Philip Selznick

"An organization is a group of living human beings. The formal or official design for living never completely accounts for what the participants do. It is always supplemented by what is called the “inf…"

"There seems to be little doubt that the factor of sheer size is a very important element in concrete bureaucratic structures. However, because of the patterns exhibited in the behavior of agents in sm…"

"Running an organisation... generates problems, which have no necessary relationship to the professed or "original" goals of the organization. The day-to-day behaviour of the group becomes centered aro…"

"The art of the creative leader is the art of institution building, the reworking of human and technological materials to fashion an organism that embodies new and enduring values."

"The relations outlined on an organization chart provide a framework within which fuller and more spontaneous human behavior takes place. The formal system may draw upon that behavior for added strengt…"

"The most important thing about organizations is that, though they are tools, each nevertheless has a life of its own."

"The formal administrative design can never adequately or fully reflect the concrete organization to which it refers, for the obvious reason that no abstract plan or pattern can—or may, if it is to be …"

"Whereas some consequences of our actions occur as planned, others are unanticipated; social actions are not context-free but are constrained, and their outcomes are shaped by the setting in which they…"