Institutional Environments and Resource Dependence: Sources of Administrative Structure in Institutions of Higher Education

Abstract

Two theoretical perspectives are combined to explain the pattern of administrative offices in public and private institutions of higher education.The first perspective, resource dependence, is used to show that the need to ensure a stable flow of resources from external sources of support partially determines administrative differentiation.The second perspective, institutionalization, emphasizes the common understandings and social definitions of organizational behavior and structure considered appropriate and nonproblematic and suggests conditions under which dependency will and will not predict the number of administrative offices that manage funding relations.The results of the analyses indicate that dependence on nontraditional sources of support is a strong predictor of administrative differentiation and demonstrate the validity of integrating these two theoretical perspectives.In explaining the formal structure of organizations, classic organization theory emphasizes problems of coordination and control of work activities (e.g., Taylor, 1911;Weber, 1946;Simon, 1956).Reflecting this tradition, research on sources of growth in the administrative component of organizations has typically focused on factors such as size and complexity that are assumed to impede the efficient supervision of tasks (Terrien and Mills, 1955; Bendix, 1956; Anderson and Warkov, 1961; Pondy, 1969; Blau, 1970; Hsu, Marsh, and Mannari, 1983).Recent work on this problem, however, places greater emphasis on environmental relations and influences than on internal relationships as determinants of administrative structure (Freeman, 1973; Meyer and Brown, 1977).A number of different perspectives on organizational environments and the way in which environments affect organizational behavior and structure have emerged.In one, the environment is conceptualized in terms of other organizations with which the focal organization engages in direct exchange relations (Levine and White, 1961;Thompson, 1967;Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978).Administrative structure, from this perspective, reflects efforts to ensure a stable flow of resources and to manage problems and uncertainties associated with exchange transactions.Increasing dependence on exchange relationships produces administrative differentiation as organizations create offices and positions to manage these relationships.In a second approach, the environment is conceptualized in terms of understandings and expectations of appropriate organizational form and behavior that are shared by members of society (Zucker, 1977(Zucker, , 1983)).Such normative understandings constitute the institutional environment of organizations.Organizations experience pressure to adapt their structure and behavior to be consistent with the institutional environment in order to ensure their legitimacy and, hence, their chances of survival (Meyer and Rowan, 1977;DiMaggio and Powell, 1983).This research integrates these two perspectives to explain administrative differentiation in colleges and universities.A central premise of this approach is that dependency relationships can, over time, become socially defined as appropriate and legitimate.It is hypothesized that when relations are

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