Surviving in a dynamic, hostile and dangerous business environment requires the adoption of a wide range of strategies and techniques. As such small and medium scale business in Zimbabwe and many parts of the world find themselves in an environment that is not only unpredictable but also quite harsh and highly dynamic (Mhike,2014)These businesses organizations can be likened to animals living in a jungle where only the strongest can survive. The business or organisation in this case represents a system which is open to and interacts with its environments. Open systems have four specific characteristic which make appropriate for these business .The first is the interchange between the system and its environment, secondly an open system is made up of a range of variables and a complex network of interrelationships. Thirdly for control the open system use anticipatory management which involves the anticipation of errors and problems before they come (Laszlo,1996). Fourthly, open systems are flexible and dynamic in nature for they move away from prescribed and rigid standards
This paper seeks to explain how the chameleon model strategy as proposed by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1940s, and furthered by Ross Ashby (1956) is, relevant and appropriate in the survival of organizations in an ever-changing environment. The model was developed following the logic of the system theory. A system view considers an organisation as a set of interacting functions that acquire inputs from the environment ,process them ,and then release the outputs back to the external environment (Daft,2001). The system‘s identity and nature is directly and indirectly influenced by its environment which helps determine its orientation. Whilst the chameleon’s characteristics can easily be perceived to be negative when compared to human behaviour, it is important to note that there are