f- !

' 7

WORKING PAPER SERIES - 227

UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS
AND THE WORKPLACE
by
John F. Glass

IL
V

John F. Glass
Coordinator
Institute of Industrial Relations
Center for Management Research and Education
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90024
(301) 825-1888
(Formerly, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of California, Northridge)

DRAFT: November 1991

INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATION8

UNIVERSIT.Y OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES
 UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS AND THE WORKPLACE
John F. Glass
Revision to be published in second edition, Using Sociology: An
Introduction from the Clinical Perspective ed. by Roger Straus
(General Hall, 1992, forthcoming).
(11-3-91)
Few of us realize how much of our lives are spent in
organizations. We usually begin and sometimes end our lives in
hospitals; our formative years are spent in schools, and we spend
the bulk of our adult years working in an organization of one sort or
another. Our experiences in organizations help to shape our
identity, how we feel about ourselves, and our value as people.
Since its beginnings, sociology has been deeply concerned with
organizations and work as key issues in understanding society and
social life. Karl Marx, for example, felt that the way in which work
is organized is the single most important fact about any society.
Perhaps Emile Durkheim's (1964) most influential contribution
centers on his analysis of the ever increasing division of labor (i.e.,
of job specialization). Max Weber's monumental synthesis of
interpretive sociology was entitled Economy and Society (1968a,b).
Sociology teaches us that human action and experience can be
understood best in its structural context. Consequently,
contemporary sociologists have been especially interested in the
social arrangements of the workplace. Since, for most of us, our
work life takes place in offices, factories, agencies, hospitals,
schools, businesses of various kinds, sociologists are also
intefested in these places as formal organizations and seek to
understand their functioning--how people make their lives and
careers within organizations, and the ways in which organizations
can be changed to become more humane and more effective.
In this chapter we will look first at some fundamental views
about organizational structure and process, and then turn to some
more recent work in organizational analysis and planned change,

1
including culture, the quality of work life, and organizational. stress
as important variables. The purpose is to help you learn about
organizational life and take a look at career opportunities in this
area where a sociological bent is most relevant.
A detailed examination of sociological analyses of
organizations is beyond the scope of this chapter. Perrow(1972,
1979), Blau and Meyer(1971), Dalton(1959), Etzioni(1964), and
Gouldner(1954), are all excellent examples of. organizational studies
by well known sociologists.

Formal Organizations
Formal organizations ("organizations" for short) are complex
human systems deliberately established to fill a defined purpose
(Caplow 1983). Pioneered by Max Weber, the sociological study of
organizations investigates how they are structured, how people
behave in them, how they are led and managed, how they relate to
their social environments, and why some organizations are more
successful than others.
Sociologists generally analyze organizations from the
perspective of systems theory (see Chapt. xx). Human systems on
this scale are often described simply as social systems, that is
a number of individuals organized into a network of work groups.
Like any other system, organizations can be either considered as a
whole or analyzed in terms of their component parts and
relationships--their structure and process.
Looking at a factory as a process of transforming raw material
into a finished product is an example of the general systems,
dynamic approach. Activities are analyzed in terms of input of
information, material, and labor; processing of these inputs; and
then output of products, services, or information, Every such
system also incorporates feedback mechanisms through which the
organization detects and adjusts to changes in both its environment
and internal states.

2
 The social structure is the framework of the organization; to
analyze its structure is similar to analyzing the anatomy of a living
organism. In both cases, structure provides forms and patterns for
coordinating and conducting the activities (or "functions") of the
system.
Perhaps the most basic way of understanding social structure
is to consider its internal division of labor--how the tasks of the
organization are distributed among its component individuals and
groups of individuals. "Roles" and "positions" are the building blocks
of organizational structure in this sense.
Role refers to a set of expectations for behavior defining how
a person within an organization is to function. Roles are always
considered in terms of how they relate to others' roles around them:
boss/worker, parent/child, and teacher/student are common
examples of such role relationships. In organizational analysis,
emphasis is commonly placed on the role relationship, for example,
on the manager/subordinate relationship where one person is held
accountable for the performance of another in a work setting
(Jaques 1976).
A position, on the other hand, is a location within the
organization where the task or function is determined by that
organization's purpose. "Waitress," "chief surgeon," and "senator" are
examples of positions. The position of waitress in a restaurant, for
example, carries with it a set of behavioral norms or rules for
performing the role, such as those concerning taking orders, filling
orders, serving customers, or preparing certain food items. All
these norms (expectations for behavior), taken together, define the
role of waitress, the set of expectations for behavior associated
with that position.
Positions and roles are not the same. A position is defined i
terms of role relationships and is filled by a person hired or
assigned to perform a specific role within the organization. A
position can exist without the performance of its associated role, as
when a position is vacant.
Every position in a social structure carries with it a status,
that is a unique place in the organization's hierarchy, or pecking
order. Status is usually thought of in terms of the authority it
carries. Authority refers to the right to make decisions or
demands, exert influence, give directions, or apply sanctions.
3
 "Higher" positions generally have formal authority over lower
positions, as in a "chain of command." Sergeants are allowed to
give orders to privates; the role and status of sergeant carries with
it this authority. Whether or not the sergeant's orders are actually
followed, however, depends both on the subordinate's acceptance of
that authority and the sergeant's power to influence his behavior.
Power can be defined as the ability to act and to influence
either the behavior of others or the outcome of events. Although
power and authority often go together, they are not the same. Power
is an attribute of an individual or a group of individuals, not
something inherent in a position. Authority is always vested in
positions rather than individuals. For example, the person occupying
in the position of "supervisor" has the right to assign work, give
orders, and hire or fire workers. The individual has this authority
solely by virtue of filling that position; because the person is their
supervisor, workers will normally accept this as a legitimate
exercise of authority.
In practice, however, one might have authority and no power,
or vice versa. A police officer, for example, who is disarmed by a
robber has the authority to arrest the criminal but may not in that
situation have the power to exercise this authority; an armed robber
has power to influence others but no authority to do so. In everyday
life people generally follow rules, orders, instructions because they
voluntarily agree to accept the authority of those in positions to
give such directions.
Power is a key sociological concept in organizational life as
well as in life in general. Who has power, who doesn't, whether it is
shared or not, and the major struggles that occur when people want
access to power or don't want to give it up, is often the key to
understanding organizational behavior.

