Orgs adapt structures to secure critical external resources.
Pfeffer and Salancik's 1978 argument. Boards, joint ventures and long-term contracts are all read as devices for managing dependence rather than as governance in any pure sense.
In practice
- A firm whose largest customer is 60% of revenue appoints that customer's former director to its board.
- A charity dependent on one funder restructures its programmes around that funder's reporting categories, and calls it strategy.