Lex Donaldson

“Lex Donaldson at UNSW Australia Business School”

“Donaldson [is] a leading proponent of ‘sociological positivism’ in the field of organisation studies.”

“Critics of structural contingency theory sometimes argue that it is not sensible for organizations to move into fit with their contingencies, because while the organization is changing its structure to fit the contingencies, the contingencies themselves change, so that the organizational structural change does not produce fit. Nevertheless, by moving towards the fit, the organization is decreasing misfit, and thereby increasing its performance relative to what it would be if it were to make no structural change.”

“The aim [of positivism in organization studies] is to reveal causal regularities that underlie surface reality.”