Organizational Structure
An organization, then, can be looked upon as a hierarchical
network of positions each carrying specific role expectations and a
formally or informally defmed level of status. The number of

4
positions and hierarchical levels is closely associated with
organizational scale. That is, in small businesses and similar
organizations, a few people take on many roles; sales, service, and
bookkeeping may all be done by a single individual. Status
hierarchies tent to be minimal in such cases,' compared to the large
organization in which there is a great division of labor. The
traditional automobile assembly plant is a prime example of this,
where each worker does just one or two tasks, and several echelons
of supervisory and management personnel are required to coordinate
all these people in accomplishing the organization's task.
The structure of an organization has significant consequences
for its functioning at all levels. Since the organization is a social
system, the relationships between positions are of utmost
importance. Organizations have problems when roles are not clear,
when structure is not compatible with task, or when individuals are
not clear about who is accountable or responsible for what.
Common sense might tell you that structure is structure; to
analyze organizational structure, all one would have to do is consult
an organization chart, the charter or legal code formally
establishing that organization, its bylaws, or other documentary
evidence. This is what Elliott Jaques (1976), a leading British
clinical sociologist, terms the organization's manifest social
struc ture.

Jaques has found, however, that in organizations, as elsewhere

in social life, things are not necessarily what they seem. It is
essential, he has shown, to consider three other aspects of
organizational structure. The first is the assumed social structure,
how the participants in the organization see its role structure, what
they believe or assume to be the current situation. Second, he
stresses, the sociologist must also analyze the extant social
structure. This refers to how things actually function, which can be
determined only by systematic research. This generally leads to a
description of the organization that is very different from its
manifest or assumed structure. Finally, from the perspective of a
sociological clinician, Jaques considers the requisite social
structure of an organization. This is a conceptualization of the
organization as it would need to be in order to maximize its
effectiveness in realizing its objectives.
A classic example of sociological practice, from the work of
William F. Whyte, can illustrate many of the concepts we have been

5
discussing. Demonstrating how the structure of social relationships
decisively influences behavior within organizations, it also shows
how sociological investigation can lead to useful change (Whyte
1948; Porter, 1962).
In the years after World War II, Whyte was retained by a
restaurant chain to help them with pressing problems of
inefficiency, low morale, and high employee turnover. Waitresses
were stressed; cooks were walking off the job; and managers,
needless to say, were upset After applying his expertise in field
research methods (described in Chapter xx) to investigating the
situation, Whyte determined that the root of the problem lay in the
high levels of stress during busy periods, which affected the
relationships between waitresses and customers, waitresses and
cooks, waitresses and managers, managers and cooks.
Upon examining the extant social structure and observing
interactions between these roles, Whyte found that the situation
violated nearly all aspects of requisite structure. The setup was
simply inappropriate. The cooks, who were males, earned more
money than the waitresses, who were females. They also had higher
status-in the manifest structure, that is.
In actuality, Whyte observed the waitresses giving orders to
the cooks. This violates the rule that persons of higher status give
orders to those of lower status, not vice versa. Moreover
(remember, this was some 40 years ago), women were giving orders
to men.
Whyte's associate, Edith Lenz Hamilton, pointed out an elegant
and amazingly simple solution: the spindle, that round metal band
with clips on it to hold written "orders" now found in almost all
restaurants. This innovation allowed the waitress to place a
customer's order before the cook without having to give the order
verbally.
The spindle changed the social structure of the restaurant. It
served as a memory device for the cook, who no longer had to
remember all the orders. This made his work easier, especially
during rush hours. The spindle was also a buffer; several waitresses
could put up their orders simultaneously without having to fight for
the cook's attention. By restructuring the relationship between
cooks and waitresses, this device led both to feel differently,

6
behave differently, and experience their work roles with less stress
and internal conflict.
It also had the practical effect of enabling the cook to get to
each order at his own work rate. The spindle held orders in the
sequence received, while allowing the cook to look them all over by
merely turning the spindle. This made it possible to coordinate the
preparation of all the orders, reducing errors.
The spindle restructures the relationship between positions in
the restaurant. By facilitating a change in the pattern of interaction
between people in the social system, Whyte thus solved a problem
that had exhibited itself through individual behavior in forms that
were good for neither the organization nor the individual.
Common sense might have suggested a psychological
explanation and solution for the problem, but it actually lay in the
way the work was organized, how positions were filled, cultural
biases concerning gender, and how roles interacted. In short, it was
a sociological problem:
The structure of relationships between roles
has a decisive effect upon ... the people who occupy them,
and upon the quality of their social interactions. Change
the nature of this structure of social relationships and
you change behavior and the quality of social life. The
same people act and go about life differently.... In short,
social institutions produce powerful effects on human
behavior and relationships; they are never neutral or
innocent (Jaques 1976: 14).

What Whyte did, in summary, was to look at the restaurant as a

social system rather than look only at the positions and processes
making up the system. A systems approach, then, investigates the
dynamic configuration of the whole organization; how roles interact,
how work flows, how information flows. Systems-level solutions
are sought for systems-level problems.

7
Bureaucracy as a Kind of Organization
Sociologists have investigated many kinds of organizations,
large and small, formal and informal, voluntary and coercive, to
name just a few. In our society today, the workplace is
predominantly a form of "bureaucratic organization."
First studied by Weber, this kind of organization is designed to
accomplish large-scale administrative tasks by systematically
coordinating the work of many individuals in a rational manner. By
"rational," sociologists mean both cost effective and scientific.
This contrasts with the old-fashioned "Mom and Pop" operation
where business was conducted on the basis of personal
relationships, common sense, and the owners' "feel."
Bureaucracy is identified with such features as impersonal
management by formal rules, a hierarchy of specialized positions
organized in terms of status and function and the principle that the
position is separate from the person appointed to fill that job
description. This form of organization may not be appropriate for
neighborhood enterprises such as the "Mom and Pop" store or in
professional and educational situations where efficient
administration and production is less important than quality of
relationships or where roles cannot be performed within a
hierarchical structure.
In most other cases-the majority of contemporary work
situations, in fact-bureaucratic organization promotes efficient
operation, eliminates favoritism, and provides career opportunities
based on expertise and specialized knowledge. It has become popular
to associate bureaucracy with "red tape," inertia, and inefficiency,
but these very real problems are related to the imposition of this
form on situations where it is simply inappropriate, or to
inappropriate organization of the bureaucracy itself.
We may find ourselves frustrated by corporate or governmental
bureaucracies as they exist at present. Jaques (1976) argues that
bureaucracies can be made both more humane and more effective
through, among other things, restructuring roles and authority
patterns. Not only is bureaucracy here to stay but it represents the
most efficient way of structuring large organizations. Therefore,
when we consider how sociologists can apply their knowledge,

8
perspectives, and methods to working with organizations, we are
generally speaking about working with bureaucracies (Blau and
Meyer 1971).

