Page 178 - DMGT520_ORGANIZATION_CHANGE_AND_DEVELOPMENT

Unit 13: Mechanistic and Organic Systems

management action which will be suitable for all situations. Contingency approach tries to fill Notes
the gap between organisation and its environment.

Notes Contingency approach takes into account not only given situations but also the
influence of given solutions on behavior patterns of an organisation.
According to Tosi and Hammer the basic view is that when a subsystem in an organisation
behaves in response to another system or subsystem, we say that response is contingent on
environment.
Contingency approach has the following features:

 Management action is contingent on certain action outside the system or subsystem as the
case may be.
 Organisational action should be based on the behavior of action outside the system so that
organisation should be integrated with the environment.
 Because of the specific organisation-environment relationship, no action can be universal.
It varies from situation to situation.

13.3.1 Implications of Contingency Approach

Contingency approach is an important addition to the paradigm of modern theory of
management. It is the sophisticated approach to understand the increasing complexity to the
organisation. The major implications of the contingency approach are as follows:
 Management is entirely situational and there is nothing like universal principle of
management or one best way of doing a particular thing.

 The approach suggests suitable alternatives for those managerial actions which are
generally contingent upon external and internal environment such as organisational design,
strategy formulation, etc.
 Contingency approach suggests that since the organisation interacts with its environment,
neither the organisation or any of its subsystem is free to take absolute action.

13.3.2 Limitations of Contingency Approach

In spite of various contributions, contingency approach has not been acknowledged as a unified
theory of management because it suffers from certain limitations:
 Inadequate literature: This approach has not adequately spelled out various types of
actions which can be taken under different situations.
 Complex: The suggestion of this approach is very simple, that the mangers when actually
put into practice, this becomes very complex.

 Difficult empirical testing: This approach lacks the empirical validity and hence cannot be
adopted to managerial actions.

 Reactive not proactive: Contingency approach is basically reactive in nature. It merely
suggests what mangers can do in a given situation.

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