p.155-156 The concept was first developed by Weick in his influential and innovative monograph, The Social Psychology of Organizing (1969), to connote an organism's adjustment to its environment by directly acting upon the environment to change it. Enactment thus has the capacity to create ecological change to which the organism may have subsequently to adjust, possibly by further enactment. Weick discusses this process in the context of active sense-making by the individual manager or employee, but also notes how one may enact "limitations," for example, by avoidance of disconfirming experience, or "charades," by acting-out in order to test understanding. Enactment is thus often a species of self-fulfilling prophesy. It may also be deviation amplifying, where consequences are successively multiplied by actions on the environment. Weick also identifies enactment as a form of SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM, the reification of experience and environment through action.

Since Weick's origination of the concept, it has found most use in STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, to capture the dynamics of relations between ORGANIZATION AND ENVIRONMENT. Child (1972) developed the analogous notion of STRATEGIC CHOICE with similar intent, i.e., to show how organizational adaptation should not be seen as entirely exogenously directed, but can be endogenous in origin and, in its effects, modify the contingencies bearing down upon the firm. This idea reinforces a model of organizations as "purposeful systems" (Ackoff & Emery, 1972), akin to willful actors, a construction which challenges the behaviorist PARADIGM of OPEN SYSTEMS' actions being determined by environmental CONDITIONING.

One can expect enactment processes to be most visible in large and powerful organizations which have market-making capacity, but they are no less relevant to the way smaller enterprises conceive their contexts and make choices about how they will act in relation to them. Enactment alternatives to accommodating environmental forces include creating buffers to diffuse impact, negotiating with STAKE-HOLDERS, coopting influential agencies, and avoidance.

As an operational concept, enactment lacks precision and therefore cannot be expected to be much further elaborated in organizational analysis. However, it embodies an important recognition of how agency and constructive COGNITIVE PROCESSES are essential elements in our understanding of the behavior of individuals and organizations.

Structuration

p.543 This term was coined by Giddens (1984) to refer to the dynamic articulation between structure and action (which Giddens called "agency"). Traditionally, sociologists and organizational theorists have treated structure as an exogenous constraint on action. In turn, they have viewed action as independent of structure and, in many instances, as a phenomenon that exists at "lower" LEVEL OF ANALYSIS. In organization studies, the implicit gulf between structure and action is reflected in the distinction between micro- and macro-organizational behavior. Giddens argued that action and structure are inextricably linked, that action both ''constitutes and is constituted by" structure. From this perspective human action always instantiates structures. Actions may replicate, but they may also alter existing structural patterns. The relationship between action and structure is therefore a process that can best be understood when studied over time. The importance of structuration for organization studies is that is provides a theoretical and empirical base for bridging the longstanding gulf between studies of organizational structure and studies of everyday action within organizations (see ORGANIZATION DESIGN). Giddens' notion of structuration bears similarities to Strauss's (1978) concept of a "NEGOTIATED ORDER," the rules, roles, rights and obligations that individuals and other types of actors establish as they interact with each other over time.