The Social Psychology of Organizations

An excellent monograph on social structures. Proven to be a primary resource for my doctoral dissertation. Katz and Kahn provide a precedential resource on the attributes of leadership, impacts of external causal factors on development and health, and key organizational theories which form the foundation on my study. Discussion of open system theory is of particular importance to my research in the area of leadership attributes, development, influences of stress, and the requirements to sustain well-being.

I first read The Social Psychology of Oganizations, by Katz & Kahn, in Spring 1973, as a required reading for Organization Theories Core Course at New York University, Wagner Graduate School Of Public Administration. Based upon my readings and use of this text book for both academic and later business research, I strongly believe that this structurally detailed, powerful and insightful book is a required core, basic studies reading for High School, College, University, Graduate Students and Post Graduate Studies. The Key Stone to this book is the concept of the Ying, Yang, the polarized interaction,interrelationship(s) of both the Formal and the Informal Organizations within both Public and Private Economy Sector Organizations."The formal Goals of the Formal Organization are not necessarily those of the Informal Organization and vice a versa."This landmark research work by Katz & Kahan, greatly enhances, sensitizes and helps the reader to conceptually organize, catalogue organizations and individuals by both types of organizational hierarchy and types of individuals' characterietics, so that we may more easily deal with both Formal and Informal Organizations and Individuals in a smoother, more rational, less emotional manner.I teach an Executive Project Managment course in both the Public and Private sectors of the Economy. When teaching Project Management to the US Department of Defense, the US Navy, NAVSEA, I have always recommended the supplemental research use of The Social Psychology of Organizations by Daniel Kats, Robert Louis Kahn, as I do when teaching and consulting within the private sector of the economy.Katz & Kahan's, The Social Psychology of Organizations, provides the reader with a rich, detailed, structured framework,indeed a structured compartmentalized baseline, against which we can compare multiple types of diversified organizations and multiple types of diversified individuals, as we meet them throughout the lifetime course our public and private lives.Since a corporation is indeed a Formal Organization, and the corporation is a "Living Entity", then this work allows the reader to understand the diversified (sometimes disfunctional) personalities of the Formal Organization vs. the Informal Organization, corporate culture as they relate to us as the individual having to work and live wihtin their corporate contexts, paramaters and according to their unique set of corporate cultural rules and their respective formal and informal regulations.From a Psychological perspective, The Social Psychology of Organizations by Katz & Kahan, both fore-warns and fore-arms individuals vis a vis their interactions and inter-relationships with, within large corporations, large social structures and one on one with individuals.What a true treasure-trove of organizational knowledge, behavior, insights this organizational research really is. This is a timeless piece of organizational research work, as relevent today in 2002, as it was in 1

The Katz and Kahn classic provides readers with an in-depth look at the systems, and modalities prevalent in organizations. It provides a clear map of the impact organizations have on their people, and consequently the impact the people have on the organization. Of particular usefulness were the chapters on power and authority, and role behaviors. While the perfect organization may never exist, Katz and Kahn have gone a long way towards giving their readers a better way of asking the right questions of organizations. Many of their points are germane not only in the era during which it was written, but will become more critical to e-commerce businesses as they realize that there is business to conduct after the initial honeymoon with the product.

Clearly the bible of organizational psychology