“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

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 31

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James D. Mooney36
American businessman 1884–1957

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“The scalar process is the same form in organization which is sometimes called hierarchical. But in order to avoid all definitional ambiguities the term scalar is much to be preferred. A scale means a series of steps; hence, something graduated.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 31

“The scalar principle is the same form in organization that is sometimes called hierarchical. But, to avoid all definitional variants, scalar is here preferred. A scale means a series of steps, something graded. In organization it means the grading of duties, not according to different functions, for this involves another principle of organization, but according to degrees of authority and corresponding responsibility. For convenience we shall call this phenomenon of organization the scalar chain. The common impression regards this scale or chain merely as a "type" of organization, characteristic only of the vaster institutions of government, army, church, and industry. This impression is erroneous. It is likewise misleading, for it seems to imply that the scalar chain in organization lacks universality. These great organizations differ from others only in that the chain is longer. The truth is that wherever we find an organization even of two people, related as superior and subordinate, we have the scalar principle. This chain constitutes the universal process of coordination, through which the supreme coordinating authority becomes effective throughout the entire structure.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 94-95; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 251-252

“Leadership is the form that authority assumes when it enters into process. As such it constitutes the determining principle of the entire scalar process, existing not only at the source, but projecting itself through its own action throughout the entire chain, until, through functional definition, it effectuates the formal coordination of the entire structure.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 33

“Mechanism… provides us with no grasp of the specific characteristics of organisms, of the organization of organic processes among one another, of organic 'wholeness', of the problem of the origin of organic 'teleology', or of the historical character of organisms… We must therefore try to establish a new standpoint which — as opposed to mechanism — takes account of organic wholeness, but… treats it in a manner which admits of scientific investigation.”

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

Source: 1930s, Modern Theory of Development, 1933, 1962, p. 46

“Executive processes are specialized functions in what we know as organizations. If these functions are to be adequately described, the description must be in terms of the nature of the organization itself.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. vii

“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

“They, economics and evolution, are both examples of a larger process, which has been at work in this part of the universe for a very long time. This is the process of the development of structures of increasing complexity and improbability. The evolutionary process always operates through mutation and selection and has involved some distinction between the genotype which mutates and the phenotype which is selected. The process by which the genotype constructs the phenotype may be described as "organization". Economic development manifesto itself largely in the production of commodities, that is, goods and services. It originates, however, in ideas, plans, and attitudes in the human mind. These are the genotypes in economic development. This whole process indeed can be described as a process in the growth of knowledge. What the economist calls "capital" is nothing more than human knowledge imposed on the material world. Knowledge and the growth of knowledge, therefore, is the essential key to economic development. Investment, financial systems and economic organizations and institutions are in a sense only the machinery by which a knowledge process is created and expressed.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1977) Economic Development as an Evolutionary System, Fifth World Congress of the International Economic Association, Tokyo, Aug.-Sept. 1977.
1970s

Bernhard Riemann photo

“The adaptation observed in men, animals and plants… one part of this adaptation is explained from a thought-process in the interior of these bodies… another part, however, the adaptation of the organism, by a thought-process in a greater whole.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

“The term dissociation is here used for a condition in which the organizing process in an individual fail to develop one characteristic form, and two or more mutually incompatible systems of behavior compete for control.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 62

“Concepts of uncertainty and information processing are used to integrate the diverse organization design/structure literatures. This approach more fully explicates the concept of congruence which lies at the heart of contingency ideas. The review suggests a contingency approach to design which develops a feasible set of structural alternatives from which the organization can choose.”

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

Source: "Information Processing as an Integrating Concept in Organizational Design." 1978, p. 613: Abstract

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