Paul R. Lawrence: Organizing

“CONSIDERABLE attention has recently been devoted to understanding behavior in large organizational systems. Although some of this work has been based on research, it has more typically been general theorizing with little support from research data. Our interest in examining complex organizations is to study more systematically and empirically their internal functioning in relation to the demands of the external environment on the organization and the ability of the organization to cope effectively with these demands, contributing to a theory of the functioning of large organizations based on empirical research.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 2

Behavior , Understanding , Support , Study

“[Integration is defined as] the process of achieving unity of effort among the various subsystems in the accomplishment of the organization's task.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Variant: [Integration is defined as] the process of achieving unity of effort among the various subsystems in the accomplishment of the organization's task.
Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 4

Effort

“The act of segmenting the organization into departments would influence the behavior of organizational members in several ways. The members of each unit would become specialists in dealing with the particular tasks. Both because of their prior education and experience and because of the nature of their task, they would develop specialized working styles and mental processes.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 9

Education , Way , Behavior , Nature

“Sales personnel in all six organizations indicated a primary concern with customer problems, competitive activities, and other events in the marketplace. Manufacturing personnel were all primarily interested in problems of cost reduction, process efficiency, and similar matters.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 37

Problem

“March and Simon's work reflects a key concern with the issue of inducing contributions from organizational members and emphasizes rationality in organizations. The writing of Likert and McGregor reflects a central interest in organizational arrangements for releasing the underutilized energy of individual members. Argyris' work emphasizes the impact of the organization on individual development. All of these writers tend to start with the individual as the basic unit of analysis and build toward the large organization, while we are proposing to start with larger, sociological entities- the entire organization and its larger subsystems.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 3

“This is a comparative study of six organizations operating in the same industrial environment. The subsystems (sales, research, and production) in each organization were differentiated from each other in terms of subsystem formal structures, the member's goal orientation, member's time orientations and member's interpersonal orientations. This differentiation was related to the requirements of the particular subenvironment with which each subsystem dealt. A relationship was found between the extent to which the states of differentiation and integration in each organization met the requirements of the environment and the relative economic performance of the organizations.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 1

Study , Time

“The quality of the state of collaboration that exist among organizations that is required to achieve unity of effort by the demands of the environment.”

Paul R. Lawrence

Source: Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, 1967, p. 11

Effort