Organizasyonel yapılarda stratejik bir faktör olarak çevrenin sayısal analizi

Abstract

Bütün isletmeler bâr çevre içinde yasamak ve hayatlarını sürdürmek zorundadır. Bunun için isletmeler organizasyon yapıları içerisinde çevredeki değişimleri önceden sezecek ve bunlara karsı önlemler alacak veya bunları kendi yararlarına çevirecek birimler kurarlar. Bu birimlerin bir görevi de geleceğe yönelik planlar yapmaktır. Bunların yapılabilmesi için isletmeler çevrelerinin özelliklerini bilmek ve öğrenmek zorundadırlar. Bu çevre özelliklerinin isletmelerin organizasyon yapılarına olan etkileride unutulmamalıdır. Bu çalışmanın amacı. işletmelerin bu çevresel boyutlarının sayısal olarak ölçülebilmesi için bir literatür araştırması sunmak ve Türkiye'de imalat sektöründe bu boyutların bir uygulamasını vermekti. Bu amaçla yapılan çalışmalar besbölüm altında toplanmıştır. Birinci bolümde, organizasyon teorileri anlatılmış ve bu teorilerin önerdikleri organizasyonel yapıların güçlü ve zayıf tarafları incelenmiştir. Her organizasyon teorisi çevreye değişik bir bakış açısı getirmiş ve bu bakış açısına bağlı olarak da kendi yapılarını oluşturmuşlardır. Bu bölümde özellikle klasik, davranışsal ve durumsallık - kosulsallık yaklaşımları üzerinde durulmuş, ve araştırmamızın temelini oluşturan kosusallık yaklaşımının detayları üzerinde durulmuştur. ikinci bölümde, ilk bölümde anlatılan organizasyon teorilerinden yola çıkılarak organizasyon-çevre etkileşimi ve organizasyonların çevreleri incelenmiştir. Çevre tanımlamaları verilmiş, çeşitli yazarların çevreye bakış açıları açıklanmıştır. üçüncü bölümde, organizasyonların çevresel boyutlarının tanımları verilmiş ve bunların nasıl ölçülebileceği hakkında bir literatür araştırması sunulmuştur. Dördüncü bölümde, üçüncü bölümde açıklamaları, ölçüm yöntemleri verilmiş olan çevresel boyutların, Türkiye uygulamasının yapılabilmesi için araştırmanın kavramsal temeli verilmiştir. Aynı bölüm içinde oluşturulan bilgi toplama formu ve imalat sektörü içindeki on bir firmaya uygulanması sonucu elde edilen değerler verilmiştir. Besinci ve son bölümde ise, dördüncü bölümde elde ettiğimiz değerlerin istatistiksel analizleri Ve bu analizlerin yorumları verilmiştir. Ayrıca gelecek çalışmalar için öneriler de bu bölümde verilmiştir.

The purpose of the thesis is to investigate dimensions of organizational environments and how we can measure them. Studies of the bussiness environment have assumed a very important position in the thinking of management scholars as changes in interest rates, the money supply, demographics, and technology have become more frequent and pronounced than before. Evidence of this increased emphasis on environmental conditions is provided by two major theories of management that have come into their own over past 25 years: open system theory and contingency theory. Both of these theory's focus on the nature of the relationship between organizations and their environments, and refinements of these theories have resulted in an increased awareness of the signif iciance of environmental change of organizational effectiveness. Resource-dependence theory and population-ecology theory are two recent examples of open system theory extensions. Organizational theorists emphasize that organizations must adapt to their environment if they are to remain viable. In the thesis environment is thought of as the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision making behavior of individuals in the organizations. If the environment is defined in this way. there are then factors within the boundaries of the organization or specific decision making units that must be considered as part of the environment. A differentiation is made between the system's internal and external environment. The internal environment consists of those relevant physical and social factors within the boundaries of the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration in the decision making behavior of individuals in that system. The internal environment consists Of organizational personnel component, organizational functional and staff units component and organizational level component. The external environment consists of those relevant physical and social factors outside the boundaries of -XI 1- the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration. The external environment consists of customer component, suppliers component, competitor component, socio-political component and technological component. The next step was the identification of the environment's dimensions. In this step, seven environmental dimensions (characteristics) can be suggested: perceived uncertainty, environmental volatilities (market volatility, technological volatility, income volatility and industrial volatility), complexity (the simple-complex dimensions), dynamism (static-dynamic dimension), munificence, concentrations (industry-sales concentration, competitive concentration) and routineness of problem/ opportunity states. These dimensions (characteristics) were conceptualized for the thesis in the following manner. First dimension is perceived uncertainty. Uncertainty can be defined as a state that exist when an individual defines himself as engaging in directed behavior based upon less than complete knowledge of (a) his