Organisations are viewed as systems which utilise energy in a patterned, directed effort to alter the condition of basic materials in a predetermined… - Charles Perrow

The operative goals will be shaped by the dominant group, reflecting the imperatives of the particular task area that is most critical, their own background characteristics (distinctive perspectives based upon their training, career lines, and areas of competence) and the unofficial uses to which they put the organization for their own needs.

Executives were closely observed at work at their desks, at staff meetings, while talking with inmates or moving about the grounds and so on, and again in the feedback sessions when we gave them findings.

The Basic Argument In its simplest form, the argument goes like this: when the tasks people perform are well understood, predictable, routine, and repetitive, a bureaucratic structure is the most efficient. Things can be "programmed," to use March and Simon's term. Where tasks are not well understood, generally because the 'raw material' that each person works on is poorly understood and possibly reactive, recalcitrant or self activating. the tasks are non-routine. Such units or organizations are difficult to bureaucratize.