Adapting to a Declining Environment: Lessons from a Religious Order

This study examines the ten U.S. provinces of the largest religious order of Catholic priests and brothers, the Jesuits, and explores the structural/organizational adaptations which these ten provinces employed to accommodate dramatic reductions in membership. The organizational placement of roughly 11,000 individual members of these provinces is traced between the years 1965 and 1979.The research indicates that, by increasing interorganizational cooperation and exchange of information and by enhancing the administrative component, these organizations were able to reduce slack resource requirements and were largely able to protect their core operations from the impact of decline. These observations differ dramatically from those reported in typical, for-profit organizations (e.g., Harrigan 1980).Finally, to the extent that cutback did reach the core, an attempt is made to examine the width and depth of retrenchment at both the divisional and departmental levels and to determine whether the mode of retrenchment affected individuals' willingness to subsequently invest in the organization. The analysis suggests that narrower, deeper cuts at the departmental level may have had a positive effect on members' willingness to invest in the organizations, while narrower, deeper cuts at the division level may have contributed to more members deciding to leave the organizations.