existing relationship with his environment, (b) the existence of and knowledge of conditional, functional relationships between his behavior and environmental variables to the occurrence of a future (ts.) self environment relation and (c) the place of future (ti) self environment relations within longer time frame (ta t") of a Belf environment relations hierarchy. Two basic methods were developed for the measurement of perceived uncertainty. One of them is developed by Robert B. Duncan and the other method is developed by P.R. Lawrence and J.W. Lorsch. Duncan state that three components of uncertainty were mentioned by some or all of the eighteen individuals who gave a definition: (1) the lack of information regarding the environmental factors associated with a given decision making situation, (2) not knowing the outcome of a specific decision in terms of how much the organization would lose if the decision were incorrect, and (3) inability to assign probabilities with any degree of confidence with regard to how environmental factors are going to affect the success or failure of the decision unit in performing its function. Dimensions 1 and 2 of perceived environmental uncertainty are measured by scale items similar to those in the Likert system. The firs dimensions contains six scale items of which the following is an example: how often do you believe that the information you have about this factor is adequate for decision making? The second dimension is composed of six scale items. An example is: how often do you feel you are unable to predict how this factor is going to -XI 11- react to or be affected by decision made in this group? There. are two components to the question that measures the third dimension. First, the respondent was asked to indicate on a scale how sure he was of how each of these factors was going to affect the success or failure of his work group in carrying out its function. Lawrence and Lorsch's instrument is a nine item questionnaire designed to measure uncertainty in the three subenvironments of marketing» manufacturing, and research. In administering this instrument, the respondent is asked three questions about each of the subenvironments. The response to each question is evaluated using a Likert-type scale. The questions and response categories determine the extend to which each subenvironments is perceived according to the following characteristics: (1) lack of clarity of information, (2) general uncertainty of casual relations, and (3) long time span of feedback about results. Responses to the three questions for each subenvironment are summed, resulting in three subenvironment and one total uncertainty score for each respondent. The nature of uncertainty may be subject to several interpretations. A reasonable interpretation would be degree of accuracy with which one can predict the future. Where there is less variance, there is more certainty. In terms of sales or income those firms or industries that have more stable patterns would be more certain environments. This measure, dealing with the range of fluctuations of revenues or expenditures, is generally called volatility. Four volatility measures can be calculated. Their definitions of these measures follow: Market volatility: The average of the coefficients of variation of sales divided by average sales revenue for individual firms in the industry. Technological volatility: The average ratio of the sum of researh and development expenditures and capital expenditures to total assets over a period of years for individual firms, and this figure for individual, firms averaged in order to obtain a technological volatility measure. Income volatility: The average of the coefficients of variation of earnings before interest and taxes divided by average sales revenue for individual firms in the industry. Industry volatility can be defined the average of market and technological volatility. La Porte's (1971) definition of the complexity construct served as a guideline for operational izat ion -xiv- of his concept. He defined complexity as a function of three sets of variables: (a) the. number of factors and components in the internal and external environments that must be taken into consideration in decision making goal setting, and goal attainment; (b) the relative differentiation or variety of these factors and components; and (c) the degree of interdependency among the factors and components. The first two sets of variables deals with the extent to which the various factors and components in the environmental list affect or restrict the CEO's activities pertaining to goal setting, decision making, and goal attaintment, and hence relates to the problem of manageability of the stimuli. Static-dynamic dimension indicates the degree to which the factors of the decision unit's internal and external environment remain basically the same over time or are in a continual process of change. It is composed of two subdimensions. The first focuses on the degree to which the factors identified by decision unit members in the unit's internal and/or external environment are stable, that is, remain the same over time, or are in a process of change. The first subdimension of the static -dynamic dimensions is measured by asking respondents how often