow domain, but it seems
equally enticing in providing clear predictions and has certainly been pervasive then its
decline has begun. And yet, SCT did die, or, at least, to paraphrase McArthur’s state-
ment again, just faded away.
The Impact of SCT on the Organization Theory’s Landscape

In spite of SCT’s fate, there is no question about its contribution the organization theory’s
landscape. As we have noted, several of our interviewees were of the opinion that SCT
did not die but has morphed into new theories, frameworks and approaches. In particular,
Rich Burton insisted that while the term ‘structural contingency’ is less in use nowadays, the
concepts (e.g., modularity) are in even more use now. The theory survived, even thrived, he
suggested, under different names, e.g., configuration, and while previous authors looked at a
single contingency variable, modern day scholars looking at multiple variables. This was also
the view of John Child, who saw SCT’s imprint in current concepts such as ambidexterity.
Still, our review suggested that cases where a theory or a perspective will build directly
on SCT are relatively rare. Even in the few instances where the forerunners of SCT
are referenced, there is seldom an explicit effort to build on the SCT model. A sample
exception is the article by Birkinshaw et al. (2002), which attempts to extend the SCT
framework to the presumably new contingency factor of knowledge (which arguably
is already accommodated in the framework –environment-structure fit reduces uncer-
tainty, thus augmenting relevant knowledge), but such examples are rare and seem to
have completely disappeared in later years when SCT appears to have been dropped
from the attention screen. Thus, most of our observations are indirect, pointing at an
implicit impact and or proposing how a use of SCT could enrich the current theoretical
perspectives.
If a direct lineage from SCT to later theories is difficult to establish, SCT may have
inspired recent theories indirectly. Another, perhaps less palatable possibility, is that
other theories have independently identified concepts and constructs that are simi-
lar to those of SCT, a ‘reinvention of the wheel’ that raises serious questions about
achieving progress in the organization theory realm, that would benefit from building
on the existing theoretical base. Regardless, we believe that SCT has provided frame-
works and tools that are not only useful for contemporary organizational research,
but that on some level are superior to those of today, or, at the least, can be viewed as
complementary. This also offers the prospect of integrating and synthesizing multiple
theories –an important endeavour at a time when new theories seem to be added
almost yearly.
A first, broad observation is that SCT has had a seminal impact on the transition of or-
ganization theory from an age of universalistic theories (clearly a misinterpretation in the
case of Max Weber’s work but still the accepted wisdom of the time), to an age of contin-
gency where the environment, on its various iterations, became central to organizational
scholarship and theory making. Koontz’s (1980, p. 180) observation that ‘one of the
approaches to management thought and practice that has tended to take management
academicians by storm is the contingency approach to management’ which ‘emphasizes
the fact that what managers do in practice depends on a given set of circumstances’ can
be clearly attributed to SCT, which came after a long set of presumably universal models.
It is well beyond the scope of this paper to offer an exhaustive review of the potential
impact and value of SCT for later theories, but let us provide a few examples. Take, for in-
stance, resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). The crux of the theory
is that organizations are dependent on their environment for key inputs, a dependence
that limits their ability to operate freely, consistent with their objectives and capabilities,
hence the need to understand these dependencies and develop strategies to deal with
them. Interdependence is one of the contingency factors identified by SCT research,
and in the aforementioned unified framework (Ellis et al., 2002) appears as a driver of
uncertainty. Not only does SCT offers a more sophisticated way with which to capture
interdependence (Randolph, 1981) and identify the uncertainty dimensions it triggers,
but SCT can support resource dependence in other ways. For instance, unlike in SCT, in
resource dependence theory, interdependence does not drive organization structure, nor
does the fit between the two predict performance, aspects that could enrich the resource
framework. Resource dependence theory is focused on reducing interdependence as the
main way to mitigate uncertainty (e.g., Hillman et al., 2009), but the strategies to do that
do not include a structural response, e.g., bringing operations in-house, which is easier to
accommodate in an organic design.
Though rooted in biology, population ecology (Hannan and Freeman, 1977) is also
a product of the transition towards a focus on the environment, initiated by SCT.
Population ecology has no role for management, viewing the organization’s fate as pre-
ordained. To an extent, this is consistent with the criticism of SCT as too deterministic,
however later SCT literature, in particular Child (1972) and Donaldson (1987) have tried
to navigate it towards a managerial active scenario where executives react to contingen-
cies in the environment or technology, which could serve as a template for injecting some
discretion into organizational fate. For example, the Child and Donaldson approaches
can be seen to counter, or complement, the concept of organizational inertia, which is
central to the population ecology argument.
In agency theory (Jensen and Meckling, 1976), outcome uncertainty is a central
construct, and SCT can show how it might differ from other uncertainty dimensions.
Eisenhardt (1989) asks how agency theory can contribute to organization theory, but the
question can also be posed in reverse, that is, how can organization theory, specifically
SCT, contribute to agency theory. For instance, one might propose that when a principal
and an agent have a different structure, suspicion will be greater because of the difficulty
or monitoring, say, a mechanistic structure by an organic organization and vice versa.
Similarly, one could argue that the ability to sign behavioural based contracts as opposed
to outcome-based contracts depends, among other factors, on the organizational struc-
ture adopted in response to technology, the environment, and the resulting uncertainty.
For example, an outcome-based contract will not be effective when tasks are ill-defined.
Similarly, personality variations notwithstanding, risk aversion which will impact the
principal-agent relationship might be higher in mechanistic organizations whose execu-
tives are used to deal with a stable environment or may have drawn into them in the first
place due to low risk tolerance.
For transaction costs theory, SCT provides a number of potentially complementary

