“Once standards of procedures and the allocation of tasks and authority become the subject of normative agreements, the cost of change greatly increased. Normative agreements constrain adaptation in at least two ways. First, they provide a justification and an organizing principle for those elements that wish to resist reorganization (i. e. they can resist in terms of a shared principle). Second, normative agreements preclude the serious consideration of many alternative responses.”

— Michael T. Hannan

Source: "The Population Ecology of Organizations," 1977, p. 931

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US-American sociologist of Stanford University 1943

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