The Organization

Abstract

Organizations consist of groups which work together to reach the organization’s goals. Each group is expected to have for its members stable roles and defined tasks. Organizations have differing atmospheres, ways of doing things, differing levels of energy, of individual freedom, and kinds of personality - in short, they have different cultures. Cultures are made of interlocking sets of values, norms, and beliefs. Organizations are molded by history and present circumstances, by technology, by the people that work in them, and by their objectives. Following an information processing approach to the study of organizations, they can be defined as the “social structures constituted to gather and interpret information about the environment and use it to convert other resources into outputs such as products and actions” [159].