Charles Perrow: Trending quotes (page 2)

“For many purposes of organizational analysis technology might not be an independent variable but a dependent one.”

Charles Perrow

Charles Perrow (1967), in: Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of the ... Annual Winter Meeting, Vol. 19 (1967), p. 163
1960s

Dependency

“Some of these by-products [of official goals] may become so important to the participants who make up the institution as to constitute unofficial goals. “I would not be interested in this hospital unless it…” did something or other. “The trouble with this place is everyone is so concerned with” this or that pursuit. Where these blanks are not filled in with good patient care, teaching and research we have unofficial goals of some group or individual, and thus we have uses to which the institution is put other than the avowed ones.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 15. (Emphasis in the original by Jones (2013)).

“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

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 59

Change

“By technology is meant the actions that an individual performs upon an object, with or without the aid of tools or mechanical devices, in order to make some change in that object. The object, or 'raw material', may be a living being, human or otherwise, a symbol, or an Inanimate object. People are raw materials in people-changing or people-processing organizations; symbols are materials in banks, advertising agencies, and some research organizations; the interactions of people are raw materials to be manipulated by administrators in organizations; boards of directors, committees, and councils are usually Involved with the changing or processing of symbols and human interactions, and so on.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations", 1967, p. 195

People , Change

“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

Variant: 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.
Source: 1960s, "The analysis of goals in complex organizations", 1961, p. 857

Training

“Chapter Five deals with the messiest problem of all— but the one to which all analytical roads should lead : the nature of organizational goals and the strategies used to achieve them.”

Charles Perrow

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

Nature , Problem

“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

Source: 1960s, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations", 1967, p. 204

“Most normal accidents have a significant degree of incomprehensibility.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 23

“The vast proportion of the activity in organizations goes on without personal directives and supervision – and even without written rules – and sometimes in permitted violation of the rules.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 128

Personality

“Where and how will official goals be subverted?”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 23

“It takes just the right combination of circumstances to produce a catastrophe, just as it takes the right combination of inevitable errors to produce an accident.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 356

Error

“Most studies of the internal operation of complex organizations, if they mention goals at all, have taken official statements of goals at face value. This may be justified if only a limited problem is being investigated, but even then it contributes to the view that goals are not problematical. In this view, goals have no effect upon activities other than in the grossest terms; or it can be taken for granted that the only problem is to adjust means to given and stable ends. This reflects a distinctive "model" of organizational behavior, which Gouldner has characterized as the rational model. Its proponents see the managerial elite as using rational and logical means to pursue clear and discrete ends set forth in official statements of goals, while the worker is seen as governed by non-rationalistic, traditionalistic orientations.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, "The analysis of goals in complex organizations", 1961, p. 854.

Behavior , Problem , Study

“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

Source: 1970s, "Three Types of Effectiveness Studies," 1977, p. 101 ; As cited in: Diehl-Taylor (1997)

People

“As with all theories, we can learn something from agency theory and transaction-costs economics, since they emphasize something others hide. But as with all theories, they also distort; in fact, I will argue that their distortions outweigh the value of what they highlight.”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 220

Learning

“As an organizational sociologist, I was interested in the system characteristics of large accidents, but the discipline also made me aware of the organizational genesis of male-made disasters.”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 4

“The nuclear power industry, for example, lacks a strong union, has random public victims with delayed effects, has no safety board that is independent of licensing and regulatory functions, and does not see an immediate effect on its profits if safety flags (though a far more severe incentive exists to avoid a catastrophic accident which could shut down the industry)”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 127

Strong

“Frequent scheduling of mass activities in the company of other inmates, group punishment, and administering physical punishment before groups of inmates enhance the probability that inmates identify strongly with one another against staff. When, in addition, staff maintain domineering authority relationships and considerable social dishance, inmates further perceive themselves as members of a group opposed to staff, and divergent interests between these groups are more fully recognized”

Charles Perrow

Source: 1960s, Organization for treatment, 1966, p. 225

“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

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 119

School , Support , Reality

“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

Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, power, and the origins of corporate capitalism. Princeton University Press, 2002/2009. Book abstract.
1980s and later

“The burning cry in all organizations is for “good leadership,” but we have learned that beyond a threshold level of adequacy it is extremely difficult to know what good leadership is.”

Charles Perrow

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

Learning , Cry