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James G. March Quotes

1928–2018 United States

James Gardner March (January 15, 1928 – September 27, 2018) was an American business theorist and professor emeritus in management, sociology, political science, and education at Stanford University. Widely recognized as a pioneer of organization and management theory, March coauthored the classic books Organizations (1958) and A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (1959).

United States
Business theorists
Sociologists

Also known as: James March, March, James G., March. James G.

Random James G. March quote

6 quotes

No organization works if the toilets don't work, but I don't believe that finding solutions to business problems is my job.

Ideas as Art (2006)

I am not now, nor I have ever been, relevant.

Ideas as Art (2006)

They [human beings] are unwilling to gamble that God made those people who are skilled at rational argumentation uniquely virtuous. They protect themselves and others from cleverness by obscuring their preferences.

If a manager asks an academic consultant what to do and that consultant answers, then the consultant should be fired. No academic has the experience to know the context of a managerial problem well enough to give specific advice about a specific situation.

Ideas as Art (2006)

Social, political and economic institutions have become larger, considerably more complex and resourceful, and prima facie more important to collective life. Many of the major actors in modern economic and political systems are formal organizations, and the institutions of law and bureaucracy occupy a dominant role in contemporary life.

Pure rationality and limited rationality share a common perspective, seeing decisions as based on evaluation of alternatives in terms of their consequences for preferences. This logic of consequences can be contrasted with a logic of appropriateness by which actions are matched to situations by means of rules organized into identities.

James G. March (1994)

Attribution

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