Spencer’s Reviews > Organizations > Status Update

In specialization we approach a theoretically very interesting limiting case where the demand and supply of a particular bundle of abilities tends to decrease until we have an organization that can find a replacement only at prohibitive cost and an employee who can find another job only at prohibitive loss.

One problem in organizing control systems in complex organizations is to neutralize...the dysfunctional consequences of subgroup organization without destroying it ability to perform necessary functions...organizations sometimes find difficulty in forcing lower-echelon leaders to conform to the demands of the hierarchy because some of the methods...seriously undermine the leadership positions of the supervisor.

It has become increasingly clear that important unanticipated consequences follow when the "machine" model of human organisms is used to stimulate production. It has also become clear that simple theories built on concepts of morale and satisfaction have had little or no success.