opportunities. First, SCT seems to provide a more sophisticated conceptualization of
uncertainty, which is a core construct in the transaction costs model. For instance, trans-
action cost economics does not make a clear distinction between the general uncertainty
in the environment and the uncertainty surrounding the potentially opportunistic actions
of actors. And although transaction cost economics and the resource-based perspective
make ample use of such concepts as ‘tacitness’ and ‘codification’, they do not make the
connection with SCT related concepts such as task routinization and uniformity. For ex-
ample, the idea of ‘inimitability’ which lies at the heart of the resource-based approach
is akin to ‘craft’ technology in the Woodward classification, and while Kogut and Zander
(1995) have offered a rudimentary classification of knowledge management, it is a far
cry from SCT’s multidimensional rigor. Also, the organization structure used by a firm
can have a substantial impact of the ability of an actor to act opportunistically, another
key construct in transaction costs economics: By definition, an organic structure provides
more opportunities for lower-level actors to act ‘with guile’ since their discretion is wider
and monitoring will be more limited.
Another example is signalling theory, which is focused on issues related to information
asymmetry, that is, when one party has more and or better access to information than
the other, in particular the reduction of said asymmetry (e.g., Connelly et al., 2011).
Organizational structure is not part of the signalling theory equation, but it could well
be. For example, a ‘party’ is typically an organization, and its environment and structure
could have material influence on how much information is available to decision makers
at various levels. While sometimes using concepts such as dynamism and complexity,
signalling theory does not take advantage of the SCT framework which ties organization
and environment together.
Finally, though not a theory per se, ambidexterity, a concept that has gained pop-
ularity in the strategy literature refers to the ability of an organization to compete in
different types of contexts, dynamic or less so (e.g., Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004), for
instance, when simultaneously facing mature and new technologies (e.g., Tushman
and O’Reilly, 2013). Essentially, the argument is that different parts of the organiza-
tion are exposed to different levels of environmental turbulence, which is tantalizingly
close to the SCT model by Lawrence and Lorsch (1967). Linking ambidexterity with
SCT will enable using a number of tools and a wealth of empirical evidence that
can be deployed not only to operationalize the concept but also position it within a
broader theoretical and applied context. For example, what ambidexterity scholars
call ‘alignment activities’ (e.g., Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004, p. 212) is very similar
to Child’s (1972) and Donaldson’s (1987) SAFRIT model. Crucially, Lawrence and
Lorsch (1967) discussed at length the integrating mechanisms through which different
subunits coordinate, which is highly relevant to the ability to achieve the said align-
ment. While recent literature attempted something similar (e.g., Jansen et al., 2009),
it would benefit from looking at the different measures of structure, that is, central-
ization specialization and formalization, that tend to be lumped together in the latter
literature.
Further afield, SCT is likely the inspiration for Fiedler’s contingency leadership model,
though the link was never developed, probably because of the wall separating ‘macro’
and ‘micro’ research (mezzo attempts notwithstanding). The same walls can explain the
lack of synergy between the uncertainty captured in SCT, the tolerance for ambiguity
studied in organization behaviour, and the uncertainty avoidance studied in interna-
tional business, all of which would boost theory development.
Managerial Thinking and Reinventing the Wheel

