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April 10, 2026
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"[ Diversification strategy is] a firmâs commitment to diversity per se, together with the strengths, skills or purposes that span this diversity, shown by the way in which business activities are related one to another."
"Changes don't come along in nice annual packages, so the need for strategy work is episodic, not necessarily annual."
"BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF THE FIRM: A turn from structure to internal processes was the theme of authors such as Richard Cyert and James March, Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn, and Karl Weick... All but one... was a psychologist by education, so it should not be surprising that their view of organization theory emphasizes internal processes and resembles the micro approach of organizational behavior. Another group of theorists, all but one educated as a sociologist, viewed organizations as a product of macro environmental forces. These behavioralists were Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik, Michael Hannan and John Freeman, and John Meyer and Richard Scott. Pfeffer (the only non-sociologist) and Salancik presented a resource-dependent theory that postulates that organizations require support from their external environment and can only survive to the extent that this support is forthcoming. Managers form coalitions to gather support in an open system of external relationships in which there are constraints that create either a munificent or scarce resource situation."
"There is one word that best describes Jerry Salancik: mischievous. He was always full of mischief and brought an attitude and spirit of fun and playfulness to his research and colleagues that made life interesting and stimulating."
"The criticality of a resource can be measured as the ability of an organization to function in the absence of the resource or in the absence of the market for the output."
"The theme of this book, and the underlying premise of the external perspective on organizations, is that organizational activities and outcomes are accounted for by the context in which the organization is embedded."
"The term rationalize refers to any situations in which a person's action is described with reference to some supporting reason or cause. The term âlegitimateâ refers to one criterion by which rationalizations are selected from the many possible explanations for action. Justifications or rationalizations are selected primarily when they are acceptable explanations in a given social context. This means they fit with the facts as known according to the rules of behavior generally followed."
"People as adaptive organisms adjust their behavior and beliefs to the social context and to the reality of their own past and present behavior and situation."
"This article outlines a approach to explain . In comparison with need-satisfaction and expectancy models of job attitudes and motivation, the social information processing perspective emphasizes the effects of context and the consequences of past choices, rather than individual predispositions and rational decision-making processes. When an individual develops statements about attitudes or needs, he or she uses social information - information about past behavior and about what others think. The process of attributing attitudes or needs from behavior is itself affected by commitment processes, by the saliency and relevance of information, and by the need to develop socially acceptable and legitimate rationalizations for actions. Both attitudes and need statements, as well as characterizations of jobs, are affected by informational social influence. The implications of the social information processing perspective for organization development efforts and programs of job redesign are discussed."
"Success ruins everything.Pfeffer, Jeffrey, and Christina T. Fong. "The business school âbusinessâ: Some lessons from the US experience." Journal of management studies 41.8 (2004): 1501-1520."
"Commitment is a state of being in which an individual becomes bound by his actions and through this actions to beliefs that sustain his activities and his own involvement."
"Two contributors to explicitness are the observability of the act and the unequivocality of the act. Some acts are not observable and we may know them only by inference from assumed consequences. You leave a dollar bill on a checkout counter, turn away for a moment, then find it missing. The consequence is obvious, but do you know if the customer next to you took it or if it was carried away by a draft from the open door? Acts themselves can be equivocal, forgotten, or otherwise intractable."
"The most frequently encountered view of commitment in organizations is one having to do with an individual's psychological bond to the organization."
"The effects of subunit power on organizational decision making and the bases of subunit power are examined in a large midwestern state university. It is hypothesized that subunits acquire power to the extent that they provide resources critical to the organization and that power affects resource allocations within organizations in so far as the resource is critical to the subunits and scarce within the organization. Departmental power is found to be most highly correlated with the department's ability to obtain outside grants and contracts, with national prestige and the relative size of the graduate program following closely in importance. Power is used most in the allocation of graduate university fellowships, the most critical and scarce resource, and is unrelated to the allocation of summer faculty fellowships, the least critical and scarce resource."
