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

—  James D. Thompson

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

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James D. Thompson11
American sociologist 1920–1973

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“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to buffer environmental influences by surrounding their technical cores with input and output components.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 20; Proposition 2.2

“When buffering, leveling, and forecasting do not protect their technical cores from environmental fluctuations, organizations under norms of rationality resort to rationing.”

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

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“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to smooth out input and output transactions.”

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“The more sectors in which the organization subject to rationality norms is constrained; the more power the organization will seek over remaining sectors of its task environment… many constraints and unable to achieve power in other sectors of its task environment will seek to enlarge the task environment.”

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

“Institutional theories of organization provide a rich, complex view of organizations. In these theories, organizations are influenced by normative pressures, sometimes arising from external sources such as the state, other times arising from within the organization itself. Under some conditions, these pressures lead the organization to be guided by legitimated elements, from standard operating procedures to professional certification and state requirement, which often have the effect of directing attention away from task performance… Institutional theories of organization have spread rapidly, a testimony to the power of the imaginative ideas developed in theoretical and empirical work.”

Lynne G. Zucker American sociologist

Lynne G. Zucker (‎1987). "Institutional Theories of Organization," In: Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 13: 443-464

“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 (1920–1973) American sociologist

Organizations in Action, 1967

Lewis Pugh photo

“Law taught me how to argue passionately and rationally. That’s key to being a successful environmental campaigner. If you are too emotional you run the risk of turning off policy makers. And if you can’t present your arguments rationally, no one will listen to you.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

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“As open systems, organizations faced an environment that might be placid and benevolent, or turbulent and harsh. Economic, social, political, and technological changes could come rapidly or slowly, and some organizational arrangements might be better able to cope with the changing environment than others. Could it be that there was no one way to structure an organization that design was influenced by environmental factors and could vary, depending on technology?
Joan Woodward (1916–1971) took this contingency view, classified organizations by the complexity of the technology used in producing goods, and found that it influenced an organization’s structure. Her classification, ranging from less complex (1) to more advanced (3), consisted of (1) unit and small-batch production systems that produced made-to-order and customized products to meet consumers’ needs; (2) large-batch and mass production, which involved a fairly standardized or uniform product with but few variations in its final appearance; and (3) long-run continuous-process production, which involved a standard product manufactured by moving through a predictable series of steps.”

Daniel A. Wren (1932) American business theorist

Source: The evolution of management thought, 1972, p. 462-3 (in 2009 edition)

Paul DiMaggio photo

“What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as afield, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes—coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.”

Paul DiMaggio (1951) American sociologist

Source: "The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields," 1983, p. 147; abstract

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