Organizational Management

There have been two major schools of thought that have

dominated American management, scientific management, and human
relations. The dominant approach in industry in the first half of
this century was the scientific management school. This approach
is exemplified by the work of F.W. Taylor in the early years of the
20th century (Weisbord 1987). The prototypical "efficiency expert,'
he sought to improve factory performance by "rationalizing" work--
that is, by breaking down jobs to their smallest elements so as to
make tasks as quick and efficient as possible. These tasks were
then quantified, generally in terms of output rates, and the worker
was offered a bonus for "increased productivity." The goal of the
efficiency expert was to get workers to do exactly as management
wanted. The method was based on stopwatches and individual
psychology, not systems theory. "Scientific management" was
interested in one thing and one thing only: how much one worker
could do, day in and day out, if he or she were shown the most
efficient way of doing the job.
Increasingly, however, emphasis has been placed on
management control rather than efficiency of production. Here, a
rudimentary systems approach has been employed that is, in many
ways, compatible with the structural-functionalist model.
Consultants employing this perspective concentrate on the
organization's needs, goals, structure, and functioning. The
assumption is that the healthy state of a social system is one of
equilibrium and that this harmonious condition will naturally follow
if only people are adequately socialized to accept the values of the
organization. The organizational structure, they believe, should be
determined by the functional needs of the system.
This "structure-systems" approach for understanding and
changing organizations is typically management oriented. After all,

9
the consultant is hired by management to help them with problems
in employee relations, productivity, profitability, and so forth. The
expectation is that employees will "be reasonable," as defined by
the organization or the policies under which it operates-meaning, of
course, "by management." The legitimacy of managerial authority
and the necessity of "rule from above" are simply taken for granted.
Policies based on these presumptions, however, can evoke strong
feelings of anger and frustration when those within or served by the
organization feel that their needs or their situations are not being
considered.
It should be noted here that sociologists who work with
organizations tend to share a common set of values that emphasize
the individual's well being within the organization. Often denoted by
the term organizational democracy, this set of values views worker
and management alike as "citizens" of the organization. It defines
the purpose of intervention as facilitating such things as self-
regulation, participation in decision making, innovation, trust,
openness, and collaboration. These stand in contrast to the
conventional values of regulation from above, "top down" authority
(following orders), reliance on standardized procedures, mistrust,
secrecy, and "minding one's own business."
Indeed, sociologists (and others as well) have been vitally
interested in organizations from the viewpoint of the individual.
Goffman's classic study portrays the mental hospital as an
institution in which patients learn to "make out" i.e, to develop
informal norms, and in a myriad of ways to evade the formal rules
and controls and protect their behavior which often is at odds with
the goals of the organization (Goffman, 1961). Studs Terkel's
(1975) best seller, Working, tells the stories of workers in a variety
of occupations through their individual feelings and experience with
regard to their jobs and the organizations they work in. A more
recent study of how men and women differ in their experiences,
work, and careers in large corporations is reported by Rosabeth Moss
Kanter in Men and Women of the Corporation (1977).

10
The Human Relations Approach

What has become known as the human relations approach remains

perhaps the best known application of sociological thinking to
organizations and the workplace. Its roots lie in the pioneering
studies by industrial sociologists during the 1930s at the Western
Electric telephone equipment plant near Chicago. There, Elton Mayo,
Fritz Roethlisberger, and others found that workers set informal
norms about production. They would trade jobs, and establish their
own work rules, generally unknown to management and often
contrary to official company policy. A good summary and critical
evaluation of the Hawthorne findings are found in Landsberger
(1958) and Weisbord (1987).
The human relations school stressed the importance of
informal networks (sometimes called "informal organization") and
showed that people are motivated by social as well as economic
rewards. The human relations approach also established the
importance of group membership as a determinant of attitudes and
behavior. Douglas McGregor, a social psychologist, whose book The
Human Side of Enterprise (1960) had a great impact on
organizational research and practice, coined the terms "Theory X
and Theory Y"" to represent two different assumptions about human
behavior which also were translated into management styles and
corporate philosophies.
Theory X assumes that human beings are inherently lazy, will
avoid work if they can, and must be directed and controlled. These
negative assumptions arose from the philosophy of the assembly line
and traditional hierarchical organizational structure. Theory Y on
the other hand, makes positive assumptions about human motivation
and behavior. People are willing to assume responsibility, desire to
achieve, are capable of directing their own behavior, can be trusted,
and 'are able to change and develop. Theory X and Theory Y
assumptions affect managerial styles, relationships between peers
and subordinates, the level of trust in a work team, and an
organization's formal and informal structure. Theory Y assumptions
underlie much of the more recent organization theory and design as
covered later in this chapter. Weisbord (1987) argues that both
Theory X and Y have positive and negative aspects and that both X and
Y exist in each of us, thus rejecting the simple dichotomy of X or Y.

11
 An example of the human relations approach in action comes
from sociologist Robert Schrank (1978) who suggested that what
makes work pleasant for many workers is the chance to socialize
with other workers. Schrank's credentials are not those of an
"armchair expert.' Instead, he put in some 25 years as a blue-collar
worker, union organizer, and bureaucrat before he entered college
and earned his Ph.D. in sociology.
Schrank questions much of the conventional wisdom about
worker satisfaction and life in the factory. High absenteeism, he
argues, does not necessarily mean dissatisfied workers but may
reflect the fact that the workers can afford to take a day off to go
fishing. As a manager, Schrank himself closed shop and "took
inventory" the day hunting season opened.
Getting workers to work for you rather than against you can be
accomplished through such simple tactics as keeping toilets clean,
having pleasant dining areas, and improving the social atmosphere of
the workplace. While Schrank is pessimistic about management's
ability to make repetitive work interesting and enriching, he
suggests that giving workers a chance to schmooze will at least
make the day less dull for them. He suggests that the workplace can
easily be rearranged to facilitate this:
If you have a crew or workers assembling parts at desks
and they keep turning around craning their necks to talk to
the people behind them, thru the desks around so they face
each other.... Turn your machines around so people can talk
to each other like normal human beings (quoted i
Successful Business, 1979:41).
Redefining the situation, even in this simple, physical sense,
initiates a re-definition of behavioral roles within that
environment. How? The work environment had previously been
structured to block interaction between workers, quite effectively
defining their roles (as opposed to those of office staff) as not
involving socializing on the job. Schrank merely removes this
element of the situation, effectively unblocking the flow of
interaction between workers. He believes, moreover, that managers
should talk to their employees and find out what they think. In many
cases, employees can be left to organize work themselves. People
will work harder and be more satisfied in a workplace where people
are friendly, where there is warmth, a supportive atmosphere, and a