SCT is not the first or only management theory to end up in the proverbial dustbin.
Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy has been so distorted over time, starting with
Peter Blau, that management textbooks now present it as a historical relic stripped
from all theoretical and predictive properties and, worse of all, as a closed system
model, whereas it was clearly a forerunner of environmental and comparative anal-
ysis. Scientific Management has become so much of a rallying cry to organization
behaviour that students no longer know its origin (the term was coined by Judge
Brandeis), ask why it was introduced, or why some of its principles are still visible in
certain workplaces. Other ‘old’ theories seem to be alive and well: Role theory has
been around for more than forty years. Transaction cost theory is almost half a cen-
tury old. Resource dependence, formalized in 1978 by Pfeffer and Salancik, saw an
initial decline, which may also be attributed to the weakening role of sociology in the
world of management, but eventually found a niche in strategy, possibly edged on by a
single researcher (Xia, 2011; Xia and Li, 2013; Zheng and Xia, 2016). The resource-
based view (Barney, 1991, 2001), to the extent that it is a theory at all, and despite
being clearly shown to be tautological (Priem and Butler, 2001), continues to serve as
a popular lens with which to address strategic dilemmas. Like SCT, game theory has
been criticized for its narrow perspective, not being ‘flexible enough to accommo-
date’ something else besides monetary gain (Guala, 2006. p. 251), and yet remains a
staple in multiple disciplines, from economics to international relations, among many
others. Guala (2006, p, 262) notes that even empirical rejection of some of its funda-
mental tenets did not undermine game theory’s standing, not among scholarly com-
munities nor among practitioners, so that ‘the refutation of game theory took place
almost simultaneously with the theory’s most remarkable successes in policy-making.’
So where do we go from here? Meehl (1990, p, 195), writing on psychological theories,
puts the dilemma succinctly:
‘Am I prepared to say that my friend X’s theory has been refuted, or strongly corrob-
orated, or is in some vague epistemic region in between? … Should we continue to
investigate it and try to patch things up? … Or is the state of the evidence such a mess
conceptually and interpretatively that perhaps the thing to do is to give it up as a bad
job and start working on something else?’.
The issue, indeed, is not what happens to SCT theory, but what are the implications
for the broader field of management? It has already been observed that Kuhn’s con-
cept of the progression of science through transition of paradigms (1977, 1996; see
also Shapere, 1964) may not be applicable in management, where ‘at any time, there
are a number of competing paradigms available’ (Clarke and Clegg, 2000, p. 45). But if
we continue to replace existing theories with others that offer no superior explanatory
power, we will end up in a non-virtuous cycle. In the meantime, we would be forfeiting
opportunities for cross-fertilization.
CONCLUSION
If theories are not formally refuted and continue to be active in one way or another,
we might get (or already are) into a dead end, where theories just pile up one on top
of the other, leading to stagnation or even regression rather than scientific progress.
According to Meehl (1990), this state is typical to the field of social sciences (of which
management and organization are a part): ‘… theories in the “soft areas” have a
tendency to go through periods of initial enthusiasm leading to large amounts of
empirical investigation with ambiguous over-all results. This period of infatuation is
followed by various kinds of amendment and the proliferation of ad-hoc hypotheses.
Finally, in the long run, experimenters lose interest rather than deliberately discard
a theory as clearly falsified’ (Meehl, 1990, p. 196). The question of how to proceed
is still open. Meehl (1990, p. 195) does not provide an unambiguous answer: on the
one hand, he argues, we can continue to collect evidence until we can safely refute
a theory (problematic because there is no accepted definition to when we can safely
make this decision); on the other hand, Meehl offers to move on, to let many theories
to ‘wallow in their blood’, to open a new page and start working on something new.
This, unfortunately, perpetuates the problem.
If this is the case, why does the academic community accept it with equanimity?
The silver lining off having multiple theories is that they bring some academic benefits.
Cronbach (1954, 1975) argued that there are more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamt in our hypotheses, and our observations should be open to them. It means
that our theories are always restricted and there is no single theory that can explain the
multiple phenomena of this world. A death of a theory reduces the cost of research that
juxtaposes various theoretical perspectives, but, at the same time, there is a fear that with
the death of a theory, many ideas that have not yet been put to an empirical test will be
lost. Are we willing to pay the price?
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APPENDIX 1
Interviews Protocol
Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews
Did the theory die?

