Marketing Theory and Practice

Running Head: MARKETING THEORY AND PRACTICE 1
Marketing Theory and Practice

MARKETING THEORY AND PRACTICE 2
Introduction
The theories of organizational action study the impact of social relationship between different
individuals within the organization along with their activities on a company as a whole. Also,
these theories examine effects of external and internal business environment like cultural, legal
and political on the organizationi. There are two types of organizational theories i.e. strategic
choice and deterministic theory. Further, deterministic theory can be categorized in theories i.e.
resource dependency theory, population ecology theory and institutional theory. Both of the
theories make a significant contribution to the understanding of organization design and action.
The major objective of this essay is to critically analyze both strategic choice and deterministic
theories. It includes the discussion about both theories and related arguments are presented.
Moreover, there is the discussion about the strengths of both strategic choice and deterministic
theories of organizational action. In the below essay, the research question is answered by stating
the argument that both of the theories are compelling in context of organizational design and
action.
Discussion about Both Theories
According to Elsaid, Okasha, & Abdelghaly (2013) organizational structure is a framework
which outlines how some activities are instructed for attaining the organizational objectives.
These activities are such as roles, rules and responsibilities of organizational people. It describes
the approach of business and response to the marketplace. There are some management scholars
who have proposed two general theories of organizational structure i.e. strategic choice and
deterministic. These theories are differentiated in the level of adaptability that they assume in
influencing the marketplaceii.
Among these theories, one of the most significant theories is strategic choice theory that explains
the role which managers and leaders have in affecting a company via developing different
alternatives in an active process. This theory offers a strategic choice which focused the
individuals’ agency and groups to make the choices. In this context Shafritz, Ott & Jang (2015)
stated that these choices created the part of the learning process of a workplace which adapted to
both the internal and external environment. In addition to organizational settings, this concept
can be studied with relation to the responses of people to routine conflictsiii.

MARKETING THEORY AND PRACTICE 3
Apart from this, another theory is deterministic theory that states that the marketplace has an
effective control on the businesses which are operating in it. This theory asserts that companies
are pressurized to adapt or respond to the market changes. The concept of determinism can be
understood by looking at three theories i.e. population ecology, resource dependency and
institutional theory. All the theories indicate that organizations are controlled by different aspects
such as by other company’s resources as per resource dependency concept, rules, norms and
regulations as per institutional theory and external environment as per population ecology
theoryiv.
Option 2: Both are Compelling
Arguments
Looking at the explanation of both the theories, the fact should be noted that both theories create
a compelling impact on the organizational behaviour of an organization. In one hand strategic
choice refers to the role that leaders play in influencing the employees and making dynamic
choices in an organization. Whereas deterministic theory of organizational structure refers to the
structure that has comparatively less control on the functions in an organization and marketplace
controls the business. It should be noted that it depends upon the organization that which
structure that they have to choose for their business. It cannot be said that one theory is more
compelling than other is as all the organizations have diverse working environment and business
structures as well. Like, talking about a retail organization, it can be said that the companies
present in this industry would prefer strategic choice theory as it lays a consolidated control over
the functions and diverse choices in the environment as wellv.
However, in the case of deterministic theory, it would best fit to the social organizations like
NGOs as it expresses less control over the actions and let the market define the work and actions
that the organization have to implement. Like, the resource dependency theory let the
organization work according to the resources available with them but resources do not govern the
actions in other organization present in diverse industries. In the case of determinism theory, the
companies have to adopt changes present in the environment without opposing. Thus, it can be
said that it depend upon the organization and their capacity to adopt change that governs that
effectiveness of the theories on the management. Both the theory hold equal validity in the