"Trade unions, governments, business corporations, political parties, and the like are formal structures in the sense that they represent rationally ordered instruments for the achievement of stated goals."

“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 useful—exhaustively describe an empirical totality. At the same time, that which is not included in the abstract design is vitally relevant to the maintenance and development of the formal system itself.”

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

“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 occur. Especially significant are the constraints on action that arise from commitments enforced by institutionalization. Because organizations are social systems, goals and procedures tend to achieve an established, value impregnated status. We say that they become institutionalized.”

“The action of the officials tends to have an increasingly internal relevance , which may result in the deflection of the organization from its original path, which, however, usually remains as the formally professed aim of the organization.”

“The term “leadership” connotes critical experience rather than routine practice.”

“Cooptation is the process of absorbing new elements into the leadership or policy- determining structure of an organization as a means of averting threats to its stability or existence.”