Child … Structural contingency theory has not disappeared from the schol-
arly stage. It depends on how broadly one defines ‘structural’. For
example, in one of my articles, I take measures to enable organiza-
tional participation as being structural.
Child … I think that SCT has moved on to new phase in which the organi-
zational challenge of mixed contingencies is recognized. This new
phase is being discussed under headings such as ambidexterity and
the hybrid approach to organization.
Burton … I think the word structural contingency theory, that phrase is prob-
ably less used now than it was in the past…the notions and concepts
seems to me are more broadly used now than they were back
then….the origins are different but some of the problems are quite
the same. … There’s a lot of work done in modularity and modu-
larity has been framed as an organizational contingency theory
argument, but it didn’t roll out of SCT tradition… but out of some
other traditions, economics, engineering and if you look at what
they found, I would argue that it adds to, maybe one to the other…
Theoretical
deficiencies
Hickson … The theory is not human enough…too mechanistic and neglects
the individual level.
… The theory is incomplete and static, but in principle, these limita-
tions could be overcome.
Child … We still don’t know enough about how decision-makers understand
and interpret the ‘implications’ of contingencies, including how
much their understanding is colored by ideological and power-
related considerations
Pugh … Two big things: first, we were too busy studying what organizations
do now, so this has become supposedly anti-change and second,
there was only a limited range of factors; I am OK with people later
saying ‘you should also have included…’.
Burton … a lot of the empirical work has been cross-sectional in nature and
consequently, I suppose, at a theoretical level, has been static. If you
look at Lex Donaldson’s work, he has tried to look at that. We just
published a paper on what we call a dynamic fit and if you go back
to elementary physics, we know from plutonian theory that static
mechanics is rather incomplete and this is true in all of static theory,
which is mostly what we do in management.
… SCT is too static… it is a key indictment of the theory of why
it declines. The field is now becoming increasingly obsessed with
time and certain contingency theories that basically ought to be a
dynamic theory that traces initial conditions to possible outcomes…
… We need to consider time in whatever length between variables we