"In New Directions for Organization Theory, Jeffrey Pfeffer offers a comprehensive analysis and overview of the field of organization theory and its research literature. This work traces the evolution of organization studies, particularly its more recent history, and highlights the principle concepts and controversies characterizing the study of organizations. Pfeffer argues that the world of organizations has changed in several important ways, including the increasing externalization of employment and the growing use of contingent workers; the changing size distribution of organizations, with a larger proportion of smaller organizations; the increasing influence of external capital markets on organizational decision-making and a concomitant decrease in managerial autonomy; and increasing salary inequality within organizations in the US compared both to the past and to other industrialized nations. These changes and their public policy implications make it especially important to understand organizations as social entities. But Pfeffer questions whether the research literature of organization studies has either addressed these changes and their causes or made much of a contribution to the discussion of public policy..."
"The theories in this chapter, focusing on the individual level of analysis, differ somewhat from those in the next chapter, in which a more organizational level of analysis is employed. Although all of the theories are essentially cognitive and social definitionist in nature, particularly as developed in the general sociological literature, there are at least two important subgroups within the social constructionist perspective."
"According to the resource dependence perspective, firms do not merely respond to external constraint and control through compliance to environmental demands. Rather, a variety of strategies may be undertaken to somehow alter the situation confronting the organization to make compliance less necessary."
"The neglect of context, it is argued, leads to the development of theories that do not have the potential of understanding development and change over time or for understanding the subtle nuances of interaction that are critical in apprehending what is really occurring."
"The domain of organization theory is coming to resemble more of a weed patch than a well-tended garden. Theories of the middle range (Merton, 1968; Pinder and Moore, 1979) proliferate, along with measures, terms, concepts, and research paradigms. It is often difficult to discern in what direction knowledge of organizations is progressing â or if, it is progressing at all. Researchers, students of organization theory, and those who look to such theory for some guidance about issues of management and administration confront an almost bewildering array of variables, perspectives, and inferred prescriptions."
"Every piece of data suggests that workplaces are in dire shape and there is low levels of trust in leaders. For instance, data on employee engagement from Gallup show that worldwide only about 13% of employees report being engaged with their work, and in the U.S., the number is barely higher at 20%. Job satisfaction has declined almost linearly since 1987 to the present. The Edelman Trust index indicates that the public at large has low trust in leaders, while other surveys show that employees do not expect their own leaders to make ethical decisions or to consistently tell them the truth about difficult situations."
"The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself â which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge."
"Nearly fifty years ago... Douglas McGregor launched a debate over how to manage The Human Side of the Enterprise. By comparing what he called Theory X and Theory Y perspectives, he challenged the management profession to reexamine its assumptions about the motivations employees bring to their jobs. The question was: Could employees be trusted and empowered to do good work, or did they have to be closely directed, monitored, and controlled to act in the interests of the firm? While McGregorâs Theory Y sparked important innovations in human resource practices, it did not challenge fundamental assumptions underpinning the 20th Century organizational model. If, as is widely recognized, human capital and knowledge are the most important sources of value for the 21st Century organization, then fundamental assumptions about the relationship between work and organizations will also need to be challenged."
"Democratically elected worker representatives cannot get away with symbolic or partially diffused innovations; they will be thrown out of office. They will demand that the program be 39 either abandoned or institutionalized and spread to cover more of their constituents"
"The importance of top management commitment to organizational change is so well accepted that it is almost clichĂŠ to repeat the fact. We would therefore expect managerial values to be just as important in this area as in others that require strategic direction and leadership."
"Employee participation cannot and will not be divorced from other human resource practices and organisational strategies. The implication of this argument is that we need to look at the total set of organisational strategies and assess their effects on performance."
"Unions are an essential part of the democratic fabric of society, but they are not necessarily desirable or acceptable `in my firm or on my property."
"The workplace changes being introduced jointly have two basic objectives: (1) to increase the participation and involvement of individuals and informal groups work so as to overcome adversarial relations and increase employee motivation, commitment, and problem-solving potential; and (2) to alter the organization of work so as to simplify work rules, lower costs, and increase flexibility in the management of human resources."
"A critical aspect of the operation of the New Deal system was the long history of incremental change and resistance to more fundamental modification. This incremental adjustment orientation was apparent in government policy, managerial practice, and union bargaining objectives."
"Our central argument is that industrial relations practices and outcomes are shaped by the interactions of environmental forces along with the strategic choices and values of American managers, union leaders, workers and public policy decision makers."
"American corporations often say human resources are their most important asset. In our national discourse, everyone talks about jobs. Yet as a society we somehow tolerate persistent high unemployment, 30 years of stagnating wages and growing wage inequality, two decades of declining job satisfaction and loss of pension and retirement benefits, and continuous challenges from the consequences of unemployment on family life. If we really valued work and human resources, we would address these problems with the vigor required to solve them."
"Given that organizational theory deals with different ways of organizing human activity, how does one âtheorizeâ about organizations? In most scientific disciplines, if one wants to theorize about something and ultimately study it, the most common approach is to bring it into a laboratory for closer inspection. Unfortunately, organizational theorists cannot do this because organizations are largely abstractions, and thus cannot be subjected to laboratory investigations. Although we can draw elegant organization charts to represent reporting relationships, and so on, what keeps an organization together is the fact that an organizationâs employees understand it and adapt their behavior accordingly."
"In terms of academic roots, the field that really has taken the lead in theorizing about the organization of purposeful human behavior is sociology. Sociology is essentially the study of macro-level forces (e.g., social stratification, social institutions) on human behavior (e.g., Merton, 1968; Parsons, 1951)... Given this historical backdrop, it is natural that sociologists would be more interested in the impact of the structure and design of organizations than psychologists would be. In fact, the Hawthorne studies, which are considered one of the most important historical events contributing to the development of organizational psychology, were conducted under the direction of sociologist Elton Mayo."
"In the organizational sciences (e.g., organizational behavior, organizational psychology), one of the more misunderstood terms is âorganizational theory.â To some, organizational theory is a field of study; to others, it is the process of using metaphors to describe organizational processes... or it represents an attempt to determine the best way to organize work organizations. The term is used to indicate all of these things, but an âorganizational theoryâ is really just a way of organizing purposeful human action. Given the diversity of purposeful human endeavors, there are numerous ways to organize them, and, hence, a great many organizational theories."
"âs work was undoubtedly pioneering, but it must be remembered that he focused primarily on physiological reactions to aversive physical stimuli. He was not focusing on stress in the workplace. The first large-scale program of research focusing exclusively on stress in the workplace was undertaken at the University of Michiganâs Institute for Social Research in the early 1960s. What is particularly noteworthy about this research effort is that the focus was on psychosocial factors in the workplace that may be stressful to employees. Psychosocial factors represent aspects of the work environment having to do with interactions with other people. In particular, the Michigan researchers focused much of their attention on what they termed role stressors... which are aversive working conditions associated with behaviors expected of each employee in an organization."
"The earliest scientific investigations related to the field of occupational stress were conducted by the well-known physiologist in the early part of the twentieth century (e.g., Cannon, 1914). Cannon was a pioneer in the investigation of the relationship between emotions and physiological responses, and is perhaps best known for having coined the term homeostasis."
"Hackett and Guion (1985) offer a number of explanations for the weak relation between job satisfaction and absenteeism. One reason is the measurement of absenteeism itself. Although at first glance absenteeism would appear to be a rather simple variable, it is actually quite complex. For example, when measuring absences, one can distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. Excused absences would be allowed for events such as illnesses and funerals. In unexcused absences, the employee simply does not show up at work. One could argue that job satisfaction would be more likely to play a role in unexcused than in excused absences."
"Job satisfaction is typically defined as an employeeâs level of positive affect toward his or her job or job situation... Along with positive affect, we can add both a cognitive and a behavioral component to this definition... The cognitive aspect of job satisfaction represents an employeeâs beliefs about his or her job or job situation; that is, an employee may believe that his or her job is interesting, stimulating, dull, or demandingâto name a few options... The behavioral component represents an employeeâs behaviors or, more often, behavioral tendencies toward his or her job. An employeeâs level of job satisfaction may be revealed by the fact that he or she tries to attend work regularly, works hard, and intends to remain a member of the organization for a long period of time."
"Job satisfaction is, without a doubt, one of the most heavily studied topics in organizational psychology, as well as in the broader field of industrial/organizational psychology. To emphasize this point, many authors, over the years, have referred to Lockeâs chapter in the Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1976), where he reported that studies dealing with job satisfaction numbered in the thousands."
