Spencer’s Reviews > Classics of Organization Theory > Status Update

Understanding what it takes to have power and recognizing the classic behavior of the powerless can immediately help managers make sense out of a number of familiar organizational problems that are usually attributed to inadequate people.

Power is America's last dirty word. It is easier to talk about money--and much easier to talk about sex--than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it; people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it; and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.

Organizations are complex systems of individuals and coalitions, each having its own interests, beliefs, values, preferences, perspectives, and perceptions. The coalitions continuously compete with each other for scarce organizational resources. Conflict is inevitable. Influence, as well as the power and political activities through which influence is acquired and maintained, is the primary weapon.

It is impossible to understand the nature of a formal organization without investigating the networks of informal relations and the unofficial norms as well as the formal hierarchy of authority and the official body of rules, since the formally instituted and the informally emerging patterns are inextricably intertwined.

The organic form, by departing from the familiar clarity and fixity of the hierarchic structure, is often experienced by [a] manager as an uneasy, embarrassed, or chronically anxious quest for knowledge about what he should be doing, or what is expected of him, and similar apprehensiveness about what others are doing. This kind of response is necessary if the organic form of organization is to work effectively.

In most work situations the meaning of a change is likely to be as important, if not more so, than the change itself...However, the meaning which these changes have for the worker is not strictly and primarily logical, for they are fraught with human feeling and values.

But as we inspect these formal structures we begin to see that they never succeed in conquering the non rational dimensions of organizational behavior. The latter remain at once indispensable to the continued existence of the system of coordination and at the same time the source of friction, dilemma, doubt, and ruin.

...the determination of the precise combination of incentives and persuasion that will be both effective and feasible is a matter of great delicacy. Indeed, it is so delicate and complex that rarely, if ever, is the scheme of incentives determinable in advance of application. It can only evolve...invariably external conditions affect the possibilities of material incentives and human motives are likewise variable

The sovereign is never entirely in command, and must sacrifice rational controls (and unitary goals) to accede to a variety of internal and external pressures. The best and most rational way to do things, in principle, may not be feasible in practice, depending on what competitive and supportive elements the environment supplies.