postulate… structural contingency that has been cross-sectional has
been static and that in itself is maybe the reason it has petered out
or died…
Pennings … nowadays we need to come up with dynamic approaches, longitu-
dinal approaches to the framing why do they have the structure they
have as a function of time and that of course is very challenging
Pugh … there was only a limited range of factors; I am OK with people
later saying ‘you should also have included… ‘.
Burton … Any theory of this kind that has a one variable explanation is likely
to be limited… in a multi-contingency we tend to look at a handful
of contingencies and their effect on the organization’s structure that
involves issues of information systems and so forth.
… It seems to me there’s an evolution that arose over the last half
century with contingency theory, population ecology and organiza-
tional capabilities and so on. … from my point of view, we’re trying
to put them together and get a greater understanding than any one
of them by themselves.
Burton … If I would sum up the various weaknesses of the theory that had
an impact on its receptivity, I would put the climb in power of the
organization theory as an important factor perhaps more than the
others. The other factors are relatively minor –theoretical deficien-
cies, methodological weaknesses, empirical support, even faculty
mobility…
Stopford … Mostly, it is formulated and tested as cross-sectional. Too little on
temporal research and path-dependence. Maybe there are too many
independent variables to allow clarity for causality.
Donaldson … Most of the criticisms are wrong or have been dealt with by revi-
sions to the theory.
Empirical support
Child … Actually, the empirical findings are among the stronger and more
consistent of those we have in organizational analysis.
… Ignoring hindsight, I would say that at the time the support was
pretty convincing, but in hindsight I would say, given that the
research that was largely cross sectional and given that the research
failed to consider issues of let’s say endogeneity, we now would say
in hindsight that it did not… it was so primitive… by today’s stand-
ards, we can no longer claim it to have that validity.
… At the time, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the evidence seemed to be
quite compelling but nowadays… there is a guy at Wharton and
somebody at Harvard, Yuan Rivkin and Nicolai Siggelkov. They
have mostly done computer simulations testing contingency no-
tions… they have an eight pages paper in ASQ… I think in 2009,
in which they articulate initial foundations, organizational and
environmental and then trades what kind of outcomes follow from
the organizational and environmental relationship… So if you ask
now, is the empirical support still there? Well if you look at
Pennings … the simulation support, it is kind of compelling I would say, but

