Organizational Theory Quotes

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered

Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.

There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

The study of economic organization commonly proceeds as though market and administrative modes of organization were disjunct. Market organi­zation is the province of economists. Inter­nal organization is the concern of organization theory specialist. And never the twain shall meet.

I worry that humanity has been "advanced" to its present level of incompetency because evolution works on the Peter Principle.

The optimum committee has no members.

An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Scientific management promised to replace rules of thumb with accurate measurements.

Theory is a dirty word in some managerial quarters. That is rather curious, because all of us, managers especially, can no more get along without theories than libraries can get along without catalogs and for the same reason: theories help us make sense of incoming information.

What is missing from the policy analyst's tool kit -- and from the set of accepted, well-developed theories of human organization -- is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts.

Tektology was the first attempt in the history of science to arrive at a systematic formulation of the principles of organization operating in living and nonliving systems.