Paul R. Lawrence Quotes

American business theorist (1922-2011)

(April 26, 1922 – November 1, 2011) was an American sociologist, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School, and consultant. He is known from his 1967 work with Jay W. Lorsch, entitled Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration, a pioneering work in the field of contingency theory.

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Alternative Names: Paul Roger Lawrence

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This is a comparative study of six organizations operating in the same industrial environment. The subsystems (sales, research, and production) in each organization were differentiated from each other in terms of subsystem formal structures, the member's goal orientation, member's time orientations and member's interpersonal orientations. This differentiation was related to the requirements of the particular subenvironment with which each subsystem dealt. A relationship was found between the extent to which the states of differentiation and integration in each organization met the requirements of the environment and the relative economic performance of the organizations.

Humans have evolved a leadership brain. Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders [the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend], even as they respect and reward their own drives.

We humans are truly marvelous, adaptable creatures, products of an exciting and inspiring — even though often dangerous — evolutionary story, a story to be celebrated with conviction and enthusiasm even as we move on to new challenges.