“In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.”

—  Herbert A. Simon , book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 114.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the …" by Herbert A. Simon?
Herbert A. Simon photo
Herbert A. Simon 58
American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and p… 1916–2001

Related quotes

“In business, the followers are the customers. To produce these customers, the entire corporation must be viewed as a customer-creating and customer satisfying organism. Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization.”

Theodore Levitt (1925–2006) American economist and professor at Harvard Business School

Source: Marketing Myopia, 1960, p. 20-21

Ennius photo

“The Roman state survives by its ancient customs and its manhood.”
Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

Annals, Book V

“Hard systems thinking is also accused of conservatism. It privileges the values and interests of its clients and customers, and lends its apparent expertise to their realization. It thus gives the facade of objectivity to changes that help to secure the status quo. In general terms, despite its many strengths and achievements, hard systems thinking is today thought of as having a limited domain of application.”

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

Michael C. Jackson (2007) Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. p. 62

Steve Blank photo

“No business plan survives its first contact with customers.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 53.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“Only that he may conform
To tyrant custom.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, Third Day, Part ii. Compare: "The tyrant custom", William Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc. 3, line 230.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

Clayton M. Christensen photo

“[There is a distinguishes between] low-end disruption which targets customers who do not need the full performance valued by customers at the high end of the market and "new-market disruption" that targets customers that could previously not be served profitably by the incumbent.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Christensen (2003) The Innovator's Solution. p. 22-23
2000s

Peter Kropotkin photo

“Its character is the skillful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), II
Context: Legislators confounded in one code the two currents of custom of which we have just been speaking, the maxims which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life in common, and the mandates which are meant to ensure external existence to inequality.
Customs, absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the crowd. "Do not kill," says the code, and hastens to add, "And pay tithes to the priest." "Do not steal," says the code, and immediately after, "He who refuses to pay taxes, shall have his hand struck off."
Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skillful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.

“An organization can secure the efforts necessary to its existence, then, either by the objective inducements it provides or by changing states of mind. It seems to me improbable that any organization can exist as a practical matter which does not employ both methods in combination. In some organizations the emphasis is on the offering of objective incentives — this is true of most industrial organizations. In others the preponderance is on the state of mind — this is true of most patriotic and religious organizations.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 141

“Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 11

Melanie Perkins photo

“Solve customer problems and make sure that the customer is representative of a large market and then you will have a pretty good formula.”

Melanie Perkins (1987) Australian technology entrepreneur

Source: https://twitter.com/arjunmahadevan/status/1677775875369058304

Related topics