Environmental Stability Or Complexity For Structure Designing?

It is important for organizations that the structure corresponds to the environment. The objective is to know, from the perspective of enterprise directors, what they consider for designing organizational structure: stability or complexity. A correlation cross sectional study was developed in 23 enterprises in which their directors or representatives participated in a survey consisting in two instruments: one for verifying their perspective about structural performance, and another for knowing how they consider their environment in two dimensions: stability and complexity, according to Duncan´s classification. The results show that environmental complexity is more considered than stability by directors for designing their organizational structure. There is also a strong correlation between structure designing and organizational performance, which corresponds to what was expected according to the authors in the supportive literature. The study was developed in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, in mid-size enterprises including manufacturing, commerce and service. The data was gathered in the second semester of 2006. As structures are designed based on complexity more than in stability, which had not been discussed before at least for enterprises in the South-East of Mexico, their response to environmental attacks tends to be slower than necessary, decision making takes a long time and the mechanistic paradigm prevails. Helping organizations consider both stability and complexity could make them respond in a faster and more accurate way to environmental change, making them more flexible, productive and competitive.