12
good eward and feedback system that considers the needs of the
peopl who constitute the organization.
Schrank is especially critical of the attempt to "be scientific"
by imply quantifying everything; this is precisely what Taylor tried
to o. Rather than study an organization from the management's
perspective, through questionnaires or other so-called empirical
methods, Schrank prefers to take workers to a local bar and, over a
couple of beers, ask them to talk about their job. In this way, he
attempts to gain Verstehen into how the system is or is not working
from the perspective of those who are doing the actual work.
This led Schrank to propose some unusual innovations. He
suggests, for example, putting telephones in factories so that blue-
collar workers have the same opportunity to call or be contacted
during the work-day as white-collar workers. Most production
workers, one must realize, operate in an almost military atmosphere
in which they are permitted only one or two breaks a day, by the
clock, and in which their activity often is entirely controlled by the
flow of the assembly line. When a Canadian company added
telephones on a production line, it found that the average worker
made or received only two or three calls a week, and that this did
not interfere with production at all. In fact, assembly-line workers
covered for their buddies who were on the phone, and an informal
norm developed that it was unfair to inconvenience others by
spending too much time on the phone.
The past few years have seen great changes in large
organizations due to changes in technology as we experience a
dramatic shift from an industrial to an information society. This
shift is made possible by the dramatic increase in the use of
computers, where knowledge rather than brute labor has become
central to economic development (Toffler 1990). Managers need to
be facilitators, not controllers, in this new computer age.
Decentralized workplaces replace the large hierarchically managed
workylace of old. The increase in mergers, re-organization, a
growing multli-cultural workforce, global competition, layoffs, are
all indications of the greater need to pay attention to the human
issues in organizations. The age of Taylor, that of unskilled
workers on assembly lines, is largely over.

13
 Organization Development
Beginning in the early 1960s, a new field, organization
development, commonly known as OD began, emerging from the work
of applied behavioral science practitioners from business,
psychology, and sociology (Burke 1982). Its roots lay in the
industrial human relations research and practice based on small
group theory and leadership training popular in the 1950s and 60s.
Kurt Lewin's work in group dynamics and his development of action
research (Marrow 1969; Weisbord, 1987) had a major impact on the
field. Lewin, an experimental social psychologist, believed in the
wedding of theory and practice with the belief that diagnosis of the
problem also should include a commitment to action. People
participating in research on their own behavior are more likely to
act on the results. This is a radically different notion than the
traditional scientific stance that seeks to avoid any influence of the
researcher on the subject.
OD is really an umbrella covering a variety of organization
design and intervention activities (Burkel982; Scheinl969;
Tannenbaum, et. al. 1985). The goal is to improve organizational
effectiveness and meet needs of organizational members. The
targets of any change may be the structure of the organization, the
social climate, or the behavior of individuals in the organization. As
the OD field has grown, it has become more self-consciously
sociological in orientation; its focus has progressed from small
group interventions to changing whole social systems. Two major
perspectives, one focusing on organizational culture, and the other
on quality of work life are instructive examples of sociological
theory and practice in organizational development.

14
Organizational Culture

At the beginning of the chapter we examined organizational

structure--the network of social relations in detail. Another
dimension of social organization is the culture of the organization
(Blau and Scott 1962).
There has been a great interest in organizational culture in the
last decade (Deal and Kennedy 1982; Kilmann 1985, 1989; Schein,
1985). The culture of an organization is that set of generally
unconscious assumptions about reality shared by members of the
organization and expressed in their shared beliefs, values,and
behavior. Culture is rarely discussed, but newcomers learn the
unwritten rules of "how we do things around here."
Peters and Waterman (1982), Kanter (1983), O'Toole(1985),
Schein (1985), Peters (1987), Walton (1988) and others have
investigated extremely successful corporations- to see what they
have in common and what distinguishes them from less successful
ones. "Excellent" organizations exhibited a conspicuous and coherent
culture maintained through stories, slogans, myths, and legends.
Like the anthropologist who seeks to understand societies through
their cultures, the clinical sociologist can glean valuable
information about an organization by looking for evidence of its
culture. A similar approach is taken in the fascinating collection of
articles on organizational ethnography by Jones and his colleagues
(1988). Ethnography, relying on participant observation, in-depth
interviewing, and documentation of traditions brings to light the
values and ways of doing things in organizations that guide behavior
and decision making, and aid or hinder organizational effectiveness-
in short, gives clues to the organization's culture.
l-

What are the shared values? Are they innovation, product

quality, and service? Does the organization treat its employees
well? What is the climate of the organization--open, closed,
authoritarian, democratic, repressive, growth oriented? What myths
have sustained the organization over the years? The Bell Telephone
Company, for example, deliberately maintained the image of itself
as a service company rather than a telephone company; in both its

15
advertising to the public and its internal communication, "Ma Bell"
instilled in its employees and the public the belief that it was a
public service company rather than a manufacturer and distributor
of telephone equipment. F & P, Inc. (the letters stand for Fun and
Profit), a promotions and marketing company in Los Angeles, has a
teddy bear as a corporate symbol to stand for a "warm and fuzzy"
company.
Most innovative companies believe that their individual
employees, from top to bottom, are the best source of new ideas and
energy. Highly innovative organizations reward people for being
collaborative. They view the task of management as one of creating
climates and environments hospitable to people's natural
inventiveness. Harrison(1983) believes that balance and harmony
are keys to organizational vitality. The support of individuals by one
another and by the larger whole comes through a sense of mutual
responsibility and caring in such organizations.
Organizations have a certain style, character, ways of doing
things that may be even more important than the formal system in
understanding the organization if a change effort is to be successful
(Kilmann 1989). When Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), was taken
over by US Air, the new owners sought to change an informal history
of irreverence that was a trademark of PSA and loved by its
customers. The happy face smiles on the front of the aircraft were
painted over, and flight attendants were instructed to cut the humor
from their public address announcements, long a PSA trademark.
Norms, written and unwritten are a good clue to an
organization's culture, as the PSA example shows. Ralph Kilmann
(1985), Director of the Program in Corporate Culture at the
University of Pittsburgh School of Business has developed a culture
gap survey that looks at the differences between the actual norms
and the desired norms. In his consulting work he has group members
list actual norms that currently guide their behavior ("don't disagree
with your boss," "don't rock the boat," "look busy even when you are
not"~) and then share and discuss them. Participants come up with a
new list of norms they would like to see to promote organizational
success such as "congratulate those who suggest new ways of doing
things. "
Some organizations that Kilmann works with, where the
culture gap between actual and desired norms is too great to
confront, exhibit norms that exemplify resistance to change--

