In creating an environmental strategy from the transformation perspective of organizational environment, the authors write that the traditional manage-your-environment approach is futile. While such an approach may appear to produce favorable short-term results, such results may not be true over the long term. The organization is part of a larger, interdependent whole, and its actions affect that larger whole (Bonner & Gagne, 1995, p. 222). The new strategies recommended to replace the old self-centered ones include the following: seek to play one's part in the whole, stay flexible, focus on moving with the cycles rather than trying to manage them, seek to establish collaborative, win-win relationship with the elements of the external environment, and develop a proactive mind-set (Bonner & Gagne, 1995, pp. 222-226).
Strategies are designed in response to perceived opportunities and constraints presented by the external environment. The authors illustrated the environment-strategy-structure link as the approach that forges the formal linkages between the external elements of the organization and the internal decision making or resource allocation functions within the organization. The following stages are followed: assessment of the external environment; formulation of the organization's purpose, philosophy, mission, and key goals; selection of specific long-term objectives and strategies needed to achieve the objectives; development of short-range objectives and allocation of resources to achieve them; and design of organizational structures and systems to achieve the goals. Using this model, strategic decisions are those key decisions that tie the organization's mission and purpose to the environmental opportunities (Bonner & Gagne, 1995, p. 324).
Organizational theorists trace their origins back to the writings of Max Weber. Weber was more interested in understanding how Western society was changing, however, than ...