Carolina QuotesOnce standards of procedures and the allocation of tasks and authority become the subject of normative agreements, the cost of change greatly increased. Normative agreements constrain adaptation in at least two ways. First, they provide a justification and an organizing principle for those elements that wish to resist reorganization (i.e. they can resist in terms of a shared principle). Second, normative agreements preclude the serious consideration of many alternative responses.
Michael T. Hannan Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 931
- work
- "The Population Ecology of Organizations," 1977
- year
- 1977
- locator
- p. 931
Cite this record
“Once standards of procedures and the allocation of tasks and…” Michael T. Hannan. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-48952FCA3A. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/48952fca3a
More from Michael T. Hannan
The concept of "niche," initially borrowed by biologists from early social science, plays a central role in ecological theory... The niche... consists of all those combinations of resource levels at which the population can survive and reproduce itself.
Hannan and Freeman examine the ecology of organizations by exploring the competition for resources and by trying to account for rates of entry and exit and for the diversity of organizational forms. They show that the destinies of organizations are determined more by impersonal forces than by the intervention of individuals by the intervention of individuals.
For wide classes of organizations there are very strong inertial pressures on structure arising from both internal arrangements (for example, internal politics) and from the environment (for example, public legitimation of organizational activity). To claim otherwise is to ignore the most obvious feature of organizational life. Failing churches do not become retail stores nor do firms transform themselves into churches.