16
"protect yourself at all costs," "don't try to change until everyone
else has changed," "if you ignore the problem, maybe it will go
away. "
With the recent rash of mergers, buy-outs, and corporate
takeovers , very different cultures are often thrown together, as in
the PSA example, when the acquiring firm wants to completely
integrate the other and have a uniform set of norms. Marks and
Mirvis (1966) believe that the most important contributor to
discord in mergers is a clash in corporate cultures. There may be a
fear of loss of an organization's identity, as in the airline example
mentioned earlier. There are often differences in the way the
companies are managed--participative and people oriented vs
autocratic and focused on numbers. Culture is often overlooked
when merger deals are made--economic, production, marketing, and
technical issues are foremost. Developing a transition structure,
keeping people informed, and providing social support can ease the
stress of mergers.
Dave Jamieson (1989) looks at an organization's culture from a
broader perspective than Kilmann. Jamieson considers five
components of an organization's culture: Linguistic--language,
jargon, slogans; Symbolic--logos, decor, facilities; Historic--
stories, myths, legends about founders; Ritualistic--things valued,
ceremonies, rewards for right behavior; and Normative--rules and
norms about what is right and wrong. In his consulting work
Jamieson has the members of the organization identify the five
components, by looking at their values, beliefs, and assumptions. He
then has them come up with a desired culture that can be reinforced
through the organization's structure, systems, and procedures.
A recent large scale attempt at organizational change at Pacific
Bell provides a dramatic example of the impact of organizational
culture on the outcome (Faithhorne, 1987). In 1983, Pac Bell was
divested from AT & T, along with other regional telephone
companies. These new companies now had to compete with other
telephone companies without the umbrella of Ma Bell. The top
management of Pac Bell decided that the culture of the company
must change to adapt to the new conditions of deregulation and
competition. A leadership development program was started in 1985
involving managers at all levels and eventually all 67,000
employees. It was one of the largest planned change efforts of its
kind. The program was abandoned in 1987 after complaints from

17
some employees led to a Public Utilities Commission investigation
and extensive press coverage.
What went wrong? The culture of Pac Bell was not prepared
for the leadership development program. The company wanted to
change its culture; paradoxically, the change effort itself
reflected and reinforced the old culture. Used to top-down
leadership, management bought a program and introduced it at the
top. The change program stressed creativity, innovative thinking,
and a whole systems approach that did not fit easily with the
traditional business culture of a telephone company.
The project was intended to develop appreciation for
the competitive nature of the business after de-regulation and to
enhance initiative and effective work across traditional
bureaucratic boundaries. However, employees, who for the most
part worked for Pac Bell for their entire careers were used to
following strict procedures spelled out in manuals. Telephone
operator behavior was measured and controlled to the minute, and
conformity was valued for uniform service goals. Profits had
been assured and competition was never an issue. Management
orders flowed from above, dependably, predictably, reliably,
without much change--in short a compliance culture that did not
leave much room for individual expression or creativity.
Pac Bell has a bureaucratic culture developed in a semi-
regulated environment and characterized by conformity, low risk,
and concern with how things are done rather than results. Some
people feared taking risks, losing their power, prestige, position.
Top management bought the change effort without sufficiently
sharing information with others who would be directly affected by
the decision. The program was designed to help employees let go of
old habits, learn new ways to facilitate team work, be more
creative, and think for themselves--all admirable goals.
From this example we learn that organizational
cultures are very difficult to change. They are real and powerful,
and shape the behavior of those in the organization. Unless there
is a genuine effort to include those affected by planned change in
the change effort, such interventions are almost certainly
experienced as a threat and produce defensiveness and resistance
by those organization members involved.

18
The Quality of Work Life

Another approach to the study and change of work

organizations, an example of organization development with a
sociological approach, focuses on the quality of work life, (QWL), a
term coined in the early 1970s to describe a) a concern with the
impact of technology on people as well as on organizational
effectiveness; b) the idea of participation in organizational problem
solving and decision making at various organizational levels. When
there is a special emphasis on the interaction of human systems and
technology, the term "sociotechnical systems" (STS) is used (Trist
1981).
One of the best known QWL-related innovations is quality
circles, small groups of workers and mangers who meet regularly
for problem solving (Abbott 1987). The problems might involve work
roles, flow of work, labor-management relations, improving product
quality, or redesigning jobs. Criticisms of quality circles are that
they do not encourage workers to discuss larger issues of the firm
and rarely have the ability to change the real power structure at
work (Lerner 1986).

The concept of sociotechnical systems gives equal emphasis to

both people and technology. Offices using computers, and factories
of almost any kind are workplaces where humans interact with
machines--the social system of workers interacting with the
technical systems. Unlike the scientific management school, which
emphasized technology and looked at workers as individual
attachments to it, STS looks at workers in relation to each other and
to the tools, techniques, and environment of the workplace from a
systems perspective (Weisbord 1987) . The restaurant spindle
exanaple, earlier in the chapter, was an elementary example of an
STS approach.
An informative example of how STS works in practice comes
from an intervention attributed to the work of Norwegian social
psychologist Einar Thorsrud (Trist 1981; Whyte 1989). Norwegian
merchant ships with large crews were facing strong competition
from foreign countries with lower labor costs. Shipping company

