Charles Perrow Quotes

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American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees—up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued?

Charles Perrow

To call for decentralization, representative bureaucracy, collegial authority, or employee-centered, innovative or organic organizations - to mention only a few of the highly normative prescriptions that are being offered by social scientists today - is to call for a type of structure that can be realized only with a certain type of technology, unless we are willing to pay a high cost in terms of output. Given a routine technology, the much maligned Weberian bureaucracy probably constitutes the socially optimum form of organizational structure.

Charles Perrow

It [the human relations school ] lacks empirical support and conceptual clarity, and it fails to grapple with the realities of authoritarian control in organizations and the true status of the subordinate

Charles Perrow

Charles Perrow

Charles Perrow

Born: February 9, 1925

Died: November 12, 2019 (aged 94)

Bio: Charles B. Perrow was an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University.

Known for:

Normal Accidents (1984)
Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay (1972)
The Next Catastrophe (2007)
Organizing America (2001)
The AIDS disaster (1990)

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