Expert answer:Reflection paper
Solved by verified expert:Write two paragraphs reflection about organization and technology. There are two articles attached required for reflection (Perrow and Thompson). One paragraph reflection for each article.
perrow____framework_comp_analysis_org_theory.pdf
readings_thompson_org_theory_2016.pdf
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A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Organizations
Author(s): Charles Perrow
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 194-208
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2091811
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194 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
over which the individual presumably has
some control and, therefore, “merits.” In
other words, the individual’s private capacities are involved. But do not the individual’s
capacities depend to more than a trivial degree upon the genetic material with which
he enters the social contest, and over which
he has no more control than his race or his
sex? And, therefore, is not the allocation of
status according to ability actually just as
much an “ascribed” criterion as the more
traditional assignment of positions based on
“social” heredity?
If one of the major social issues facing
contemporary societies, as we have suggested, involves a basic confrontation between the principles of social heredity and
the meritocracy, then which mode of selec-
tion is more equitable? Which is more “just”
if volition is involved in neither the mental
capacities that an individual inherits nor the
social advantages conferred upon him by his
parents?
Although one mode is perhaps no more
equitable than the other, one does appear to
be more rational. Here, we would agree with
Linton’s position, and others, that social
heredity, while not “dysfunctional” in simpler societies, no longer meets the demands
of a complex technology. To the extent that
the survival of our present technology (and
social order) depends upon the effective
utilization of human resources, then the
identification, sorting, and development of
talent will continue to be persuasive arguments.
A FRAMEWORK FOR THE COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS OF ORGANIZATIONS *
CHARLES PERROW
University of Wisconsin
Complex organizations are conceptualized in terms of their technologies, or the work done
on raw materials. Two aspects of technology vary independently: the number of exceptions
that must be handled, and the degree to which search is an analyzable or unanalyzable procedure. If there is a large number of exceptions and search is not logical and analytic, the
technology is described as nonroutine. Few exceptions and analyzable search procedures describe a routine technology. Two other types result from other combinations-craft and en-
gineering technologies. Task structures vary with the technology utilized, and are analyzed
in terms of control and coordination and three levels of management. Social structure in turn
is related to technology and task structure. Finally, the variations in three types of goals are
weakly related to the preceding variables in this conceptualization. The perspective provides
a basis for comparing organizations which avoids many problems found in other schemes utilizing structure, function or goals as the basis for comparison. Furthermore, it allows one to
selectively utilize competing organizational theories once it is understood that their relevance
is restricted to organizations with specific kinds of technologies. The scheme makes apparent
some errors in present efforts to compare organizations.
THIS paper presents a perspective on organizations that hopefully will provide
a basis for comparative organizational
analysis, and also allow one to utilize selec* Revision of a paper read at the 1966 Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association.
This paper was prepared during the course of research on industrial corporations supported by
Grant No. GS-742, National Science Foundation.
Numerous colleagues criticized an earlier version
tively the existing theories of organizational
behavior. There are four characteristics of
this perspective.
First, technology, or the work done in
organizations, is considered the defining
unstintingly, but I would like to single out Ernest
Vargas, Geoffrey Guest and Anthony Kovner, who
transcended their graduate student roles at the University of Pittsburgh during the formulation of
these ideas in sticky field situations.
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ORGANIZATION ANALYSIS 195
characteristic of organizations. That is, organizations are seen primarily as systems
for getting work done, for applying techniques to the problem of altering raw materials-whether the materials be people, symbols or things. This is in contrast to other
perspectives which see organizations as, for
example, cooperative systems, institutions, or
decision-making systems.
Second, this perspective treats technology
as an independent variable, and structurethe arrangements among people for getting
work done-as a dependent variable. Goals
are conceived of as being in part a dependent variable. What is held to be an independent and dependent variable when one
abstracts general variables from a highly interdependent and complex social system is
less of an assertion about reality than a
strategy of analysis. Thus, no claim is made
that for all purposes technology need be
an independent variable.
Third, this perspective attempts to conceptualize the organization as a whole, rather
than to deal only with specific processes or
subparts. Thus, while the importance of
technology has often been demonstrated
within work groups or for particular or-
ganizational processes, here it will be used
as a basis for dealing with the organization
as an organization.
Finally, and in the long run perhaps most
importantly, the perspective holds that technology is a better basis for comparing organizations than the several schemes which
now exist.1
None of these points in itself is new, and
the last section of this article discusses the
uses to which the concept of technology has
been put by others. However, the attempt
to deal with all four points simultaneously,
or, to put it differently, to pay systematic
attention to the role of technology in analyzing and comparing organizations as a whole,
is believed to be distinctive.
1 E.g., social function (schools, business firms,
hospitals, etc.), as used by Talcott Parsons in
Structure and Process in Modern Society, Glencoe,
flI.: The Free Press, 1960, pp. 44-47; who benefits,
proposed by Peter M. Blau and William R. Scott
in Formal Organizations, San Francisco: Chandler,
1962, pp. 42-45; or compliance structure, as used
by Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of
Complex Organizations, New York: The Free Press,
1961.