19
managers *and union leaders wished to explore whether ships could
be operated with smaller crews and better living/working
conditions, which would also reduce crew turnover, another costly
concern.
Shipping company managers, union leaders, and ships officers
and crew members worked with a team of social scientists to re-
design the ship with new technical, physical and social
arrangements. The traditional segregation of personnel--officers,
petty officers, and crew, including deck and engine room personnel
was ended. Guided by STS thinking, ships were re-designed to
facilitate the establishment of a single shipboard community among
people who must live together under isolated conditions, 24 hours
per day. Some of these design features included common recreation
and dining halls where all ranks could socialize, as compared to
separate facilities for each group. This involved changing the social
system by the deliberate reduction of status differentials between
officers and crew. This successful intervention, later carried out in
other shipping companies and maritime nations, was a pioneering
example of how a more democratic organization of the workplace in
a non-bureaucratic manner could lead to more efficient operation
and greater employee satisfaction.
The new Saturn automobile plant in Tennesee (Gwynne 1990) is
a striking example of an industrial organization's attempt to design
a plant to make a product that will be competitive based on QWL and
STS thinking. Team work, a major commitment to increasing quality,
and the efficient use of resources underly the transformation from a
hierarchical assembly line. The union, the United Auto Workers,
fully shares in the power and decision making at top levels. The
plant is organized into some 165 work teams of about ten members
each. The teams are allowed to interview and approve new
employees for their team, are given budget responsibility and a say
in the purchase and installation of car assembly equipment. The
Saturn philosophy encourages consensus decision making, and worker
compensation is affected by product quality, productivity, and
company profits giving employees a direct stake in the outcome.
The Saturn plant reflects the character of organizational
renewal spelled out by Kanter (1983) and others: encouragement of a
culture of pride, reduction of layers of hierarchy, and giving people
at lower levels a chance to contribute to change. This shift to. more
participatory, democratic, and team centered production is seen as

20
America's best strategy for survival in the tough economic times
ahead.
In short, QWL, and STS represent a shift from Taylorism to
systems thinking, and to a belief that social. systems can be
improved only when those who are part of them understand how they
work and can have a role in changing them. It represents a shift
from the bureaucratic model of order, control, and concentrated
prediction, power to a more decentralized model with a flatter
hierarchy, where emphasis is on cooperation, empowerment at all
levels, innovation and creativity. Weisbord (1987) stresses that
this new thinkg must include economic realities--competiton,
markets for products, and social responsibility, as environmental
and other global issues become paramount.

The Sociologist as Change Facilitator

Since we have looked at organizational analysis and change

from an increasingly sociological perspective, let us look more
closely at some sociological practitioners of organizational change.
The focus of their interventions is on roles, relationships,
organizational structure, and the environments in which the
organization functions.
One of the earliest models of sociological practice at this
level, social analysis, was developed by Elliott Jaques while
associated with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in
Britain during the 1940s. We already have discussed some of his
concepts. Although he is a trained psychoanalyst, Jaques's approach
is distinctly sociological, focusing on social structure as opposed to
personality factors or group process.
Social analysis is based on the fact that things do not always
work the way they are supposed to work and that the way they are
supposed to work is always subject to re-definition, anyhow. The
method, as it has been developed over the past 40 years, is quite
elegant (Jaques 1982). The social analyst looks at role
relationships and how they are perceived in order to' learn about the
organization. Jaques has found that specifying and clarifying
accountability and authority in manager-subordinate role

21
relationships is essential to organizational success and individual
well-being. Specifying roles is therefore an* important sociological
task in organization design, analysis, and change.
The social analyst is invited into some unit of an organization
experiencing problems. The analyst then discusses the situation
with those involved, both as a group and individually, working up a
summary of their views, which is then presented to the group as a
whole. The analyst's role is to help members clarify their views,
teasing out the important ideas and supplying concepts when
necessary, and then to help the group systematically conceptualize
their situation and possible resolutions. Often, this will be worked
up into a report, which is then presented to the next higher unit of
organization and the process repeated at that level of the system.
Jaques worked with a single company, Glacier Metal Works, for
over 30 years. During this period--probably the longest-term study
of a single organization yet conducted--he did social analysis with
the company's Work Council on a wide range of projects. These
included methods of payment, managerial organization, trade union
representation, industrial relations, promotion procedures, and
employee participation. As a result of this work, Jaques's expertise
has been called upon time and again when large organizations are
considering structural changes. His group has done social analysis,
for example, with the Church of England, the British National Health
Service, and the U.S. Army.
Sociologist William F. Whyte, whose restaurant research we
discussed earlier, uses a form of organizational research and
intervention called participatory action research (Whyte 1987;
1989a; 1989b). PAR is a technique for advancing scientific
knowledge and solving practical problems in an integrated manner. It
is a collaborative effort for change based on sound scientific
knowledge --the Norwegian shipping example described earlier is a
good example of PAR. Employees in the organization team up with
professional researchers to design the initial projects, to gather and
anal[ie data, and utilize the findings in action projects. Participant
observation by the researcher is often a part of the process. Whyte
points out that in the complex field of modern industrial
organizations, few problems can be solved by a single academic
discipline. Ideas and methods from engineering, accounting, and
business administration need to be integrated. PAR does not follow
the standard scientific model of researcher collecting the facts

22
without any feedback from the subjects of the study involved. By
working together the PAR team can correct information before it is
finally reported or implemented.
Kurt Lewin coined the well known phrase "There is nothing as
practical as a good theory." An example from my own consulting
experience illustrates how theory can inform practice. I was asked
by a company to look at their credit department which had developed
serious morale problems and employee dissatisfaction. The
company's culture could be best described as one big family, where
multi-generations worked, hardly anyone got fired, and there was
strong loyalty to the company.
The work of the credit department was stressful and routine.
After interviewing about half the clerks, the supervisors, and the
manager of the department, I discovered the problem lay primarily in
the management of the department. The manager was an alcoholic,
and had promoted a clerk to be his assistant and supervise a key
section of the department. This woman, who had no supervisory
training, was a classic Theory X top-down manager: she was
constantly critical, treated employees as children, did not allow
them to talk to each other, did not trust them, and gave them no
latitude in how the work was to be done. The result was a climate
of fear, suspicion, hostility, and no trust.
The assistant manager was covering for her ineffective boss and
running the department, a case where she had the power but no
official (manifest, to use Jaques' term) authority to do so. Her
emphasis on control, denial, and workaholism was perfectly
analogous to an alcoholic family, where the non-drinking spouse
covers for the alcoholic, and the children act out. This is well
explained by family systems theory (Schaef and Fassel 1988). Her
intentions were the best: she genuinely believed her behavior was in
the best interest of the department and the company. The company
decided the best course was to remove both the manager and his
assistant from the department resulting in much improvement.
Organization development specialists, as we have seen, take a
variety of approaches in their work as change facilitators in
organizational settings. As we move from a production oriented
economy to an information processing, service economy, there have
been a number of corresponding changes in the workplace and work
environment which offer new challenges for the clinical-
organizational sociologist.

