ORGANIZATION AND ENVIRONMENT

Organization and Environment

Introduction

Seldom in the history of humanity has either the pace or variety of change been greater than that witnessed in the past 3 decades (Homer-Dixon, 2000). The revolution in communication and technology has made the world a smaller and vastly more interconnected place. The ripple effects of this revolution extend to the very structure of our society:

Increases in life expectancy through medical advances and vast migrations of people have contributed to significant demographic shifts in Western societies. These shifts pose new challenges to governments and nonprofit organizations in particular.

One of these challenges is a growing clash of values between upholding individual rights and civil liberties on the one hand and a demand for greater adherence to more “traditional” religious and cultural values on the other. Nonprofit organizations often find themselves caught in the middle.

With more rapid communication and transportation capabilities, global competition and trade agreements are shifting production around the world thus affecting millions of lives.

Advances in technology have made many jobs obsolete, creating major employment, welfare, and educational challenges. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, even in Western countries (Dunn, 2003).

Paradoxically, despite these strides in technology, famine, drought, and disease are still endemic in much of the world and often made worse by the displacement of people from rural to urban settings and the destruction of environmental ecosystems.

These changes have implications not only for businesses and corporations but also for nonprofit organizations many of which serve the poor, the displaced, and the diseased. In addition, accompanying these major societal transformations is a general philosophical shift that leans toward adopting the “corporate model” as the gold standard for efficiency in both public and nonprofit sector organizations, irrespective of its degree of applicability and relevance (Mein hard, Foster, & Berger, 2004; Rice & Prince, 2000). This has led to demands on nonprofit organizations to adopt more efficient businesslike practices, even as they are coping with all the other changes.

It is not surprising then that the challenge of navigating an organization in times of rapid and multifaceted change may seem staggering to the people within. With so many things happening simultaneously, it is difficult to know where to focus, to understand what is critical, and to be aware of the opportunities and resources that may be available. Much like first-time parents, leaders can be overwhelmed by the barrage of new information and the struggle to determine what is most important. However, their sense of being consumed by these details can be significantly reduced if given a lens through which to see what is critical and tools with which to confront the new challenges. In this chapter, various lenses are offered to help leaders navigate change: a wide-angle one to understand the broader context of the challenges they face and a telescopic one to focus on those aspects of the external and internal environments that are critical to their organizations. While there is no “magic bullet” to make organizational transformations easy and painless, the research and theories presented here will enhance understanding of the ...