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

—  James D. Thompson

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

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James D. Thompson11
American sociologist 1920–1973

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

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Proposition 2.5
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“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to seal off their core technologies from environmental influences.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

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

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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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Proposition 2.4
Organizations in Action, 1967

“Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energy input consists of transactions between the organization and its environment.”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 16-17

“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

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Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 223 as cited in: Gillian Ragsdell, Daune West, Jennifer Wilby (2002) Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age. p. 82. In the original quote Checkland summarised his earlier work with Smyth published in 1976.

“It [a power based model of organization] sees organizations a intentional human constructions but not necessarily rational systems guided by official goals; as bargaining areas rather than cooperative systems; as systems of power rather than coercive institutions reflecting cultural norms, and as resources for other organizations and groups rather than closed systems. If we define organizations, then, as intentional human constructions wherein people and groups within and without the organization compete for outputs of interest them under conditions of unequal power, we have posed the issue of effectiveness quite differently”

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“Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.”

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“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.”

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

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