90: Organizations in Action -- James D. Thompson (Part 1)

We examine James D. Thompson’s Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory from 1967 that established a new direction in organization studies. Beginning with a recapitulation of the theoretical work of the time, Thompson expanded the dominant rational model of organizing with the emerging ideas about human behaviour, complexity, and the relation between organizations and their environments. The result was a proposed theory of administration that remains relevant to this day.