THE LIMITS OF ORGANIZATION. lst ed

by Kenneth J. Arrow

The Fels lectures on public policy analysis.

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics

Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this little book! A very quick, concise book with lots of excellent tidbits. Especially interesting to read now, with the onslaught of internet information that people are faced with daily, to hear how Arrow imagined individuals and organizations would deal with "too much" back in 1974. Kind of computer programming - kind of game theory. I loved it and I am adding more of his work to my to-read list.

[Reda Oumlil · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent short essay by arguably the greatest economist of all time , intelligible and lucid . His description of the price and non-price systems is immaculate .

[Bryce Hwang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic book explaining how the cost of gathering and transmitting information lead to the evolution of organizations (firms, government, and even moral principles).

A memorable line of questioning from the beginning of the book: 'If I am not for myself, then who is for me? And if I am not for others, then who am I? And if not now when?'

[Bill Jaeger · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best, most insightful books in economics, by one if the most brilliant economists of the past 100 years. Contains enormous insights about that part of economics which is not pertaining to markets -- namely an enormous amount of really important stuff.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good short book on Organizational Economics.

[rixx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't finish this book, my brain isn't sufficiently economist-shaped. I even tried to read it twice this year, so I'm declaring this an unsuccessful attempt. Still, some very rough and unedited notes on what I read before giving up:

Leftists (as in: anarcho-syndicalists) call for unity between individual and social roles, whereas the right/libertarians deny the role of collective action/responsibility, and substitute the market. Most of us operate in the middle of this tension between social conscience and self-preservation, forgetting social claims for a while and then remembering and fulfilling them.

**Organisations are means of achieving benefits of collective actions** in situations in which the price system fails. We need social groups to mediate the use of and competition for scarce resources, and to generate advantages of cooperation. Because while markets may be efficient, they are not enough: we need to deal with hard/impossible-to-price stuff. There's a bunch of arguing that not everything can be priced and that the market relies on impossible to price things like trust and responsibility: big surprise.

**Information has costs**, especially lack of information, scond-guessing, uncertainty. But also information handling: everybody's capacity is limited and costly, as is expanding it (learning a language, joining an ingroup etc). All information inflow changes our expectations and outlook, and it's hard to know which information to invest effort in, since we can't know information value and distribution (as in: adjacent information is easier to acquire).

Ideally, we'd know our priorities and values, but practically, we can't, and also they change a lot.

[R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of four essays. They deal with how organizations facilitate dealing with uncertainty and the allocation of scarce resources, as well as the challenges they encounter with the coordination of effort.
Two thirds of the way through the second essay I began skimming through the rest. The prose suffers from the economist’s turgid jargon. Perhaps it is due to my ignorance, but it felt that much of what was said was common sense and could have been said in plain English.

[Shawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Decent, general, somewhat abstract, a 90-min. read. It goes over the purpose of organization. It felt vague, there weren't any specifics to draw upon, it felt like a commentary, or assessment, of the efficiency of organizations. He defines organizations widely, to include relationships. I didn't learn anything, but there are some nice quotes in this essay, and some references.

[Andreas Selvig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting discussion of when, how, and what happens when the price mechanism is ineffective as an organisational principle. Conceptual discussion of what problems warrant organisation and what problems such organisation faces

[Jace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cleared up multiple terms I had troubled defining.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, though turgid and somewhat dated, attempt to explain organizations from a neoclassical perspective.