Carolina QuotesOrganisations are viewed as systems which utilise energy in a patterned, directed effort to alter the condition of basic materials in a predetermined manner.
Charles Perrow Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 913
- work
- "Hospitals: technology, structure and goals", 1965
- year
- 1965
- locator
- p. 913
Cite this record
“Organisations are viewed as systems which utilise energy in …” Charles Perrow. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-C596422944. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/c596422944
More from Charles Perrow
All complex organizations use people to pursue their tasks, but people-changing organizations work not only with or through people but also on them. People constitute the raison d'etre of these organizations, and, and, as our label suggests, the desired product is a new or altered person. People-changing organizations can be contrasted with organizations that produce, distribute, or service inanimate objects or symbols. The latter may have important consequences for their members' statuses, role-orientations, identities, and personalities, but these alterations are usually incidental, personal, or instrumental. In people-changing organizations the alterations re the primary end. Conceived in this way, the term "people-changing" encompasses a broad variety of organizations, ranging from the monastery (which cleanses the soul while teaching the outward signs of grace) to Menninger's (which restructures the personality), and even to the House of Venus (which reshapes buttocks and identity simultaneously).
People's attitudes are shaped at least as much by the organization in which they work as by their pre-existing attitudes.
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.