Luther H. Gulick quote: “The theory of organization… has to do with the structure of co-ordination imposed upon the work-division units of an en…”

“Follett was always preoccupied with the dynamic view of organization, with the thing in process, so to speak. Authority, Power, Leadership, the Giving of Orders, Conflict, Conciliation — all her keywords are active words. There is a static or structural approach to the problem of organization which has its value; but those who are most convinced of the importance of such structural analysis would be the first to admit that it is only a step on the journey, an instrument of thought; it is not and cannot be complete in itself; it is only the anatomy of the subject. As in medicine, the study of anatomy may be an essential discipline, but it is in the physiology and psychology of the individual patient that that discipline finds its working justification.
Thus the four principles which she finally arrived at to express her view of organization were all active principles. In her own words, they are:
"1. Co-ordination by direct contact of the responsible people concerned.
2. Co-ordination in the early stages.
3. Co-ordination as a reciprocal relating of all the features in a situation.
4. Co-ordination as a continuing process."”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Since these principles are carefully explained and illustrated by Miss Follett herself in the final paper in this volume, we must content ourselves here with merely this concise statement of them.
Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxvi

“The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

“Another recent development is the theory of formal organizations, that is, structures planfully instituted, such as those of an army, Bureaucracy, business enterprise, etc. This theory is framed in a philosophy which accepts the premise that the only meaningful way to study organization is to study it as a system.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 1. Introduction, p. 9

“Organization theory is the branch of sociology that studies organizations as distinct units in society. The organizations examined range from sole proprietorships, hospitals and community-based non-profit organizations to vast global corporations. The field’s domain includes questions of how organizations are structured, how they are linked to other organizations, and how these structures and linkages change over time. Although it has roots in administrative theories, Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, the theory of the firm in microeconomics, and Coase’s theory of firm boundaries, organization theory as a distinct domain of sociology can be traced to the late 1950s and particularly to the work of the Carnegie School. In addition to sociology, organization theory draws on theory in economics, political science and psychology, and the range of questions addressed reflects this disciplinary diversity. While early work focused on specific questions about organizations per se – for instance, why hierarchy is so common, or how businesses set prices – later work increasingly studied organizations and their environments, and ultimately organizations as building blocks of society. Organization theory can thus be seen as a family of mechanisms for analysing social outcomes.”

Gerald F. Davis (1961) American sociologist

Gerald F. Davis (2013). "Organizational theory," in: Jens Beckert & Milan Zafirovski (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, p. 484-488

“It is essentially to the very idea and concept of organization that we there must be a process, formal in character, through which the supreme co-ordinating authority operates throughout the whole structure of the organized body. This process is not an abstraction; it is a tangible reality observable in every organization. It appears in a form so distinct and characteristic that it practically names itself, — hence the term Scalar Process.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 31

“We can also say that language is a domain of recursive linguistic co-ordinations of actions, or a domain of second-order linguistic co-ordinations of actions. We human beings also co-ordinate our actions with each other in first-order linguistic domains, and we do so frequently with non-human animals.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: Reality; The Search for Objectivity or the Quest for a Compelling Argument (1988), p. 48 as cited in: Vincent Kenny (1989) " Life, the Multiverse and Everything; an Introduction to the Ideas of. Humberto Maturana http://www.oikos.org/vinclife.htm".

“An organization is a group of living human beings. The formal or official design for living never completely accounts for what the participants do. It is always supplemented by what is called the “informal structure,” which arises as the individual brings into play his own personality, his special problems and interests. Formal relations co-ordinate roles or specialized activities, not persons.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 8

“[S]elf-organization [is] the appearance of structure or pattern without an external agent imposing it.”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Cited in: Christoph Schmitz (2007) Self-Organized Collaborative Knowledge Management. p.9
The science of self-organization and adaptivity (2001)

“Formal theories of organization have been taught in management courses for many years, and there is an extensive literature on the subject. The textbook principles of organization — hierarchical structure, authority, unity of command, task specialization, division of staff and line, span of control, equality of responsibility and authority, etc. — comprise a logically persuasive set of assumptions which have had a profound influence upon managerial behavior.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 15 (p. 21 in 2006 edition)

“Formal theories of organization have been taught in management courses for many years, and there is an extensive literature on the subject. The textbook principles of organization — hierarchical structure, authority, unity of command, task specialization, division of staff and line, span of control, equality of responsibility and authority, etc.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

comprise a logically persuasive set of assumptions which have had a profound influence upon managerial behavior.
Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 15 (p. 21 in 2006 edition)

“The theory of organization… has to do with the structure of co-ordination imposed upon the work-division units of an enterprise.”

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Luther H. Gulick 13

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