each of the factors that they identified as being important in decision making in their internal and/or external environment change. The decision units are then given a score on this subdimension from the average response of all the entities as changed. Individual responses are averaged to form the unit's overall score on this subdimension. The second subdimension focuses on the frequency with which decision unit members take into consideration new and different internal and/or external factors in decision making process. This subdimension is measured by asking respondents of a given decision unit how often they consider new and different factors in decision making. The response categories vary along the five point scale. According to Aldrich, environmental capacity, which Dess and Beard labeled munificence. refers to availability of environmental resources to support growth. Therefore, indicators for this dimension should reflect growth. Dess and Beard suggested that industry sales (or market growth) is the primary factor in environmental munificence. Following that resonlng, we designated the indicators for this dimensions as avarage growth in net sales and operating income in the dominant industry. The growth measure of each was the antilog of regression slope coefficient. The result is a smoothed measure of average growth rate over the period. Concentration, and ©specially changes in concentration, signals the extent to which a few firms are increasing or decreasing their control of critical -xv- resources. Usually such changes are accompanied or quickly followed by corresponding decreases and increases in the total number of firms competing. Thus, increasing concentration should indicate a growing diffuculty for young or small firms in acquiring critical resources. Decreasing concentration should signals an opportunity for new organizations to acquire resources. Competitive concentration, which is calculated in terms of such factors as the percentage of sales, plant capacity, or distribution channels controlled by the largest four or eight competitors, provides a summary indicator of both the strength and intensity of competitive rivalry. This costruct was measured as a three year average of percentage changes in four-firm unit sales concentration ratios. Three- year averages were calculated for unit concentrations, for the same reasons described for unit sales. Percentage is calculated as a fraction of the change in concentration from one year to the next over the concentration of the earlier year. The routineness of problem/opportunity states: Perrow distinguished between the analyzabil ity and variability of the of the stimuli or problem/opportunity states because the two elements need not go hand in hand "Because no two stimuli ever present themselves in exactly the same manner, a stimulus is said to be analyzable when incremental adaptations from existing programs or portions of existing programs can easily be made to standardize the new situation". In the present research, the routineness of problem/opportunity states dimension was analyzed in terms of the variability of the stimuli, analyzabil ity of the stimuli, and the amount of discrepancy between environmental demands and the organizational unit's capacity. The lesser the discrepancy between environmental demands and organizational unit's capacity, the greater the perceived influence over the environment and the greater the ability to resort to recsort to routine procedures in handling the problem/opportunities that arise in the focal unit. The routineness of problem/opportunity states dimension thus was measured by collecting information as follws. (1) The CEO was asked to enumerate the frequence with which the focal unit is able to resort to each of four decision procedures (ranging from highly routine to nonroutine) to arrive at decisions or recommendations. The score on this question was obtained by calculating the frequency of routine procedures. The higher the scaled routine score, the greater the reliance on rotine procedures in that particular deparment. (2) An investigation of the amount of search effort (e.g. establisment of task force, hiring consultant, number of man-hour spent) undertaken by the focal unit to gain critical information to clarify the decision problem at hand. Each respondent indicated the number of task force that -xvi- were set up in his department. These were rank-ordered and split into five even categories. A department receiving a score of 5 engaged in very few or no task force efforts. (3) The CEO was asked to indicate the extent to which is department measures up to demand made by both routine and nonroutine problems, in terms of knowledge» capital, and other physical/material resources, including personnel. In orfer to come up with an overall "ability to measure up to demands" score, the subject's response to the pertinent question regarding routine problems was multiplied by the scaled froquency of routine procedures index and then added to response to the similar question on nonroutine problems multiplied by the scaled frequency of nonroutine procedures index. This sum was then divided by 5 to end up with a 5-point scale ranging from "l=unable to measure up to demands" to "5=able to measure up to demands".