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"Since organizations are established to do something, to perform work directed to some end, all organizations have goals – some implied, some explicit."
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Charles PerrowI consider all large organizations troublesome, including governmental — Charles Perrow
"I consider all large organizations troublesome, including governmental and nonprofit organizations. They concentrate power in the hands of their top management; the larger the organization, the greater the power being concentrated. There are degrees of concentration of course, and some large organizations are so disorganized that they lose much of their potential power. But size is generally correlated with these kinds of power: By deciding where to locate they determine economic opportunities for some communities and deny it to others. Their hiring decisions affect the life chances of people, and can, unless checked, favor religious, ethnic, racial, and political affiliations. As consumers of resources, they can favor certain producers over others, and not necessarily on the grounds of “efficiency.” They can mobilize political resources to insure favored treatment better than small organizations."
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Charles Perrow
Charles Perrow
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Charles Bryce Perrow, or Chick Perrow was an American sociologist and a leading figure of organizational sociology. He spent most of his career at SUNY Stony Brook and Yale University as a professor of sociology. He authored several books and many articles on organizations, including Normal Accidents, and was primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society.
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"Organizations are seen primarily as systems for getting work done, for applying techniques to the problem of altering raw materials - whether the materials be people, symbols or things."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"The structural viewpoint considers the roles people play, rather than the nature of the personalities in these roles. It deals with the structures in which roles are performed— the relationship of groups to each other, such as sales and production, and the degree of centralization or decentralization."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"Product of complex interactions within and between the organization’s social structure, leadership groups and environment. ... They are never static but subject to continual pressure and changes over time."
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Charles PerrowQuote
"Frequent scheduling of mass activities in the company of other inmates, group punishment, and administering physical punishment before groups of inmates enhance the probability that inmates identify strongly with one another against staff. When, in addition, staff maintain domineering authority relationships and considerable social dishance, inmates further perceive themselves as members of a group opposed to staff, and divergent interests between these groups are more fully recognized"
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Charles PerrowQuote
"The dominant group, reflecting the imperatives of the particular task that is most critical (to the organization), their own background characteristics (distinctive perspectives based on their training, career lines, and areas of competence) and the unofficial uses to which they put the organization for their own ends."
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Charles Perrow