chapter SIXTEEN
Organizations and Organizational Culture
Organizations are becoming increasingly complex. They are becoming both flatter, with more responsibility at lower levels, and more hierarchical, with tighter financial control at the top. The tension between these two poles presents challenges for employees at every level. Any generalization about an organization is not going to be true for all. However, there are some critical principles that can provide helpful insights.
Organizational theorists in the early twentieth century (Taylor, 1911; Weber, 1922/1968) saw organizations as mechanistic, rational, and bureaucratic. Later theorists focused on the influence of human behavior (McGregor, ...
