Charles Perrow - Organizations Quotes

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This article [entitled A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations], was one of three independent statements in 1967 of what came to be called "contingency theory." It held that the structure of an organization depends upon (is 'contingent' upon) the kind of task performed, rather than upon some universal principles that apply to all organizations. The notion was in the wind at the time.

Charles Perrow
Most social scientists consider the non-bureaucratic, or nonroutine organization to be good and the bureaucratic or routine organization to be bad (it impedes progress, is old- fashioned, is hard on its employees, etc.). But this judgment is debatable.

Charles Perrow
Organization theory...has been altogether too accommodating to organizations and their power.

Charles Perrow
The power structure will generally dictate the operative goals of the organization.

Charles Perrow
Another discipline began to intrude upon the confident work and increasingly elaborate models of the human relations theorists (largely social psychologists) and the uneasy toying with bureaucracy of the "structionalists" (largely sociologists). Both tended to study economic organizations. A few, like Philip Selznick, were noting conflict and differences in goals (perhaps because he was studying a public agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority), but most ignored conflict or treated it as a pathological manifestation of breakdowns in communication or the ego trips of unreconstructed managers.

Charles Perrow
Operative goals designate the ends sought through the actual operating policies of the organization; they tell us what the organization actually is trying to do, regardless of what the official goals say are the aims.

Charles Perrow
People's attitudes are shaped at least as much by the organization in which they work as by their pre-existing attitudes.

Charles Perrow
The dominant group, reflecting the imperatives of the particular task that is most critical (to the organization), their own background characteristics (distinctive perspectives based on their training, career lines, and areas of competence) and the unofficial uses to which they put the organization for their own ends.

Charles Perrow
The operative goals will be shaped by the dominant group, reflecting the imperatives of the particular task area that is most critical, their own background characteristics (distinctive perspectives based upon their training, career lines, and areas of competence) and the unofficial uses to which they put the organization for their own needs.

Charles Perrow
Organizational theorists, at least since the pioneering work of Burns and Stalker, 1961 and Joan Woodward, 1965 and others in what came to be called the contingency school, have recognized that centralization is appropriate for organizations with routine tasks, and decentralization for those with nonroutine tasks. For an early statement see Perrow 1967, and Lawrence and Lorch, 1967.

Charles Perrow
In a modern society, where large organizations have acquired unprecedented importance, social scientists have increasingly sought to understand the nature of organizational goals - what they are, what shapes or determines them, what their impact is upon the environment, and how they change.

Charles Perrow
From one point of view, structure is a part of technology; for example the spread of the bureaucratic form of organization might be said to be the most profound technological innovation in the last 3 or 4 centuries.

Charles Perrow
It [a power based model of organization] sees organizations a intentional human constructions but not necessarily rational systems guided by official goals; as bargaining areas rather than cooperative systems; as systems of power rather than coercive institutions reflecting cultural norms, and as resources for other organizations and groups rather than closed systems. If we define organizations, then, as intentional human constructions wherein people and groups within and without the organization compete for outputs of interest them under conditions of unequal power, we have posed the issue of effectiveness quite differently

Charles Perrow
What do individuals or groups of similarly hope to gain from participation in the affairs of the organization? Or, to use an awkward phrase we shall reiterate frequently, what are the uses to which they put the organisation?

Charles Perrow
A great deal of organizational effort is exerted to control the effects of extra-organizational influence:; upon personnel. Daily, people come contaminated into the organization... Many of the irritating aspects of [[organizational structure] are designed to control these sources of contamination.

Charles Perrow
People do not exist just for organizations. They track all kinds of mud from the rest of their lives into the organization, and they have all kinds of interests that are independent of the organization.

Charles Perrow
While [bureaucratic] solutions have been frequently criticized by those within and without the organization, no alternative way has been found to cope with the problem of organizing large numbers of people to produce goods and services efficiently.

Charles Perrow
For our purposes then, the bureaucratic model refers to an organization which attempts to control extra-organizational influences (stemming from the characteristics of personnel and changes in the environment) through the creation of specialized (staff) positions and through such rules and devices as regulations and categorization.

Charles Perrow
I once believed that if organizations had a better fit between their technology and their structure, they would be more efficient and thus more profitable.

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
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
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
Bureaucracy is a dirty word, both to the average person and to many specialists on organizations. It suggests rigid rules and regulations, a hierarchy of offices, narrow specialization of personnel, an abundance of offices or units which can hamstring those who want to get things done, impersonality, resistance to change.

Charles Perrow
Since organizations are established to do something, to perform work directed to some end, all organizations have goals – some implied, some explicit.

Charles Perrow
Multiple leadership, as a stable system of goal determination and policy setting, is most likely to be found in organizations where there are multiple goals and where these goals lack precise criteria of achievement and allow considerable tolerances with regard to achievement. Organizations with a single goal [i.e., proprietary hospitals] or a clear hierarchy of goals provide little basis for multiple leadership. Multiple leadership arises because important group interests diverge, and each group has the power to protect its interests.

Charles Perrow
Organizations are seen primarily as systems for getting work done, for applying techniques to the problem of altering raw materials - whether the materials be people, symbols or things.

Charles Perrow
The concept of organizational goals, like the concepts of power, authority, or leadership, has been unusually resistant to precise, unambiguous definition. Yet a definition of goals is necessary and unavoidable in organizational analysis. Organizations are established to do something; they perform work directed toward some end.

Charles Perrow
The Basic Argument In its simplest form, the argument goes like this: when the tasks people perform are well understood, predictable, routine, and repetitive, a bureaucratic structure is the most efficient. Things can be "programmed," to use March and Simon's term. Where tasks are not well understood, generally because the 'raw material' that each person works on is poorly understood and possibly reactive, recalcitrant or self activating. the tasks are non-routine. Such units or organizations are difficult to bureaucratize.

Charles Perrow
From the beginning, the forces of light and the forces of darkness have polarized the field of organizational analysis, and the struggle has been protracted and inconclusive. The forces of darkness have been represented by the mechanical school of organizational theory — those who treat the organization as a machine. This school characterizes organizations in terms o£ such things as:

Charles Perrow
Product of complex interactions within and between the organization's social structure, leadership groups and environment.... They are never static but subject to continual pressure and changes over time.

Charles Perrow