Status Updates From The External Control of Org...

one function of the leader or manager is to serve as a symbol, as a focal point for the organization’s successes and failures—in other words, to personify the organization, its activities, and its outcomes. Such personification of social causation enhances the feeling of predictability and control, giving observers an identifiable, concrete target for emotion and action.

The idea was that if you wanted to understand organizational choices and actions, one place to begin this inquiry was to focus less on internal dynamics and the values and beliefs of leaders and more on the situations in which organizations were located and the pressures and constraints that emanated from those situations.