Hierarchy, Specialization, and Organizational Conflict

Abstract

The combination in modern bureaucracy of technological specialization and the older institution of hierarchy has produced an organizationally determined pattern of conflict in modern organization caused ultimately by the growing gap between authority and perceptions of technical needs, these two elements of organization being largely now in the hands of two separate sets of officials. Specifically, intraorganizational conflict, to the extent it is organizationally determined, is a function of (1) disagreement over the necessity of authoritatively created interdependence, (2) growing disparity between rights and abilities, (3) scalar status violations involved in technologically created interdependencies, and (4) differentiation of values and reality perceptions brought about by the controls over interpersonal communication exercised by the hierarchical system, the status system, and the technical system (specialization).1 Victor A. Thompson is chairman, department of political and social science, Illinois Institute of Technology.