which includes a number of factors that characterize the immediate environment in which work is done, such as the physical working environment, the available work resources, and so on. A final factor includes the organization's formal systems for attracting, placing, developing, and evaluating human resources.
Together, these factors create the set of formal organizational arrangements—that is, they are explicitly designed and specified, usually in writing.
The final component is the infcmnal organizadon. Despite the set of formal organizacional arrangements that exists in any organization, another set of arrangements tends to develop or emerge over a period of time. These arrangements are usually implicit and unwritten, but they in. fluence a good deal of behavior. For lack of a better term, such arrangements are frequently referred to as the informal organization and they
include the different structures, processes, and arrangements that emerge while the is operating. These arrangements sometimes complement formal organizational arrangements by providing structures to aid work where none exist In other situations they may arise in reaction to the formal structure, to protect individuals from it. They may therefore either aid or hinder the organization's performance.
a number of aspects of the informal organization have a particularly critical effect on behavior, they need to be considered. The be. havior of leaders (as opposed to the formal crea-
tion of leader positions) is an important of the informal organization, as are the patterns of relationships that develop both within and between groups. In addition, different types of informal working arrangements (including rules, procedures, methods, and so on) develop. Finally, there are the various communication and influence patterns that combine to create the informal organization design.
Organizations can therefore be thought of as a set of components—the task, the individuals, the organizational arrangements, and the informal organization. In any system, however, the critical question is not what the components are, but what the nature of their interaction is. This model raises the question: What are the dynamics of the relationshipsamong the componenvs? To deal with this issue, we must return to the concept of congruence or fit.