Original scientific paper
External and Internal Influences Affecting Industrial Enterprises
Veljko Rus
; Fakulteta za sociologijo, politične vede in novinarstvo, Ljubljana
Abstract
Considering the System theory the author conceives the Yugoslav enterprise to be an open system. Moreover critically taking into consideration all the various definitions for the purpose of operationalization he defines the environment as a communicative influential domain, integrating in this way the theory of the environment and of the organization.
Accepting the phenomenological hypothesis and considering the actual influence as equaling the perceptional one — the influence has been investigated, with a help of some innovations, by means of the graph of control on the top management in 55 industrial organizations. The difference between the external and internal, passive and active influences has been distinguished. Internal influence is the one within and the external is the one outside the relevant enterprise; passive is the one to which the respondent is subjected by other members of the organization and active is the one which is exercised by the respondent on other members of the organization.
According to the indexes got in this way the enterprises seem to be influenced by the examined factors of the environment to a larger extant than vice versa. The grouping of the bodies of the environment has shown the dominant status of the bank and the trade organizations in their relation to the industrial enterprises.
Still that environment is not very much like the system that was typical of eighteenth century liberal capitalism although it might appear so. Considering the system of the country itself we seem to be speaking of the seemingly liberal environment with the state itself appearing indirectly through the banks. The results seem to be confirmed and even more differentiated by the factor analysis.
Regarding the internal influence it should be pointed out that the influence of the top management on the organizational groups in the enterprises is almost equal to the amount of the influence exercised on the top management by the organizational groups.
Generally, the internal organizational relationships of influence are more intensive and more balanced. We can assume that the social relations between the organizational groups within the enterprises are more socialized and more integrated than the relations between the enterprises and their environment. Top management in an enterprise has a marginal relation towards the political representatives, a central relation towards the professionals and self-managing bodies and a firm-hierarchical-superordination-and-superordination-relation towards managerial groups.
The analysis of the correlations has shown that the active and passive external influences make up a united system of power — if viewed from the standpoint of the top management. That does not mean that the top management are exposed to the system of total control because there is also a united system of influence, which is exercised by the top management on the bodies outside the enterprise.
In the same way the uncontrolled power does not appear either in the influence of the top management on the organizational groups within the enterprise. So we claim the existence of only two integrated subsystems of the active and passive influences. The increasing influence of the top management on the environment and the organizational groups leads to the reverse influence, that is, the increasing influence of the environment and organizational groups on the top management, exhibiting thus clearly the logic of the reciprocal influence.
The author has found out a considerably different influence of the environment within the work organizations than he expected. He expected the influence of the administrative-political environment to lessen the internal active influence of the top management, and the influence of the business professional environment to increase the internal active and passive influences of the top management, and the influence of the trade organizations to increase the active internal influence of the top management. He has found out that the redistribution of power within the work organizations is not influenced by the administrative political environment, and that the influence of the top management within the enterprise is even diminished by the trade-organizations. Moreover, though in a system of external- -internal power-relations the self-managerial bodies and political organizations are not reduced to being merely marginal factors, the backbone of the whole system of the external-internal power-relations still makes the influence of the top management on the leading organizational groups and the influence of the business organizations on the enterprises. That means that the business circle from other enterprises exercises a considerable influence on the internal status of the top management within individual enterprises, and thus on the interactions between the other managerial groups as well.
This circulus vitiosus of power is uncontrolled and spontaneous product of the division of labor at the macro-level of the whole society and also at the micro-level of the work-organizations because it makes possible an intensive reciprocal influence between the external and internal managerial groups. This proves the functional autonomization of the management which will be sustained spontaneously up the time when a functionally adequate, and not only politically adequate redistribution of managerial function will be varied out.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156453
URI
Publication date:
30.9.1974.
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