On The Margins

(Masood Mortazavi)


(Books)(Blogger)(java.net)
Check Google Page Rank

20040818 Wednesday August 18, 2004

[ Society ] The Functions of the Executive: Chester Barnard and Organization Theory

Earlier, I quoted the summary of Chester Barnard's views on the individual and on why we cooperate with each other in organizations.

Here, I'll quote the summary of his views on the total context of organized cooperation and on how cooperation changes the very context of organizations.

Cooperation is the social aspect of the total situation and social factors arise form it. These factors may be in turn the limiting factors of any situation. This arises from two considerations: (a) The process of interaction must be discovered or intervened, just as a physical operation may be discovered and intervened (b) the interaction changes the motives and interest of those participating in the cooperation. (The Functions of the Executive, p. 60.)

From my own experience, item (a) in the above is primarily about change and strategy. If you want to remove a limiting factor, you may organize yourself in a band or a group. On the other hand, item (b) is about the dialectics that follows, making strategic behavior a cause of its own demise. More importantly, item (b) is about changes in motivation and interest which affect the participant in an organization simply through their participation.

2004-08-18 04:12:12.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Comments:

Post a Comment:

Comments are closed for this entry.

On the Margins Tag Cloud

america apache art berkeley blogs books business canada capital code communications community computing conference connectors content contribution corporate costs culture databases derby design desktop developers development economics education energy engineering film finance history information innovation international internet iran isfahan java java-db javaone law linux logic management markets mathematics media mobile music mysql netbeans networks news open open-solaris open-source opensolaris opensource os persian philosophy phones photography photos politics postgresql practice privacy products programming ruby science server services social society software solaris sports strategy sun sun-microsystems systems technology tehran telecommunications tools transactions transportation travel tv us video war web windows work writing

Del.icio.us

RSS Feeds

XML

All
/ Persian (فارسی)
/Announcements
/Art (هنر)
/Business
/Code
/Culture
/Design
/Economics
/Here
/History
/Java
/Mathematics
/Media
/Networks
/Papers
/Personal
/Philosophy
/Science
/Society
/Sports
/Sun Microsystems Inc.
/Technology
/Telecommunications
/This
/Web
/Work

Disclaimer

I work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are purely my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

Coordinates

Locations of visitors to this page

« November 2009
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
     
       
Today

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from M.Mortazavi. Make your own badge here.

Entry Statistics

Entries: 1246
Comments: 919

Recent Entries

StatCounter

Statistics from StatCounter

Page Rank

Check Google Page Rank

On the Margins Tag Cloud

america apache art berkeley blogs books business canada capital code communications community computing conference connectors content contribution corporate costs culture databases derby design desktop developers development economics education energy engineering film finance history information innovation international internet iran isfahan java java-db javaone law linux logic management markets mathematics media mobile music mysql netbeans networks news open open-solaris open-source opensolaris opensource os persian philosophy phones photography photos politics postgresql practice privacy products programming ruby science server services social society software solaris sports strategy sun sun-microsystems systems technology tehran telecommunications tools transactions transportation travel tv us video war web windows work writing

RSS Feeds

XML

All
/ Persian (فارسی)
/Announcements
/Art (هنر)
/Business
/Code
/Culture
/Design
/Economics
/Here
/History
/Java
/Mathematics
/Media
/Networks
/Papers
/Personal
/Philosophy
/Science
/Society
/Sports
/Sun Microsystems Inc.
/Technology
/Telecommunications
/This
/Web
/Work

Other Places




Landmine Casulties
free counters'

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
© Masood Mortazavi
This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.