Nature, Meaning and Scope of Organisational Theories

management theory and practice
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Introduction
A very old expression says that business means war that reflects competitive mood
along with strategic nature of businesses in the world where every business rival competes
with each other to gain ultimate dominance in marketplace to access and utilise common
available resources. To compete, every business design and organises strategies and theories
that can make them unique from the others while performing business operations (Anna,
2015). Organisational theory can be defined as a study of organisational structure and design,
the study of organisational relationships with internal and external environment and study of
organisational behaviour among managers and individuals within a workplace. The validating
and analysing of the above stated assertions in which organisation theory is characterised as a
fragmented body of intellect having many competing theories that explains organisational
actions, this essay aims at discussing nature, meaning and scope of organisation theories. This
essay will commence with defining definitions of key theories contributing strategic choice
and determinism theories to understand the organisational actions. This essay will conclude
after summarising the prominent findings from the discussion made in present literature to
find out which perspective among strategic choice and determinism is most compelling.
Main body
According to Dailey (2012), organisation is a set or unit of people that are managed
and structured to meet an organisation’s goals. It is a collection of individuals who works
together under a labour division along with following hierarchy of authority to achieve a
common objective. Dailey (2012) refers organisations as a social arrangement that intends to
achieve a controlled performance while pursuing collective goals. Theory on the other hand
refers to those tested propositions, generally regarded as appropriate and used like a key
principle for explanation and prediction while performing a phenomenon in organisations.

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Theories are also assumed to be a supposition of ideas to explain something that are more
grounded on proved and well demonstrated principles. According to Jofre (2011, p. 18),
“Organizational theory, organizational behaviour or organizational studies, is the systematic
study and application of knowledge about how people as individuals or groups act within
organizations”. Indeed, organisation theory can be referred as a fundamental examination of
organisation that analyses organisations, concerning organisation and departmentalisation as
a whole.
Strategic choice in organisational theory was developed during the time when
industrial relations development was changing rapidly in US. Many popular theories were
developed at that time to make US industrial relation practice stable that proved very static
and complicated to explain organisational behaviour when basic parameters within a system
appeared changing (Stein, 1999). Therefore, to add dynamic component to industrial
relations, the concept of strategic choice was developed by researchers and business
practitioners that demonstrated industrial relation practice outcomes in a uniformed manner
and after interacting with environmental forces, workers and public policy decision holders.
Strategic choice theory focuses on relevant forces present in organisations external
environment that affects relationships among individuals. According to Stein (1999, p. 202),
“Strategic-choice models can be so broadly applied that they can be, and have been, applied
to an array of actors, including people, firms, and states”. According to the case study
examples presented by the author, the interactions analysed under the strategic choice theory
involves combinations in which models can be applied to the interactions made between
actors of different levels in aggregation like international organisations with states and states
with individuals and multinational organisations. Hence, using strategic choice concept
allows assessment of interactions across each level of analysis.