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James D. Thompson Quotes

d. 1973 United States

James David Thompson (January 11, 1920 in Indianapolis – September 1, 1973) was an American sociologist, and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, especially known for his book Organizations in Action, published in 1967.

United States
Academics
Business theorists
Sociologists

Random James D. Thompson quote

9 quotes

Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to seal off their core technologies from environmental influences.

Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to buffer environmental influences by surrounding their technical cores with input and output components.

Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to smooth out input and output transactions.

Under norms of rationality, organizations seek to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes which cannot be buffered or leveled.

Organizations under norms of rationality seek to place their boundaries around those activities which if left to the task environment would be crucial contingencies.

When buffering, leveling, and forecasting do not protect their technical cores from environmental fluctuations, organizations under norms of rationality resort to rationing.

If we now reintroduce the conception of the complex organization as an open system subject to criteria of rationality, we are in a position to speculate about some dynamic properties of organizations.

A central purpose of this book is to identify a framework which might link at important points several of the now independent approaches to the understanding of complex organizations.

The incorporation of subsidiary competencies along with major missions is commonplace in organizations of all types and is not a major discovery. But our proposition is not an announcement of the fact; rather it attempts to indicate the in which domains are expanding

p. 39-40; As cited in: Barbara Czarniawska (1999)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: James D. Thompson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.