Philip Selznick > Quotes

“The term “leadership” connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6]  {37}”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Fourth, character is dynamic in that it generates new strivings, new needs and problems. It is largely through the identification of these needs that diagnosis proceeds, as when the discovery of excessive dependency or aggressiveness suggests that the patient has a particular type of character-structure.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“In what is perhaps its most significant meaning, “to institutionalize” is to infuse with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand. The prizing of social machinery beyond its technical role is largely a reflection of the unique way in which it fulfills personal or group needs. Whenever individuals become attached to an organization or a way of doing things as persons rather than as technicians, the result is a prizing of the device for its own sake. From the standpoint of the committed person, the organization is changed from an expendable tool into a valued source of personal satisfaction. Some manifestations of this process are quite obvious; others are less easily recognized. It is a commonplace that administrative changes are difficult when individuals have become habituated to and identified with long-established procedures. For example, the shifting of personnel is inhibited when business relations become personal ones and there is resistance to any change that threatens rewarding ties.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“To summarize: organizations are technical instruments, designed as means to definite goals. They are judged on engineering premises; they are expendable. Institutions, whether conceived as groups or practices, may be partly engineered, but they have also a “natural” dimension. They {22} are products of interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of group idealism; they are less readily expendable.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Rules apply to foremen and machinists, to clerks, sergeants, and vice-presidents, yet no durable organization is able to hold human experience to these formally defined roles. In actual practice, men tend to interact as many-faceted persons, adjusting to the daily round in ways that spill over the neat boundaries set by their assigned roles.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The term “organization” thus suggests a certain bareness, a lean, no-nonsense system of consciously co-ordinated activities.[1] It refers to an expendable tool, a rational instrument engineered to do a job. An “institution,” on the other hand, is more nearly a natural product of social needs and pressures—a responsive, adaptive organism. This distinction is a matter of analysis, not of direct description. It does not {6} mean that any given enterprise must be either one or the other. While an extreme case may closely approach either an “ideal” organization or an “ideal” institution, most living associations resist so easy a classification. They are complex mixtures of both designed and responsive behavior.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The relation of an organization to the external environment is, however, only one source of institutional experience. There is also an internal social world to be considered. An {8} organization is a group of living human beings. The formal or official design for living never completely accounts for what the participants do. It is always supplemented by what is called the “informal structure,” which arises as the individual brings into play his own personality, his special problems and interests. Formal relations co-ordinate roles or specialized activities, not persons.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The most striking and obvious thing about an administrative organization is its formal system of rules and objectives. Here tasks, powers, and procedures are set out according to some officially approved pattern. This pattern purports to say how the work of the organization is to be carried on, whether it be producing steel, winning votes, teaching children, or saving souls. The organization thus designed is a technical instrument for mobilizing human energies and directing them toward set aims. We allocate tasks, delegate authority, channel communication, and find some way of co-ordinating all that has been divided up and parceled out. All this is conceived as an exercise in engineering; it is governed by the related ideals of rationality and discipline.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The relations outlined on an organization chart provide a framework within which fuller and more spontaneous human behavior takes place. The formal system may draw upon that behavior for added strength; it will in its turn be subordinated to personal and group egotism. Every official and employee will try to use his position to satisfy his {9} psychological needs. This may result in a gain for the organization if he accepts its goals and extends himself in its interests. But usually, even in the best circumstances, some price is paid in organizational rigidity.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The idea of “character” as used by personality analysts is not altogether clear, but its usefulness is scarcely in doubt. There seems to be general agreement on four attributes. First, character is a historical product. “The character as a whole,” writes Fenichel, “reflects the individual’s historical development.”[8] Character is the “ego’s habitual ways of reacting.” In this sense every individual has a unique character.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“When the thoughtful American pauses to reflect upon the contrast between his life and that of his opposite number behind the Iron Curtain, and asks himself why it is that our life is so rich and the other so drab, he must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that the secret lies in the contrasting forms under which society here, and society there, are organized. He will proudly see that it is no mere coincidence that ours, the one which is least planned, and least controlled, is not only the most effective, but the most rewarding. He will find that therein lies the cause itself, the hidden source of all of our good fortune. Never in history has the world seen the like of our way of life, and the conclusion is inescapable that free men who voluntarily accept leadership outstrip in every aspect of human activity those upon whom direction is arbitrarily imposed. Freedom is therefore not only man’s most satisfying experience, but his most reliable working tool.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Third, character is functional, in the sense that it is no mere accidental accretion of responsive patterns. Character {39} development fulfills a task set by the requirements of personality organization: the defense of the individual against inner and outer demands which threaten him. “Biologically speaking, character formation is an autoplastic function. In the conflict between instinct and frustrating outer world, and motivated by the anxiety arising from this conflict, the organism erects a protection mechanism between itself and the outer world.”[9] Whatever the special content of varying theories of character-formation, they share an emphasis on the reconstruction of the self as a way of solving anxiety-laden problems.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Similarly, when a technically devised organizational unit becomes a social group—a unity of persons rather than of technicians—newly deployable energy is created; but this, too, has inherently divisive and frustrating potentialities. For the unity of persons breaks through the neat confines of rational organization and procedure; it creates new strivings, primarily for the protection of group integrity, that exert an unceasing influence on the formal pattern of delegation and control. This search for security and fulfillment is reflected in the struggle of individuals for place and preferment, in rivalry among units within the organization, and in commitment to ingrained ways of behaving. These are universal features of organizational life, and the problems they raise are perennial ones.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Institutionalization is a process. It is something that happens to an organization over time, reflecting the organization’s own distinctive history, the people who have been in it, the groups it embodies and the vested interests they have created, and the way it has adapted to its environment. For purposes of this essay, the following point is of special importance: The degree of institutionalization depends on how much leeway there is for personal and group interaction. The more precise an organization’s goals, and the more specialized and technical its operations, the less opportunity will there be for social forces to affect its development.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“A living association blends technical aims and procedures with personal desires and group interests. As a result, various elements in the association have a stake in its continued existence. Moreover, the aims of the organization may require a certain permanence and stability. There is a need to accommodate internal interests and adapt to outside forces, in order to maintain the organization as a “going concern,” minimize risks, and achieve long-run as well as short-run objectives.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Second, character is in some sense an integrated product, as is suggested by the term “character-structure.” There is a discoverable pattern in the way the ego is organized; and the existence of such a pattern is the basis of character analysis.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Leadership is not equivalent to office-holding or high prestige or authority or decision-making. It is not helpful to identify leadership with whatever is done by people in high places. The activity we have in mind may or may not be engaged in by those who are formally in positions of authority. This is inescapable if we are to develop a theory that will be useful in diagnosing cases of inadequate leadership on the part of persons in authority.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“The formal, technical system is therefore never more than a part of the living enterprise we deal with in action. The persons and groups who make it up are not content to be treated as manipulable or expendable. As human beings and not mere tools they have their own needs for self-protection and self-fulfillment—needs that may either sustain the formal system or undermine it. These human relations are a great reservoir of energy. They may be directed in constructive ways toward desired ends or they may become recalcitrant sources of frustration. One objective of sound management practice is to direct and control these internal social pressures.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Leadership is a kind of work done to meet the needs of a social situation. Possibly there are some individuals more likely to be leaders than others, possessed of distinguishing personal traits or capacities.[5] Whether or not this is so, we shall here be concerned with leadership as a specialized form of activity, a kind of work or function. Identifying what leaders do certainly bears on (and is perhaps indispensable to) the discovery of requisite personal attributes; but the questions are of a different kind and may be treated separately.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation