Changing Behavior Through Cognitive Change

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The literature of social process has made widespread use of analogies to static equilibria in mechanical systems, of frictional concepts like resistance to change, and of such reifications as pyramids. The idea of organizations as mechanisms is so pervasive as to have produced its own psychological myths, and ideologically so dominant as to cause aversion to "organic theories of society." The concept of the organization as a machine is plausible when certain unusual conditions obtain: the goal of the organization requires the performance over long periods of time of a number of repetitive operations capable of routinization; obedience to authority can be relied upon throughout the system; the top authorities in the system have continuous access to all information that is relevant to the organization's success; nearly all problems that the organization will encounter can be foreseen and hence incorporated in procedural manuals. Management can then conceive of itself as the designers and operators of the machine: it is a matter of pushing certain social buttons.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: