“If the organization is faced with greater uncertainty due to technological change, higher performance standards due to increased competition, or diversifies its product line to reduce dependence, the amount of information processing is increased. The organization must adopt at least one of the four strategies when faced with greater uncertainty.”

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 26

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Jay R. Galbraith9

American business theorist 1939–2014

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 4

“One trader's move in the market can be interpreted by another trader as relevant additional information due to the uncertainty he faces.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 6, Hierarchies, Complex Fractal Dimensions, And Log Periodicity, p. 182.

“Competition among capitalists requires that they constantly reduce the costs of production, by cutting wages or some other means, while increasing output through technological change and greater efficiency. The process, then, involves three intertwined aspects:
(1) capitalists control the means of production,
(2) laborers must sell their labor to survive because they lack access to the means of production, and
(3) there must be constant changes to increase production and cut costs.”

Ted C. Lewellen (1940–2006) American writer

Political Anthropology: An Introduction (2003), p. 213

“Evolution often uses this strategy. Indeed, the standard evolutionary practice of increasing the amount of genetic information as organisms increase in complexity is accomplished by doubling part of the genetic material and then allowing the slow specialization of function of the redundant set.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 183)

“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.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Organization design: An information processing view, 1977, p. 21

“A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death.”

Boris Sidis The Source and Aim of Human Progress

The Source and Aim of Human Progress (1919)

“[Task uncertainty is] the difference between the amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organisation.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 5

“When a broad and significant change occurs in the organization, the first question many people ask is “What's in it for me?” or “What's going to happen to me? This is an indication of the anxiety that occurs when people are faced with the uncertainty associated with organizational change.”

David A. Nadler (1948–2015) American organizational theorist

David A Nadler (2010), "Techniques for the management of change," Robert Golembiewski (ed.) Handbook of Organizational Consultation, p. 1067; Quoted in: Diane Dormant, ‎Joe Lee (2011). The Chocolate Model of Change.

“Most of our beliefs about complex organizations follow from one or the other of two distinct strategies. The closed-system strategy seeks certainty by incorporating only those variables positively associated with goal achievement and subjecting them to a monolithic control network. The open-system strategy shifts attention from goal achievement to survival and incorporates uncertainty by recognizing organizational interdependence with environment. A newer tradition enables us to conceive of the organization as an open system, indeterminate and faced with uncertainty, but subject to criteria of rationality and hence needing certainty.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 13 (in 2011 edition)

“As open systems, organizations faced an environment that might be placid and benevolent, or turbulent and harsh. Economic, social, political, and technological changes could come rapidly or slowly, and some organizational arrangements might be better able to cope with the changing environment than others. Could it be that there was no one way to structure an organization that design was influenced by environmental factors and could vary, depending on technology?
Joan Woodward (1916–1971) took this contingency view, classified organizations by the complexity of the technology used in producing goods, and found that it influenced an organization’s structure. Her classification, ranging from less complex (1) to more advanced (3), consisted of (1) unit and small-batch production systems that produced made-to-order and customized products to meet consumers’ needs; (2) large-batch and mass production, which involved a fairly standardized or uniform product with but few variations in its final appearance; and (3) long-run continuous-process production, which involved a standard product manufactured by moving through a predictable series of steps.”

Daniel A. Wren (1932) American business theorist

Source: The evolution of management thought, 1972, p. 462-3 (in 2009 edition)

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