Manager Control Over Outcomes? Nature and Nurture Over Time

Abstract

Recent scholarship on organizational change has de-emphasized environment, core competencies at founding, and structural inertia in favor of the study of strategic management. We encourage renewed consideration of forces over which managers have less control. In a reconsideration and conceptual extension of Hager and Brudney’s nature and nurture influences on nonprofit efforts to recruit volunteers, we introduce central dimensions of organizational ecology theory. We assert that more attention to the tenets of organizational ecology will sensitize the field to the influence of environments in which organizations operate. Consistent with Hager and Brudney, our longitudinal assessment of nonprofits not only records the value of purposeful adjustments of programs but also highlights how the evolution of structural conditions plays an essential role in core organizational outcomes in volunteer management. Beyond the usual validation of strategic management, we emphasize that the influence of environment and structure is an essential determinant of the fates of organizations over time.