many people would dismiss in providing the kind of support that he
would like to have.
Stopford … Cannot adequately tested on cross-sectional basis. Few researchers
seem to have the patience to do longitudinal.
Slocum … The field seems to have lost any sense of urgency with regard to
contingency theory. Structural equation modeling should have been
methodological break through to test these relationships, but the
constructs still seem to ‘fuzzy’ and there are myriad of them to ex-
plain any dependent variable. Many of the dependent variables are
still subject and therefore, do not represent salient constructs that
can be aligned with firm performance, such as ROI, ROA, etc.
Practicality
Burton …This is a problem Obel and I tried to take on because we’re inter-
ested in if you make a distinction between organization structure
and organization theory, contingency theory and organizational
design, we were really trying to develop design propositions using
the theory. This is what the Springer book is about.
… The theory is a practically useful perspective in organizational
studies, though the complexity generated by concurrent multiple
contingencies presents a major challenge….
Child Moreover, we still don’t know enough about how decision-makers
understand and interpret the ‘implications of contingencies, includ-
ing how much their understanding is colored by ideological and
power-related considerations
Pugh … Consultants try to inspire but did not find inspiration in SCT. SCT
was not flexible enough for practitioners… SCT scholars should
have provided a framework for practitioners.
Hickson … People could not see how to use it, could not translate it to what to
do with that.
Stopford … Could be of enormous utility for organizational design. Gold et al.
were near this in the book a few years ago and McKinsey picked it
up. But they provided no formal mechanisms or tests.
Slocum … Given the plethora of confusing results, there are few practical im-
plications. As such, professional practitioner oriented journals, such
as HBR, Organizational Dynamics, the Sloan Management Review,
have not published many of these research pieces. It is hard to rec-
ommend actions where research results are few and contradictory.
Methodological
deficiencies
Hickson … it was superb work –not only by the standards of the time but also
by any standard
Pennings … the research designs were largely cross sectional and therefore inad-
equate; in fact, Fiss wrote a book that spells out contingency theories
in time based perspective… He argues that most of the research
designs in organization theory, structural contingency in particular,
were often marred because they failed to spell out what he called the
process through which organizations evolved towards a certain state.
Child … I don’t see serious methodological weaknesses; rather the limitation
that structures are not reliable guides to behaviour
Donaldson … Effect of a fit on performance is inherently weak because of there
being many fits between all the various contingencies and structural
variables. They are then peculiarly vulnerable to the problem of
sampling error. Also to problem of low reliability of misfits, because
being difference scores. And there is problem of range restric-
tion due to big misfits disappearing due adaptation of culling the
organization.
Change in
landscape
Burton … There are so many required courses, strategy is appropriately a
required course now. In some sense a lot of the strategy has been
very complimentary or in some cases taken over organizationally
some of the work organizational studies.
Hickson … Organization theory going a bit out of fashion.
Pennings … While in the short run business-schools offered a haven for many
organizational sociologists when sociology departments were being
closed, in the longer run they have been a context inimical to the
more discursive and critical culture of organization studies. Business
school students want simple solutions. So, I see the rise of HRM,
offering simpler solutions to managerial problems which do not
question established structures of power and status, as having been
another factor in the decline of the status of organization theory.
Faculty mobility
Child … Faculty mobility did not help, because it weakened the critical mass
previously achieved by research teams such as the Aston Group
which had the ability (and assured funding) to conduct replication
studies and to explore the boundaries to structural contingencies
theory such as structures as contingencies for group and individual
behavior
Hickson … The dispersion of the Aston team. Derek Pugh recruited John
Child. He (Derek) moved to London Business School, then the
Open University. David (Hickson) built another group at Bradford,
let them do something new, that was a mistake!
…
Burton … Sociology departments now seem to have less interest in organiza-
tional theory then they did some time ago.
Competition
Burton … I suppose there’s always a churn and ideas as they should be after
the contingency theory, there’s population ecology which initially
really changed the analysis from the organization to the population
and initially started to deal with not unrelated to that how certain
people spent their effort there. In the strategy field you clearly have
people and they’re worried about issues in knowledge manage-
ments, in capabilities, in resource management of the firm. These
in some sense are all internal models or models of the inside of the
organization and why it works and how it can be affected. They
seem to be rather complimentary to me rather than competing.
Hickson … Theory competition –no, was not a factor.
Child … The so-called ‘paradigm wars’ instigated by scholars like Burrell
and Morgan cast a shadow over structural contingencies theory
implying that it was inherently conservative and therefore deflected
attention away from possibilities for radical organizational alter-
natives. I see the newer theories as potentially complementary to
structural contingencies theory rather than having superior explana-
tory power.
Stopford … Indeed, there is much competition, but there seems relatively little
of the hard work to test any of the theories against performance
measures.
Donaldson … while strategy has risen, it is potentially and in practice interested
in organization design and hence SCT, and some scholars on the
strategy interface do good SCT work. Organization Theory seems
to me to continue in many parts of the world, though I hear that
it has declined in some parts of US. The strong institutional factor
is that business school academics have adopted values of more
basic academic disciplines and so drifted from practically relevant
studies, e.g., conducting institutional theory studies to appeal to the
values of sociology. This is partly due to recruitment of PhDs from
academic disciplines who control the journals.
Donaldson … competition hurts it badly. Many new theories eschewed integra-
tion with SCT. They were attractive in part because of being new,
in part because they were able to gain influence in leading journals.
False idea that SCT was matured out, was propagated, as were
other false criticisms. Now some doctoral students taught only
newer theories.

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Journal of Management Studies 59:3 May 2022

The Rise and Fall of Structural Contingency Theory:

Oded Shenkara and Shmuel Ellisb

‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away’.

Paper Structure and Method

THE RISE AND FALL OF STRUCTURAL CONTINGENCY THEORY

A THEORY’S ‘AUTOPSY’: WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR SCT’S DECLINE?

Is SCT a complete theory?

Lack of attention to change

Treating one contingency at a time

Lack of empirical support

Centralization Formalization Specialization

Division of labor (work specialization)

Complexity 29 studies 22 studies 19 studies

­environmental changes (Koberg, 1987) technology) technology) technology)

Centralization Formalization Specialization

Complexity r = −0.09 r = −0.219 r = −0.073

articles. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

of competition in the scholarly environment and, especially, the requirement that

The Impact of SCT on the Organization Theory’s Landscape

For transaction costs theory, SCT provides a number of potentially complementary

Managerial Thinking and Reinventing the Wheel

Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews

Did the theory die?

Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews

… We need to consider time in whatever length between variables we

Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews

Pennings … the simulation support, it is kind of compelling I would say, but

Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews

Interviewee Them Example Quotes from Interviews

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environmental changes (Koberg, 1987) technology) technology) technology)