“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to smooth out input and output transactions.”
James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist
Proposition 2.3
Organizations in Action, 1967
Source: Short fiction, Future Tense (1964), Dodkin’s Job (p. 15)
“Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to smooth out input and output transactions.”
James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist
Proposition 2.3
Organizations in Action, 1967
Larry Bossidy (1935) American businessman
Source: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire
"Episodes and Visions", p. 308
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is Sartre; culture Cocteau; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic); Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L. A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood.
“Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.”
Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general
2000s, The Powell Principles (2003)
Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author
The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)
Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic
Green Party presidential candidacy speech (2000), Crashing the Party (2002)
“In Japan, organizations and people in the organization are synonymous.”
Kenichi Ohmae (1943) Japanese academic
Kenichi Ohmae. “The Myth and Reality of the Japanese Corporation,” Chief Executive (Summer 1981)