The Vortical Environment The Fifth in the Emery-Trist Levels of Organizational Environments

Electronic medical record system avoidance in a turbulent environment

“…[42], p. 333). Turbulent environments are also characterized by increased complexity, greater uncertainty, unexpected directionality of occurrences, and continuous transition [3]. Much of the research in this area describes environmental turbulence as having two dimensions -dynamism and complexity [11,24,71].…”

Contrasting Perspectives of Strategy Making: Applications in ‘Hyper’ Environments

“…Each firm reacts to each other firm's actions by mobilizing its capabilities in attempts to achieve competitive advantage. Mutually reactive chains of decisions and actions result from these attempts (Weick 1995), and unintended dysfunctional consequences are often produced (Emery and Trist 1973;McCann and Selsky 1984;Babüroglu 1988;Meyer et al 1993). These are the negative externalities of economic theory.…”

“…This industry condition tends to stimulate hypercompetition due to 'disruptive' technological advances (see also Christensen 1997). In hypercompetitive situations, the mutual understandings among rivals tend to break down, releasing the brakes and enabling an industry's competitive dynamics to accelerate in positive feedback processes that reinforce deviations from equilibrium (Masuch 1985; see also Babüroglu 1988). For example, when market leaders 'internalize industry change [and] … turn … themselves into moving targets' in order to deflect potential leapfrogging by competitors (Delapierre and Mytelka 1998: 78), this may speed up the rate of new product introductions.…”

Self-organization, evolutionary and revolutionary change in organizations

“…Although this can be achieved in a relatively simple system (e.g. a simple cause-controlled system for controlling heating or cooling devices), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to apply this concept to a very complex system like an organization whose environment is complex and dynamic (Emery and Trist, 1965;Terreberry, 1968;McCann and Selsky, 1984;Babüroglu, 1988). It could be argued that this environment does not have to be highly technical or political, but could be market-driven.…”

“…However, during the 1980s and 1990s, most formal organizations experienced dramatic changes in environmental conditions (Robbins, 1990;Chakravarthy, 1997;Rigby, 2001). The environment had evolved into a state defined by Emery and Trist (1965) as a turbulent field, or even more profoundly by McCann and Selsky (1984) as hyper-turbulent and by Babüroglu (1988) as vortical. This period has also witnessed the increasing emergence of another type of change that takes place in organizations -wholesale and discontinuous change characterized by a distinct change in organizations' strategy, structure, technology, process and core values, which resulted in new organization forms or configurations.…”