Organizations as Social Inventions: Rethinking Assumptions About Change

Abstract

Can we improve organizations by shaping their structure and processes? Common sense and much of organization theory support the view that it is organization itself which oppresses people and prevents them from realizing their best intentions. Acting on this view, critics and change agents have tried either to abolish structure or to design it to serve humane ends. Upon examination, however, abstract notions of organization resolve into goals and values held by individuals; putative universal organizational forms reduce to cultural artifacts. In searching for a concept of organization which recognizes its base in human action rather than in objective structure, the author draws upon a European tradition stemming from the works of Max Weber. This tradition, combined with examples of organizational life in schools, serves to identify implications for those who attempt-often with little success-to design better organizational forms. These implications suggest that our problems with schools will not yield to our manipulating the external trappings of organization-their familiar but spurious "structures." Rather, we must deal with the often conflicting views and values of those acting within these structures. The task of changing organizations depends, first, upon the varieties of reality which individuals see in existing organizations, and second, upon their acceptance of new ideas of what can or should be achieved through social action. We know little about either, but it is clear we should understand the first before we attempt to direct the second.