What are they key points in the following excerpt? In addition, different subunits of these firms faced different environments. As these different environments imposed more uncertainty on the subunits' managers, the successful firms became more differentiated; that is, the subunits differed more and more from one another in their goals, the time frames for their work, and the formality of their structure. However, this increased the potential for conflict and disorganization. Successful firms in more uncertain environments responded with higher levels of integration. They had more methods for coordinating the highly differentiated units, such as liaison positions, coordinating teams, and conflict resolution processes. This combination of differentiation and integration made the successful firms in more uncertain environments more internally complex. The authors' general conclusion advanced one of the prominent components of the contingency idea: organizations must adopt structures that are as complex as the environments they confront. As many studies of this sort accumulated, James Thompson (1967) synthesized the growing body of research in a way that provided additional insights. Organizations, he said, must contend with the demands of their tasks and their environments. They do so by trying to isolate the technical core - their primary work processes