Carolina QuotesAmerican society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued?
Charles Perrow Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, power, and the origins of corporate capitalism. Princeton University Press, 2002/2009. Book abstract.
- work
- 1980s and later
- year
- 2002
Cite this record
“American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast …” Charles Perrow. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-409429808C. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/409429808c
More from Charles Perrow
Most normal accidents have a significant degree of incomprehensibility.
Some of these by-products [of official goals] may become so important to the participants who make up the institution as to constitute unofficial goals. “I would not be interested in this hospital unless it...” did something or other. “The trouble with this place is everyone is so concerned with” this or that pursuit. Where these blanks are not filled in with good patient care, teaching and research we have unofficial goals of some group or individual, and thus we have uses to which the institution is put other than the avowed ones.
What do individuals or groups of similarly hope to gain from participation in the affairs of the organization? Or, to use an awkward phrase we shall reiterate frequently, what are the uses to which they put the organisation?