23
 Workplace Issues for the 1990s

The last decade of the 20th century promises sociological,

economic, and political changes that affect the workplace and are a
challenge to organizations of many kinds. There have been
revolutions in computer technology, international trade, and
composition of the workforce. Through the year 2000, 29% of new
labor force entrants will be non-white and 66% will be women.
There is increasing evidence of a growing shortage of skilled labor
(Finkelstein 1990). Job security has eroded for many employees as
companies face increased competition due to de-regulation,
mergers, acquisitions, and foreign competition. We will look at two
issues that have gotten much recent attention and have sociological
import: women in the workplace and occupational stress.

Women in the Workplace

A study by Judith Rosener (1990) shows that women have
dramatically different management styles from men, and that their
style may be the leadership style of the future. Women executives
tend to share power and information, encourage employee
participation, and have more sensitivity to how personal and
organizational goals can be mutually reached. This is in contrast to
male management which still tends to be top down and by command
and control as described in the beginning of the chapter. This new
style of management is in tune with the fundamental transformation
in work activity as rigid bureaucratic organizations are giving way
to more flexible arrangements that encourage employee
participation and cooperation--essential if we as a society are to
adapt to a turbulent, diverse, and rapidly changing environment
(Finkelstein 1990).
As more women move into higher management, the organizational
assumption that to be a professional is to be a man is changing.
Women find themselves in a role dilemma: If they act like males,
they are seen as non-feminine; if they act like women, they are seen
as nonprofessional. And there is still a glass ceiling, an invisible,

24
informal norm that women are to go no further up the executive
hierarchy.
There is increasing tension between career and family,
formerly largely a male issue ("I don't have time to be home with the
wife and kids"), now that more women are in the labor force. Over
50% of women with children under age six work outside of the home.
The increasing number of dual career marriages create two sets of
job demands, two paychecks, two egos and many competing claims
on both spouses' time and energy (Hochschild 1990). When
promotions and transfers occur, new problems arise and commuter
marriages emerge. Fax machines, telephones, and commuter
airlines become part of family life as couples struggle for more
family or leisure time. Businesses are discovering that there are
increased costs in absenteeism, sick leave, turnover, and down time
when family concerns are neglected. Job sharing, working at home,
restructuring work to delegate more routine tasks, and flexible work
hours (flextime) as well *as developing more child care facilities,
often at the worksite, are ways of coping with these new issues.

Stress in the Workplace

The rapid changes in the environment, work place, and
organizational life all add stress to the lives of people involved.
Organizational stress can come from a variety of sources: the job
itself, role conflicts, role ambiguity, job insecurity, stressful
relationships at work, and family/work conflicts (Renshaw 1976;
Cooper and Marshall 1977). Mergers can be stressful especially if
incompatible corporate cultures are thrown together or the values of
individual employees are at odds with the organization's culture.
Occupational stress has become a major health hazard. Mental
stress claims against employers increased more than 500% in the
198Qs in California according to the Workers' Compensation
Institute. The past decade has seen the emergence of many stress
management programs; most commonly they help individuals to
identify stressors and train them to alleviate or accommodate
stress through diet, relaxation, exercise, and the like. A
psychological and physiological approach is not enough from a
sociological viewpoint-- the situational perspective is lacking
(Goldman 1984; Gutknecht 1984.).

25
 Michael Lerner (1986), a psychologist who has designed and led
occupational stress workshops from a distinctly sociological
perspective, feels that the best remedy for stress is to identify and
change the sources of it rather than merely help individuals to adapt
to it. He believes that people in organizations are victims of a
surplus powerlessness-- a set of feelings and beliefs that make
people think of themselves as even more powerless than the actual
power situation requires, and thus leads them to act in ways that
confirm their powerlessness, a classic example of self fulfilling
prophecy. His workshops emphasize empowering members to change
the job or workplace conditions through collective action. Social
support is an important component; people in greatest distress tend
to utilize social support systems the least.
Other sources of stress come from the "de-skilling" of jobs,
when machines take over job functions and workers feel their work
gives them no opportunities to use their abilities. Long work hours
also can stressful. Americans work more hours per week and more
weeks per year than in any other capitalist country, with the
possible exception of Japan.
Industrial sociologist Robert Karasek found the highest
incidence of stress (as measured by heart attacks) in low level jobs
with high demand on workers and low opportunities for control
(Karasek, et. al 1981). A traditional assembly line is a classic
example of a high demand, low control work situation. Physicians
and lawyers may have very stressful jobs but they have much more
control over their work lives, control being measured in terms of
how much opportunity workers have to determine what is done and
at what pace. People in high demand, low control jobs had much
greater risk of coronary heart disease than people in high demand,
high control occupations such as physicians and lawyers.
This is a sociological, not psychological, analysis of physical
illness. Lerner's own research on psychic distress found the same
explanation. The explanation of these findings is based on the belief
that human beings need to use their capacities and abilities, and the
frustration of those needs can create physical and mental malaise.
Opportunities for social interaction and support, participation in
decision making (empowerment), restructuring work tasks and
designing work technology with the needs of workers in mind are all
interventions in the work place that can alleviate stress, lower
costs, and meet human needs.

26
 Stress can also come from being in an organization with an
irrational organizational culture, dysfunctional management styles,
or neurotic leadership, as Kets de Vries and Miller (1985) explore in
a book entitled The Neurotic Organizatiom Taking a sociological
perspective does not mean discounting psychological causes of
organizational problems. A multidisciplinary approach to
organizational analysis and change is best.

