Premium
Regulation and Control in Hierarchical Organizations
Author(s) -
Morse Nancy C.,
Reimer Everett,
Tannenbaum Arnold S.
Publication year - 1951
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1951.tb02239.x
Subject(s) - morse code , sociology , citation , action (physics) , control (management) , library science , computer science , artificial intelligence , telecommunications , physics , quantum mechanics
The study of social organization has passed the stage of fact gather. ing, undirected by hypothesis. We do not, however, have many welldefined variables to serve as the terms of hypotheses. The discovery of variables which have general application, subsume important social phenomena, and are capable of operational definition, is therefore important. We will describe our attempts to define two such variables in the area of organizational regulation and control. There have been other attempts which we have tried to take into account and from which we have profited. The dominance-submission continuum developed in the study of personality may be regarded as a regulation and control variable, important particularly in two-person interrelationships. The comparative study of “dernocrati~’~, “authoritarian”, and “ l a i~~ez fa i r e ’~ groups by Lewin, Lippitt, and White has emphasized the control behavior of the leader as an important variable in the face-to-face group. Most recently James Worthy2 has suggested the “flatness” of an hierarchic structure and the presiimably related decentralization of decision-making. The concept of organizational regulation and control is so closely intertwined with the concept of rollective organization that hoth require some preliminary discussion.