90: Organizations in Action - James Thompson - Talking About Organizations Podcast

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“Complex organizations—manufacturing firms, hospitals, schools, armies, community agencies—are ubiquitous in modern societies, but our understanding of them is limited and segmented.”

Thus begins James D. Thompson’s book Organizations in Action, another classic book of organization studies. It surveyed the literature of the 1960s and produced a series of novel propositions that challenged the dominant rational view in administration and revealed the role of the environment in the way organizations function and the role of the environment on organizations. The aim was to develop a foundation for administrative theory based on insights across the social sciences and inspired by ideas on complexity.

This was no easy task. In the book’s Part One, Thompson develops a long list of propositions based on the rational model: propositions about rationality itself, what the purposes and tasks of organizations were understood to be, how they were designed, and finally how they assessed themselves. In the second part, Thompson draws more substantially on the natural model of organizations and develops an open-systems view of organizations—a perspective that was emerging at the time and has become central in organization and management theory. He examines through these lenses, the “variable human” who confounded rationality, the exercise of discretion, and the sheer complexity that emerged from the ordinary collision of individual and organizational needs, wants, and expectations.

After painting such a rich picture, Thomson sketches a new view of administration where co-alignment is its “basic function.” Co-alignment is the result of efforts to synthesize the individuals’ perspectives together with the organization’s various “streams of institutionalized action” over time and space. He proposes that administration is a rather processual and collective endeavor in organizations which is constantly running up against a paradox. While flexibility is required to achieve and sustain co-alignment, there is a continuous push for greater control in organizations. Presenting the dynamics and tensions that make up organizations and management, Thompson’s work presented scholars with a broad research agenda that remains relevant to this day.