Carolina QuotesThe hundreds of scientific studies of this phenomenon come to one general conclusion: Leadership is highly variable or "contingent" upon a large variety of important variables such as nature of task, size of the group, length of time the group has existed, type of personnel within the group and their relationships with each other, and amount of pressure the group is under. It docs not seem likely that we'll be able to devise a way to select the best leader for a particular situation. Even if we could, that situation would probably change in a short time and thus would require a somewhat different type of leader.
Charles Perrow Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 13
- work
- "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973
- year
- 1973
- locator
- p. 13
Cite this record
“The hundreds of scientific studies of this phenomenon come t…” Charles Perrow. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-37C4D12BDB. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/37c4d12bdb
More from Charles Perrow
In a modern society, where large organizations have acquired unprecedented importance, social scientists have increasingly sought to understand the nature of organizational goals - what they are, what shapes or determines them, what their impact is upon the environment, and how they change.
Where and how will official goals be subverted?
Organizational theorists, at least since the pioneering work of Burns and Stalker, 1961 and Joan Woodward, 1965 and others in what came to be called the contingency school, have recognized that centralization is appropriate for organizations with routine tasks, and decentralization for those with nonroutine tasks. For an early statement see Perrow 1967, and Lawrence and Lorch, 1967.