Outside the Goal Paradigm: Power and Structured Patterns of Non-Rationality

Abstract

It is argued that power is a better explanatory factor in organizational analysis than are 'goals' or 'rationality'. This is supported by examples from the author's research in social-work organizations. These examples illustrate some of the ways that power is organized in what recent writers have called 'loosely coupled', 'street-level' bureau cracies. Informal and spontaneous organizing practices as well as rituals decide real (as distinct from formal) power and control at the operating level. For the analysis of those processes, a distinction is made between the means of organizing and other operational resources of an organization.