Doing Sociology in Organizations

The sociology of organizations as an academic subject and a

field of practice is based on the fundamental principle that human
behavior is influenced by the social contexts in which it occurs.
This principle is basic to understanding and creating change. If our
behavior is shaped by social structure, culture, and environment,
then it can be changed by altering any or all of these three.
As we have seen throughout this chapter, a sociological
perspective is useful both to understand organizations and to
facilitate change in them. Training in research design, an awareness
of social systems and structure, and sensitivity to cultural and
social phenomena (such as family/work issues and ethnic, racial,
and gender concerns) gives you insight and tools to work with
organizations. (Gutknecht 1984; Glassl979; Rebach and Bruyn 1991).
Schein (1969) and Steele (1974) are excellent primers on consulting
skills.
Although this chapter has focused on business and industrial
organizations, an increasing number of sociologists work in public
and nonprofit organizations, such as schools, government, and social
service agencies. Much of our discussion applies equally in these
settiiUgs (Bryson 1988).
There are many career opportunities in organizations for which a
sociological background is most relevant (Finkelstein 1990). Human
resource development (the new name for personnel management),
employment/labor relations, training and professional development,
employee counseling and assistance programs, affirmative action,

27
and solving family and day care problems are just a few
possibilities.
Sociologists should be part of any team negotiating mergers
and acquisitions, creating a multi-cultural work force, and dealing
with the cultural problems facing multi-national corporations.
Strategic planning, a disciplined effort to produce fundamental
decisions and actions that shape and bind what an organization is
and does (Bryson 1988:5), is another increasingly important area
where sociologists can use their expertise.
As we have seen in this chapter, working with organizations
requires an accurate understanding of an organization's structure,
process, and culture in order to pinpoint problems and facilitate
appropriate interventions. A sociological approach is useful for
gaining the information needed to guide such change.
If you were a sociological change agent, the sort of approach
you might take in diagnosing an organization's work structure would
very likely involve applying field work and participant observation
tactics such as these:
1. Talking to people in the organization.
2. Watching what they do and how they do it.
3. Reading reports, bulletin boards, policy statements,
organization charts, and other relevant material.
You would be looking to answer such questions as these:
1. What is the mission or purpose of the organization?
2. What is the formal and informal structure of the
organization?
3. What symbols, rituals, and other evidences of the
organization's culture can you discover?
4. What is distinctive or unique about this organization?
5. What do people like most and least about their jobs?
6. How are work tasks organized?

28
 7. Are decisions made at the level where the most adequate
information is available?
8. What is the climate and level of trust in the organization?
9. How are differences and disagreements handled?
10. When changes are made, are the people affected by the
changes asked for their ideas?
11. Do people desire to contribute their talents and abilities to
their work as fully as they can?
12. How effective is the organization in fulfilling its goals?
13. How does the environment--political, social, economic--
affect the organization's behavior and performance?
This kind of information would allow you to understand and
assess the organizational system which might be useful in helping
an organization -both to achieve its goals and to maximize its
potential as a satisfying workplace for its employees.
The sociological challenge is to discover which social
arrangements contribute to human growth, health, and organizational
well-being. Problems may have psychological, technical, economic,
or political dimensions, to be sure-but we must not forget the more
subtle influence of social context. Human systems are interrelated;
problems in one system or aspect of a system affect all others.
Unclear organizational objectives can contribute to poor work-
team performance. Work problems and organizational turmoil can
affect family life, and family problems can affect work life. A
clinical perspective on the sociology of organizations, therefore,
means more than using sociology for creating change. We need to
study how organizations affect our lives and use that knowledge to
improve the quality of our lives and those of our fellow human
beings.

29
 Review Questions and Exercises

1. What are the differences between a social systems

approach and an individual psychology approach to improving
organizational productivity?
2. What is the role of bureaucracy in contemporary American
life? Consider both the positive aspects of governmental and
private-sector bureaucracies. How could the negative features be
eliminated or reduced and the positive features enhanced?
3. Take the role of a sociological change agent. Either discuss
in a group or write how you would go about diagnosing the work
structure of an organization of your choice, what you might find, and
the sorts of changes you might recommend to improve both the
human interaction and the overall effectiveness of this system. (If
possible, gather data on an actual organization for this exercise.)
4. What is the impact on organizational life of the dramatic
increase of women and ethnic minorities in the workforce?
5. What are your own values and priorities around work and
career? In what kinds of organizations would you feel most
comfortable and effective?

30
 Readings and References.

Abbott, Martin L. "Looking Closely at Quality Circles: Implications

for Intervention." Clinical Sociology Review 5(1987):119-131.
Blau, Peter, and Marshal W. Meyer. Bureaucracy in Modem Society.
New York: Random House, 1971.
------, and W. Richard Scott. Formal Organizations: A Comparative
Approach. San Francisco: Chandler, 1962.
Bryson, John M. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit
Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988.
Burke, W. Warner. Organization Development: Principles and
Practices. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.

Caplow, Theodore. Managing an Organizatiom New York: Holt,

Rinehart, and Winston, 1983.
Cooper, Cary L and Judi Marshall. Understanding Executive Stress.
New York: PBI Books, 1977.
Dalton, Melville. Men Who Manage. New York: Wiley, 1959.
Deal, Terrence E., and Allan A. Kennedy. Corporate Cultures: The
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Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor is Society. New York: Free
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Etzioni, Amitai. Modem Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
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31
Finkelstein, Marvin S. "Sociology and Workplace Change: A 1990's
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Goffman, Erving. Asylwns. New Yorl. Anchor Books, 1961.
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Gutknecht, Douglas B. "Organizational Development: An Assessment
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Gwynne, S.C. "The Right Stuff." Time 136, no.18(October 29,
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Harrison, Roger. "Strategies for a New Age." Human Resource
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Hochschild, Arlie with Anne Machung. The Second Shift: Working
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Kanter, Rosabeth M. The Change Masters. New Yorlc Simon and
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____ . Men and Women of the Corporationr New York: Basic Books,
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32
Karasek, Robert, et. al. "Job Decision Latitude, Job Demands, and
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Kets de Vries, Manfred F.R. and Danny Miller. The Neurotic
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Marks, Mitchell L and Philip H. Mirvis. "The Merger Syndrome."
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Marrow, Alfred J. The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt
Lewin. New York. Basic Books, 1969.
McGregor, Douglas. The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw
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O'Toole, James. Vanguard Management: Redesigning the Corporate
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Glenview, Ill.: Scott Foresman, 1979.
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Peters, Thomas J. Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management
Revolution. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987.
., and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. In Search of
Excellence. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

33
Porter, Elias H. "The Parable of the Spindle." Harvard Business
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Rebach, Howard, and John Bruhn, eds. Handbook of Clinical Sociology.
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Renshaw, Jean. "An Exploration of the Overlapping Worlds of Work
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