Structural Contingency Theory and SARFIT
Ludmilla, Lecturer, Albania, Member
There is a process that has been articulated in the theoretical model of Structural Adaptation to Regain Fit (SARFIT) (Donaldson, 1987, 2001).
An organization in fit enjoys higher performance, which generates surplus resources and leads to expansion (Hamilton and Shergill, 1992), such as growth in size, geographic extension, innovation or diversification.
This increases the level of the contingency variables, such as size, leading to a misfit with the existing structure. The misfit lowers performance, eventually leading to a performance crisis and adaptive structural change into fit (Chandler, 1962).
This SARFIT theory subsumes several seminal works in structural contingency theory, such as Chandler (1962) on divisionalization changes in response to changing strategies and Burns and Stalker (1961) on changes from mechanistic to organic structures in response to technological and market change in the environment.