TECHNOLOGY AND RAW MATERIALS
By technology is meant the actions that
an individual performs upon an object, with
or without the aid of tools or mechanical
devices, in order to make some change in
that object. The object, or “raw material,”
may be a living being, human or otherwise,
a symbol or an inanimate object. People
are raw materials in people-changing or
people-processing organizations; symbols are
materials in banks, advertising agencies and
some research organizations; the interactions of people are raw materials to be manipulated by administrators in organizations;
boards of directors, committees and councils
are usually involved with the changing or
processing of symbols and human interactions, and so on.
In the course of changing this material in
an organizational setting, the individual
must interact with others. The form that
this interaction takes we will call the structure of the organization. It involves the arrangements or relationships that permit the
coordination and control of work. Some
work is actually concerned with changing
or maintaining the structure of an organization. Most administrators have this as a key
role, and there is a variety of technologies
for it. The distinction between technology
and structure has its gray areas, but basically it is the difference between an individual acting directly upon a material that
is to be changed and an individual interacting with other individuals in the course of
trying to change that material. In some cases
the material to be changed and the “other
individuals” he interacts with are the same
objects, but the relationships are different
in each case.
There are a number of aspects of technology which are no doubt important to
consider in some contexts, such as the environment of the work (noise, dirt, etc.) or
the possibilities of seductive or exploitative
relationships with clients, patients or customers. For our purposes, however, we are
concerned with two aspects of technology
that seem to be directly relevant to organizational structure. The first is the number
of exceptional cases encountered in the
work,2 that is, the degree to which stimuli
2 Cf. James March and Herbert Simon, Organi-
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196 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
are perceived as familiar or unfamiliar. This
varies on a scale from low to high.
or relies upon chance and guesswork. Examples would be work with exotic metals
The second is the nature of the search
or nuclear fuels, psychiatric casework, and
process that is undertaken by the individual
some kinds of advertising. We can conceive
when exceptions occur. We distinguish two
types of search process. The first type ina logical, analytical basis. Search processes
of a scale from analyzable to unanalyzable
problems.
If we dichotomize these two continua into
the presence or absence of exceptional cases
are always exceptional actions undertaken
and into the presence or absence of analyz-
by the individual. They are nonroutine. No
able problems, we have a four-fold table as
in Figure 1. The upper right-hand quadrant,
volves a search which can be conducted on
programs exist for them. If a program exists,
only a very trivial search is involved in
cell 2, where there are many exceptional
switching from one program to another pro-
cases and a few analytic techniques for an-
gram when the stimuli change. But though
alyzing them, is one extreme to which we
nonroutine, one type of search may be logi-
will refer as nonroutine. In the lower left-
cal, systematic and analytical. This is ex-
hand quadrant, cell 4, we have the routine
emplified by the mechanical engineering unit
extreme, where there are few exceptions and
of a firm building large machinery, or by
there are analytic techniques for handling
programmers writing individual programs for
those that occur. A one-dimensional scheme
slow readers in a special school. The second
type of search process occurs when the
problem is so vague and poorly conceptualized as to make it virtually unanalyzable.
In this case, no “formal” search is undertaken, but instead one draws upon the residue of unanalyzed experience or intuition,
would follow the dotted line from routine
to nonroutine. But note that the other two
quadrants may represent viable cases in
themselves and they have been labeled with
some industrial examples. Few cases would
probably fall in the upper left-hand corner
of cell 1, or lower right-hand corner of cell
3, but otherwise many organizations are
nations, New York: Wiley, 1958, pp. 141-142, where
a related distinction is made on the basis of search
behavior. In our view the occurrence of an exceptional case is prior to search behavior, and various
types of search behavior can be distinguished.
3 Ibid., p. 142.
expected to appear in these two cells.
Techniques are performed upon raw materials. The state of the art of analyzing
the characteristics of the raw materials is
likely to determine what kind of technology
Technology Variable
(Industrial Example)
SEARCH
Unanalyzable Problems
EXCEPTIONS
Craft industries Nonroutine ,
(specialty glass) aerospacer
Few exceptions – Many exceptions
Routine ,’ Engineering
(tonnage Qeed mills, (heavy machinery)
screw and bolts)
– ~~~4 3
Analyzable Problems
FIGURE 1.
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ORGANIZATION ANALYSIS 197
will be used. (Tools are also necessary, of
course, but by and large, the construction
of tools is a simpler problem than the analysis of the nature of the material and generally follows the analysis.) To understand
the nature of the material means to be able
to control it better and achieve more predictability and efficiency in transformation.
We are not referring here to the “essence”
of the material, only to the way the organization itself perceives it.
