Organizational Size Quotes

Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend.

The chances of catastrophe grow as organizations grow in number and size, and as internal communications become more time consuming and less intelligible.

Bureaucracies tend to grow and to brag about their growth based on how many individuals they have and how much money they spend.

There's a feeling that strength is determined by the size of a union. That clearly is nonsense.

Whatever the country, whatever the culture, whatever the time, when you become a big enough organization, you start to collapse and slow down.

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.

Large organizations cannot be versatile. A large organization is effective through its mass rather than through its agility. Fleas can jump many times their own height, but not an elephant.

I run a small company with 18 employees on its payroll.

A company that is big is never really bad but also not really good.

When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.

An employee who's one of hundreds, rather than one of a few, is unlikely to feel personally responsible for helping the organization adapt and change.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

No one can have 33,000 employees and not do something wrong or have one of them do something wrong.

Large staffs -- small victories

The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.

People come to a company like Abbott sometimes and think, 'It's so big, I can't make a difference.' I think just the opposite. I think everybody can make a difference.

Our great committee is too unwieldy for this operation. A great, clumsy machine is applied to the slightest and most delicate operations--the hoof of an elephant to the strokes of mezzotinto.

I firmly believe that IBM's size can be used to its advantage.

A smaller-size party and parliamentary membership does not necessarily equate to lesser demands; if anything, the opposite can be the case.