“Organizations under norms of rationality seek to place their boundaries around those activities which if left to the task environment would be crucial contingencies.
The implication of this proposition is that we should expect to find organizations including within their domains activities or competencies which, on a technological basis, could be performed by the task environment without damage to the to the major mission of the organization. For the hotel, for example, provision of rooms and meals would be the major mission, and the operation of a laundry would be excluded; yet we find hotels operating laundries. On the other hand, provision of rooms and meals would not be within the major mission of the hospital, although hospitals commonly include these activities within their domains.”

— James D. Thompson

Organizations in Action, 1967

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James D. Thompson 11

American sociologist 1920–1973

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 36-37; As cited in: Christopher A. Simon (2001). To Run a School: Administrative Organization and Learning, p. 40

“Broadly stated, the task is to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Simon (1955) "A behavioral model of rational choice", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 69 (1); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 462).
1940s-1950s

“The incorporation of subsidiary competencies along with major missions is commonplace in organizations of all types and is not a major discovery. But our proposition is not an announcement of the fact; rather it attempts to indicate the in which domains are expanding”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 39-40; As cited in: Barbara Czarniawska (1999). Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre. p. 33

“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to seal off their core technologies from environmental influences.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 19; Proposition 2.1

“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes which cannot be buffered or leveled.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Proposition 2.4
Organizations in Action, 1967

“Interaction is the mode of life of living organisms. Each must feed on its environment, ingesting chemicals or other organisms. This is something more than "interaction", it is activity directed towards the environment. Since the organism must be selective in what it ingests, it needs to discriminate among the entities in its environment. From very primitive forms of discrimination, the sensory mechanisms of organisms have evolved into the senses of man, interpreted by an internal cognitive apparatus, memories of past experiences, and an ability to take rational decisions. By "rational" I mean activity that achieves intended results because it is based on a reliable understanding of the nature of the environment. In interacting with each other to carry out tasks jointly, men have further developed language, leading to a shared understanding of the environment. This shared understanding is knowledge.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Brian Vickery (2009) " The development of knowledge http://web.archive.org/web/20100125043520/http://www.lucis.me.uk/devtknow.htm" on lucis.me.uk, 2009.