“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.”

“The basic proposition is that the greater the uncertainty of the task, the greater the amount of information that has to be processed between decision-makers during the execution of the task. If the task is well understood prior to performing it much of the activity can be preplanned. If it is n~t understood, then during the actual task execution more knowledge is acquired which leads to changes in resource allocations, schedules, and priorities.”

“Men… performed better when they understood why they were being asked to carry out a task.”

“Nonroutine tasks:… There are few well-established techniques; there is little certainty about methods, or whether or not they will work. But it also means that there may be a variety of different task to perform, in the sense that raw materials are not standardized, or orders for customers ask for many different or custom-made products.”

“Most social scientists consider the non-bureaucratic, or nonroutine organization to be good and the bureaucratic or routine organization to be bad (it impedes progress, is old- fashioned, is hard on its employees, etc.). But this judgment is debatable.”

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

“We have been born into a certain Culture, at a certain phase of its organic development, we have certain gifts. These condition the earthly task which we must perform. The metaphysical task is beyond any conditioning, for it would have been the same in any age anywhere. The earthly task is merely the form of the higher task, its organic vehicle.”

“Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.”

“The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.”

“Organizational theorists, at least since the pioneering work of Burns and Stalker, 1961 and Joan Woodward, 1965 and others in what came to be called the contingency school, have recognized that centralization is appropriate for organizations with routine tasks, and decentralization for those with nonroutine tasks. For an early statement see Perrow 1967, and Lawrence and Lorch, 1967.”