Organizational work: structuration of environments.

Traditional perspectives in organizational analysis are being questioned, the field displays new diversity, especially as a result of phenomenological studies, new directions are emerging, and a dialectic animates the relationship between theorizing and research. Organizational analysts, positing a distinction between the organization and the environment, have raised a number of issues which remain: How can organization and environment be defined? What is the nature of the consequences of organization-environment transactions? Are they in fact distinguishable? These questions are addressed here and some tentative proposals made. The essay argues that organizations prefigure, organize, and then enact the social environment in which they operate. ‘Organizational work’, it is argued, involves the social construction of the environment as well as the management of intrusive, unseen aspects of the environment that nevertheless affect everyday organizational life. In order to elaborate this thesis, data from several studies of police organizations are presented to outline the nature of the external environment posited by the organizations and to suggest that the occupational culture is a significant source for a perspective of that environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]