Spencer’s Reviews > Classics of Organization Theory > Status Update
Spencer
is finished
Managers are hired to be fired reflects a great amount of truth about all managers. one of the reasons for having a manager is to have someone who is responsible, accountable for the organization's activities and outcomes. If the manager has little influence over these activities or outcomes, it is still useful to hold him responsible. His firing itself may permit loosening some of the constraints facing the org.
— Jan 29, 2023 01:59PM
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Spencer’s Previous Updates
Spencer
is 90% done
Because attempts to control and coordinate activities in institutionalized organizations lead to conflicts and loss of legitimacy, elements of structure are decoupled from activities and from each other...Goals are made ambiguous or vacuous, and categorical ends are substituted for technical ends...the ability to coordinate things in violation of the rules—that is, to get along with other people—is highly valued.
— Jan 14, 2023 05:43PM
Spencer
is 85% done
...attention is focused on variables which are not included in any of the rational models—sentiments, cliques, social controls via informal norms, status, status striving, and so on. It is clear that students of informal organizations regard these variables not as random deviations or error, but as patterned, adaptive responses of human beings in problematic situations.
— Jan 06, 2023 07:09PM
Spencer
is on page 420 of 496
In a closed physical system the same initial conditions must lead to the same final result. In open systems this is not true even at the biological level. It is much less true at the social level. Yet in practice we insist that there is one best way...
— Jan 01, 2023 01:20PM
Spencer
is on page 400 of 496
Organizations are not, at their core, problems to be solved. Just the opposite. Every organization was created as a solution designed in its own time to meet a challenge or satisfy a need of society.
— Dec 26, 2022 11:17AM
Spencer
is on page 389 of 496
...the success of a hierarchy, or bureaucracy, can be costly. But whatever the financial cost, these protective mechanisms take over when individual contribution can be equitably assessed only through the somewhat more subtle form of bureaucratic surveillance...by comparison clans succeed when teamwork and change render individual performance almost totally ambiguous.
— Dec 24, 2022 09:09PM
Spencer
is 70% done
Culture is an abstraction, yet the forces that are created in social and organizational situations that derive from culture are powerful. If we don't understand the operation of these forces, we become victim to them...The bottom line for leaders is that if they do not become conscious of the cultures in which they are embedded, those cultures will manage them.
— Dec 17, 2022 05:22PM
