Environment, analysis, and change: a simplified trichotomy for understanding organizations

Abstract

The importance of organizations, whose most distinctive characteristic is their ubiquity, is that they are means and collective actors at the same time. However, due to their very nature, organizational phenomena are varied and multi-causal. In this regard, different theoretical views also offer different and various explanations to the same problem. However, they should not be considered contradictory approaches, or as correct or incorrect, but auxiliary and complementary. The abundance of organizational theory should allow a functional relationship between the conditions of the environment and the appropriate administrative techniques to achieve the organization's objectives to be established. Faced with the heterogeneous aspects to study organizations, this article presents a trichotomic conception, under a theoretical approach, which simplifies the understanding of organizations to understand them and conceive a broad panorama of organizational events. First, the organizational environment, conceived as an environment with three ambits, is discussed: social, economic, and political. Subsequently, the organizational analysis is conceived from three different levels: psychosocial, organizational or structural, and ecological. Finally, organizational change is visualized under a classic model widely cited in the literature: Kurt Lewin's three-phase model, which proposes to unfreeze, move or change, and re-freeze the organization in a new state. Finally, it is concluded that simplifying does not mean eliminating or omitting, but rather an arbitrary idealization as a powerful resource to conceptualize management and change in organizations. Keywords: Organizations; organizational environment; organizational analysis; organizational change; management.