Organizations in Changing Environments: The Case of East German Symphony Orchestras

Portions of the research reported here were supported by the Max Planck Institute for Bildungsforschung and by the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. We thank Larissa Kowal-Wolk, Erin Lehman, and Rebecca Roters for their collaboration on the project; Jay Tucker for help in translating and coding research materials; and Ben Dattner, Adam Galinsky, and Tuck Pescosolido for assistance in library research and data analysis. Helpful comments on this paper were provided by Judith Blau, Hannah Bruckner, Thomas Ertman, Paul DiMaggio, Connie Gersick, Stephan Liebfried, Andy Molinsky, Francie Ostrower, Charles Perrow, Klaus JOrgen Peter, and Aage Sorensen. Assistance in enumerating the population of orchestras and in gaining access to those selected for the research was provided by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB), the European Conference of Symphony Orchestras (ECSO), the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), and the Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA). We give special thanks to Kenneth Baird (ACGB), Brad Buckley (ICSOM), Rosemary Estes (ROPA), Catherine French (ASOL), Ken Haas (Boston Symphony Orchestra), and Lew Waldeck (AFM). Two periods of radical political-economic change in the former East Germany illuminate dynamics of organization-environment relationships that generally are hidden from view. Historical, qualitative, and survey data from a longitudinal comparative study of 78 orchestras in four nations show that the contexts of East German orchestras changed significantly when the socialist regime took power after World War 11, and then again in 1990 when that regime fell. Socialist rule only modestly affected orchestras' institutional features, however; they continued to reflect centuries-old German musical traditions. The collapse of socialism in 1990, by contrast, provoked differentiation among orchestras-some adapted successfully to the new political-economic context, but others floundered. Successful adaptation was found to be a joint function of an orchestra's prior strength as an organization and the kinds of leadership initiatives taken by orchestra leaders and players. Overall, the findings suggest that the size and character of environmental effects depend on the degree to which contextual changes alter (a) the strength of the link between organizational actions and resources obtained (resource contingency) and (b) organizations' latitude to manage their own affairs (operational autonomy).