"By definition, job performance is behavior, so job performance is rarely measured directly. More typically, what is measured is some external assessment of job performance."
"Job performance is a deceptively simple term. At the most general level, it can be defined simply as âall of the behaviors employees engage in while at work.â Unfortunately, this is a rather imprecise definition because employees often engage in behaviors at work that have little or nothing to do with job-specific tasks."
"In the most general sense, organizational psychology is the scientific study of individual and group behavior in formal organizational settings. Katz and Kahn, in their classic work, The Social Psychology of Organizations (1978), stated that the essence of an organization is âpatternedâ human behavior. When behavior is patterned, some structure is imposed on individuals. This structure typically comes in the form of roles (normative standards governing behavior) as well as a guiding set of values. An organization cannot exist when people just âdo their own thingâ without any awareness of the behavior of others."
"Organizations are complex social systems that sometimes perform remarkably well and sometimes fail miserably. Organizational psychology is a subfield within the larger domain of industrial/organizational psychology that seeks to facilitate a greater understanding of social processes in organizations. Organizational psychologists also seek to use these insights to enhance the effectiveness of organizationsâa goal that is potentially beneficial to all."
"According to Goldstein (1993), many organizations do not train employees adequately. For example, training programs are either poorly designed or designed in a way that does not meet the needs of employees. Either way, employees may be inadequately prepared to meet their role demands. Like the other two role stressors covered in this chapter, role overload is most often assessed through self-report questionnaires. One popular role overload measure is a scale developed by Caplanet al. (1975). As would be expected, these items appropriately reflect the frequency and intensity of role demands (e.g., âHow much workload do you have?â). Respondents would typically respond to these items on a scale ranging from âvery lightâ to âextremely heavy. Despite the popularity of this measure, there are undoubtedly other ways to measure role overload that employ non-self-report methods... [such as] some combination of objective and subjective measures."
"Like role ambiguity, the assessment of role conflict has been primarily through self-report measurement. The scale that has been used most often is that developed by Rizzo et al. (1970). These items ask respondents whether they experience things such as âincompatible requestsâ and situations in which their work is âaccepted by one group but not accepted by others.â A sample item from this scale is, âI receive incompatible requests from two or more people.â Strong agreement with a statement such as this indicates a high level of role conflict. Like the Rizzo et al. role ambiguity scale, this scale has also been the focus of much criticism and debate in the occupational stress literature (Kelloway & Barling, 1990, Netemeyer et al., 1990; Smith et al., 1993; Tracy & Johnson, 1981). Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to develop alternative measures."
"Despite frequent criticism, the vast majority of job stress researchers continue to use subjective self-reports measures for both job stressors and job strains (Jex & Beehr, 1991). Part of the reason is undoubtedly because it makes data collection relatively easy, but ease alone has not made this approach so popular. First, there is a sound theoretical reason behind this choice. Serf-reports represent incumbent perceptions, and perceptions represent an important mediating process in the occupational stress process."
"Organizational constraints represent situations or things that prevent employees from translating ability and effort into high levels of job performance. The [Organizational Constraints Scale] OCS was based on the work of Peters and O'Connor (1980), who listed 11 areas of constraints that interfered with job performance. These common situational constraints in organizations may include faulty equipment, incomplete or poor information, or perhaps interruptions by others."
"The investigation of job-related stress involves studying the relationship between stressful aspects of jobs (normally termed {[w|stressors}}) and the reputed results of stressor exposure (normally termed strains). Although several diverse theoretical models of the process by which stressors impact employees exist (e.g., Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980; Jex, in press; Jex & Beehr, 1991; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992), most models propose that employees are exposed to stressful working conditions, these conditions are perceived, and finally employees exhibit strains, which can include behaviors (e.g., increased smoking), physical illness, and psychological distress. On the job stressor side, there have been only a limited number of scales developed, which has tended to focus the field on a relatively small number of potential job stressors, for example, role ambiguity and role conflict. Yet research clearly suggests an important role for other job stressors that have received inadequate attention, such as interpersonal conflict in the workplace (Keenan & Newton, 1985) and organizational constraints on performance."