The Relevance of the Structural-Contingency Model for Organizational Effectiveness

Abstract

Johannes M. Pennings This paper examines the structural-contingency model. Both subjective and objective data were used to explore the degree of association between measures of structure and of environmental uncertainty and related measures of complexity, resourcefulness, competition and instability. The analysis of the data did not support the model; that is, environment has structural correlates, except for the variables of resourcefulness and complexity. The results show furtherthat the goodness of fit between environmental and structural variables fails to explain variance in effectiveness.