“The formal administrative design can never adequately or fully reflect the concrete organization to which it refers, for the obvious reason that no abstract plan or pattern can—or may, if it is to be useful—exhaustively describe an empirical totality. At the same time, that which is not included in the abstract design (as reflected, for example, in a a staff and-line organization chart) is vitally relevant to the maintenance and development of the formal system itself.”

—  Philip Selznick

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Organization," 1948, p. 25

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Philip Selznick20
American sociologist 1919–2010

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