Charles Perrow: Trending quotes

“One test of good theory is that it have practical implications.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. vii
Context: It is surprising how much discipline is imposed upon theory by requiring that it ‘make a difference’ and provide guidance or useful illumination. I learned long ago from students in professional schools that questions of ‘so what’ or ‘what relevance does this have’ do not signify impatience with theory per se, much less anti-intellectualism, but only impatience with the obvious, general, remote, and vague statements that often parade as social science theory. One test of good theory is that it have practical implications.

“Once a definition is embedded in a program, the opinions of personnel who remain at the institution become congruent with it.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 34

“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

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 52

People , Effort

“[People-processing institutions are] a type of social institution in which human beings constitute both the raw materials and the products of organizational work. Although all social institutions are involved in some degree in people-processing activities, the term is properly restricted to those whose primary goal is the shaping, reshaping, removing, overhauling, retooling, reassembling, and recording the physical, psychological, social, legal, or moral aspects of human objects.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Organization for treatment, 1966, p. 163; as cited in: David Shichor (2005), The Meaning and Nature of Punishment. p. 107

People

“Two aspects of this work process are of critical importance.”

Charles Perrow

1960s, "Hospitals: technology, structure and goals", 1965

“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

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 166

People , Personality

“In research terms, the issue is to examine and explain the variations within and among residential institutions.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Organization for treatment, 1966, p. vii

“Executives were closely observed at work at their desks, at staff meetings, while talking with inmates or moving about the grounds and so on, and again in the feedback sessions when we gave them findings.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Organization for treatment, 1966, p. 48

“Organisations are viewed as systems which utilise energy in a patterned, directed effort to alter the condition of basic materials in a predetermined manner.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, "Hospitals: technology, structure and goals", 1965, p. 913

Effort

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

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 4

People

“The structural viewpoint considers the roles people play, rather than the nature of the personalities in these roles. It deals with the structures in which roles are performed— the relationship of groups to each other, such as sales and production, and the degree of centralization or decentralization.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 2

People , Nature , Personality

“Covers the history and tradition, the precedents and established commitments involved in all past action. These limit, though not determine, the present actions that any one group may take. If any single thing deserved the designation “the institution” or “the hospital” it would be this.””

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 15

History , Past

“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:
:* centralized authority
:* clear lines of authority
:* specialization and expertise
:* marked division of labor
:* rules and regulations
:* clear separation of staff and line
The forces of light, which by mid-twentieth century came to be characterized as the human relations school, emphasizes people rather than machines, accommodations rather than machine-like precision, and draws its inspiration from biological systems rather than engineering systems. It has emphasized such things as:
:* delegation of authority
:* employee autonomy
:* trust and openness
:* concerns with the "whole person"
:* interpersonal dynamics
The forces of darkness formulated their position first, starting in the early part of this century. They have been characterized as the scientific management or classical management school…”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 3

People , School , Light , Parting

“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

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 7

Confidence , Communication , Study

“Without this form of social technology, the industrialized countries of the West could not have reached the heights of extravagance, wealth and pollution that they currently enjoy.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 5; Talking about bureaucracy

Country , Wealth

“The hundreds of scientific studies of this phenomenon come to one general conclusion: Leadership is highly variable or "contingent" upon a large variety of important variables such as nature of task, size of the group, length of time the group has existed, type of personnel within the group and their relationships with each other, and amount of pressure the group is under. It docs not seem likely that we'll be able to devise a way to select the best leader for a particular situation. Even if we could, that situation would probably change in a short time and thus would require a somewhat different type of leader.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 13

Way , Nature , Study , Change

“Engineers speak of a “control loop,” in which the “man in the loop” is the problematical element. This is the human component in a series of sequentially interacting pieces of equipment that control or adjust a function. But when the pilot is suddenly and unexpectedly brought into the control loop (in other words, participates in decision making) as a result of (inevitable) equipment failure, he is disoriented. Long periods of passive monitoring make one unprepared to act in emergencies. The sudden appearance of several alarms, all there for safety reasons, leads to disorientation.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 132

Failure , Decision , Appearance

“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

Charles Perrow (1963). "Goals and Power Structures: A Historical Case Study." In: E. Friedson, (Ed.), The Hospital in Modern Society. New York: The Free Press, p. 132
1960s

“Barnard comes close to joining Roethlisberger and Dickson in their assumption that management behavior is mainly rational and workers' behavior nonrational.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 88

Behavior

“Routine tasks… are well-established techniques which are sure to work, and these are applied to essentially similar raw materials, That is, there is little uncertainty about methods and little variety or change in the tasks that must be performed.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 75

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