Book Review - Organizations
Organizations. By JAMES G. MARCH and HERBERT A. SIMON, with the collaboration of HAROLD GUETZKOW. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1958. Pp. xi, 262. $6.00.)
The study of administration is now undergoing a considerable metamorphosis, and not the least important influence thereon comes from the emergence of the so-called “behavioral” sciences. While there are those who might be called behavioral scientists who do not fit into all of the following propositions, there is a rather solid core the members of which do. (1) Al- though they c o m e from various social science disciplines, they find a meeting place in the study of organization as a generic process. (2) They are interested in industrial as well as governmental organization. (3) They see organization primarily as composed of behavioral as distinct from job or task phenomena. (4) They believe that such behavior is amenable to the scientific method and, within limits, measurable. (5) Hence, a basic approach is to set up logical models of behavior, preferably those which can be expressed in mathematical symbols. The work under review was prepared by a team of behavioral scientists in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
The political scientists who for the last decade have been critical of traditional administrative dogma have o n occasion expressed apprehension that certain behavioral scientists may have relegated the question of values too far to one side. Furthermore, many political scientists harbor a healthy skepticism toward the feasibility of applying quantitative method to the study of human behavior. But there is one point at which the minds of the two could very well meet and that is in condemning what the authors of the current volume call the “machine model” of organization. This refers to the past practice of studying job relationships as something distinct and separate from the people who fill the jobs. Behavioral science brings man as a human being into the study of organization; political scientists have usually done this, although the pioneer specialists in public administration sometimes seemed more influenced by the machine model.
The book relies heavily upon examples and reported research from industry. If the reader is among those who feel that government is so unique that industrial models have limited applicability, perhaps he will find little reward in reading it. On the other hand, should he be among that group (perhaps now a minority?) which believes that political science must right- fully collaborate in the behaviorist movement, he will find it rewarding. The emphasis on industrial examples in the behavioral literature has been due in n o small part to the paucity of systematic empirical studies of govern- mental organizations. Is it not to be hoped that the emphasis by the behaviorists on empiricism will stimulate us to produce more such studies? It is interesting to note references to behavioristic studies made by political scientists twenty years ago, namely, Gaus and Wolcott, and Macmahon, Millett, and Ogden.
Perhaps the major distinction between industrial and governmental organizations is the supremacy of the political process in the latter. In the volume under review “politics” is treated as such only in one place, and then as but one of four varieties of conflict. “Power” gets a somewhat larger consideration, but is not dealt with as a major process. This is mentioned not in criticism but to suggest that the potential contributions of political science to behavioral science are not being tapped. Other possible explanations are that the political process is not dominant in the organizations studied, that power is not regarded as an important construct, or that the subject is actually covered but under the cloak of other models.
The reading of the present volume requires a rather high level of sophistication, although potential readers should not be frightened by the spectre of mathematics. It is rather in the closely reasoned vocabulary of model building which uses dictionary words instead of jargon, but in a sense not in one’s ordinary repertory. This results from the effort to be precise rather than merely literary, and the world of electronic programming into which we are rushing on a tide will subject us to ever more of it.
It is not without significance that the 1958 St. Louis meeting of theAmerican Political Science Association scheduled a panel on “Complex Organizations” the leading paper of which was read by a sociologist. That this programming was ventured with some trepidation is attested by the gently probing inquiry of one of the schedule-makers who, searching for assurance, asked whether the subject matter was appropriate for a meeting of political scientists. Your reviewer ventures the prognostication that within a short decade there will be no occasion for questioning of this variety, because behavioristic approaches to the study of governmental organizations will abound in both the journals and professional meetings. Moreover, the papers will be prepared by political scientists who have adapted themselves to the needs of the electronic age. The book under review will be frequently referred to in such writings.
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- 2018-07-21 李亮创建