Carolina QuotesMost normal accidents have a significant degree of incomprehensibility.
Charles Perrow Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 23
- work
- Normal Accidents, 1984
- year
- 1984
- locator
- p. 23
Cite this record
“Most normal accidents have a significant degree of incompreh…” Charles Perrow. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-5461EC2574. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/5461ec2574
More from Charles Perrow
The dominant group, reflecting the imperatives of the particular task that is most critical (to the organization), their own background characteristics (distinctive perspectives based on their training, career lines, and areas of competence) and the unofficial uses to which they put the organization for their own ends.
The concept of organizational goals, like the concepts of power, authority, or leadership, has been unusually resistant to precise, unambiguous definition. Yet a definition of goals is necessary and unavoidable in organizational analysis. Organizations are established to do something; they perform work directed toward some end.
Most studies of the internal operation of complex organizations, if they mention goals at all, have taken official statements of goals at face value. This may be justified if only a limited problem is being investigated, but even then it contributes to the view that goals are not problematical. In this view, goals have no effect upon activities other than in the grossest terms; or it can be taken for granted that the only problem is to adjust means to given and stable ends. This reflects a distinctive "model" of organizational behavior, which Gouldner has characterized as the rational model. Its proponents see the managerial elite as using rational and logical means to pursue clear and discrete ends set forth in official statements of goals, while the worker is seen as governed by non-rationalistic, traditionalistic orientations.