The other relevant characteristic of the
raw material, besides the understandability
of its nature, is its stability and variability;
that is, whether the material can be treated
in a standardized fashion or whether continual adjustment to it is necessary. Organizations uniformly seek to standardize their
raw material in order to minimize exceptional
situations. This is the point of de-individualizing processes found in military academies,
monasteries and prisons, or the superiority of
the synthetic shoe material Corfam over
leather.
These two characteristics interact, of
course. On the one hand, increased knowl-
edge of the nature of the material may lead
to the perception of more varieties of possible outcomes or products, which in turn
increases the need for more intimate knowledge of the nature of the material. Or the
organization, with increased knowledge of
one type of material, may begin to work with
a variety of related materials about which
more needs to be known, as when a social
service agency or employment agency relaxes its admission criteria as it gains confidence, but in the process sets off more
search behavior, or when a manufacturing
organization starts producing new but related products. On the other hand, if increased knowledge of the material is gained
but no expansion of the variety of output
occurs, this permits easier analysis of the
sources of problems that may arise in the
transformation process. It may also allow
one to prevent the rise of such problems by
the design of the production process.
A recent analysis of a public defender
system by Sudnow highlights the twin characteristics of the material variable.4 On the
4David Sudnow, “Normal Crimes: Sociological
Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender
one hand, offenders are distributed into uniform categories by means of the conception
of the “normal crime,” and on the other
hand, control over the individual offender
is insured because the public defender well
understands the offender’s “nature”-that
is, his low status, limited understanding and
intellectual resources, and his impecunious
condition. The technology, then, can be routine because there are few exceptions (and
these are handled by a different set of personnel) and no search behavior on the public defender’s part is required. The lawyer
in private practice, of course, is a contrasting case.5
It will readily be seen that these two
characteristics of the raw material are paralleled in the four-fold table of technology
(Figure 2). If the technology of an organization is going to move from cell 2 to any of
the other cells, it can only do so either by
reducing the variability of the material and
thus the number of exceptional cases that
occur, or by increasing the knowledge of
the material and thus allowing more analytic techniques to be used, or both. One may
move from cell 2 to cell 1 with increasing
production runs, clients served, accounts
handled, research projects underway, agency
programs administered and so forth, since
this allows more experience to be gained
and thus reduces the number of stimuli seen
as exceptions. If technical knowledge in-
creases, increasing the reliability of search
procedures, one may move from cell 2 to
cell 3. If both things happen-and this is
the aim of most organizations-one may
move from cell 2 to cell 4.6
TASK AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
For our purpose, the task structure of an
organization is conceived of as consisting of
Office,” Social Problems, 12 (Winter, 1965), pp.
255-276.
6 For a more extensive treatment of raw material
somewhat along these lines, see David Street, Robert Vinter and Charles Perrow, Organization for
Treatment, A Comparative Study of Institutions
for Delinquents, New York: The Free Press, 1966,
Chap. 1.
6 Some organizations, such as mental hospitals,
perceive that their technology is inadequate to their
goals, and try to move from cell 4 to cell 2 in the
search for a new technology.
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198 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Raw Material Variables
(People-Changing Examples)
PERCEIVED NATURE OF RAW MATERIAL
Not Well Understood
VARIABILITY
OF MATERIAL
Socializing instit. Elite psychiatric
(e.g. some schools) agency
1 2
Perceived
form and
as uni- Perceived as nonstable uniform and stable
Custodial institutions, Programmed learning
vocational training school
4 3
Well Understood
FIGuRz 2.
two dimensions, control and coordination.
often be correlated,9 but there is an impor-
Control itself can be broken up into two
components. They are the degree of dis-
tant distinction. Power affects outcomes directly because it involves choices regarding
basic goals and strategies. Discretion relates
to choices among means and judgments of
the critical and interdependent nature of
tasks. The consequences of decisions in the
case of discretion have no direct influence
cretion an individual or group possesses in
carrying out its tasks, and the power of an
individual or group to mobilize scarce re-
sources and to control definitions of various
situations, such as the definition of the nature of the raw material. Discretion here does
not mean freedom from supervision or free-
on goals and strategies; these decisions are
formed within the framework of accepted
dom simply to vary task sequences or pace
of work. Both of these are compatible with
routine activities, and some nonroutine tasks
goals and strategies.
Coordination, on the other hand, can be
achieved through planning or feedback, to
must be closely supervised or have precise
use the terms proposed by March and
sequences of tasks, once a program is se-
lected, because of their critical nature. Nor
does the length of time between performance
reviews 7 necessarily indicate discretion.
Rather, discretion involves judgments about
whether close supervision is required on one
task or another, about changing programs,
and about the interdependence of one’s task
with other tasks.8 Discretion and power may
7 Eliot Jaques, The Measurement of Responsibility, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.
gThis raises serious operationalization problems.
In my own work, first-line supervisors were said to
have considerable independence in some routine
production situations, and to have little in some
nonroutine situations, according to a questionnaire,
though it w …
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