"Writing the other thing so you can refer to it in the actual thing" is a natural consequence of working at this length (what, a thousand words?). This deserved its own post anyway. Nifty!
I think there’s more to say on the 2nd Law (with a VSM angle perhaps) in that breaking up into smaller units (either divisions or ultimately deconglomeration) is a specialisation response, a la Adam Smith, but there are tradeoffs/limits to that approach.
fairs - I wanted to keep this really super general - either conglomeration or deconglomeration might be valid organisational responses to being informationally overwhelmed, the important thing is that it's basically a survival response from a management team that can't cope with the flow of information
Alfred Chandler is the starting point for management science? Who is Chester Barnard--chopped liver? (I certainly agree that Taylor was only the starting point for management scientism--which is far more popular if less useful than management science.)
However, I like your laws, with one proviso. Reorganization does more than deal with increased complexity. It also breaks up entrenchment, much like the market for corporate control. Entrenchment (i.e., passage of time) degrades management even holding complexity constant.
Chester Barnard I will grant you, although in my reading he is more of a "management memoir" guy just asserting things as good practice rather than taking a scientific approach. I fully realise that this immediately raises the objection "come on, Chandler isn't exactly doing science either", but I feel like I can (as in this post) back-form a sort of science by taking him as a precursor to the cyberneticians
Barnard pushes the thesis that organisations rationalise decision making (individuals engage in subjective rationality, and collective organisations makes the rationality (more) objective), which is somewhat more ambitious than a collection of best practice. I'd give Barnard the nod of being the actual godfather of systematic management thought, although, as usual, Weber did the actual heavy lifting - it is probably an exaggeration to say that all management researchers are doing is adding footnotes to Weber, but not by much. Chandler is more of the godfather of management strategy in a meaningful sense. Both belong to the cybernetic tradition you grapple with. And both are underrated. Chandler in particular is poignant. The visible hand is a much better metaphor for a theory of the firm than the invisible hand is for the working of the market.
"Writing the other thing so you can refer to it in the actual thing" is a natural consequence of working at this length (what, a thousand words?). This deserved its own post anyway. Nifty!
I think there’s more to say on the 2nd Law (with a VSM angle perhaps) in that breaking up into smaller units (either divisions or ultimately deconglomeration) is a specialisation response, a la Adam Smith, but there are tradeoffs/limits to that approach.
fairs - I wanted to keep this really super general - either conglomeration or deconglomeration might be valid organisational responses to being informationally overwhelmed, the important thing is that it's basically a survival response from a management team that can't cope with the flow of information
Alfred Chandler is the starting point for management science? Who is Chester Barnard--chopped liver? (I certainly agree that Taylor was only the starting point for management scientism--which is far more popular if less useful than management science.)
However, I like your laws, with one proviso. Reorganization does more than deal with increased complexity. It also breaks up entrenchment, much like the market for corporate control. Entrenchment (i.e., passage of time) degrades management even holding complexity constant.
Chester Barnard I will grant you, although in my reading he is more of a "management memoir" guy just asserting things as good practice rather than taking a scientific approach. I fully realise that this immediately raises the objection "come on, Chandler isn't exactly doing science either", but I feel like I can (as in this post) back-form a sort of science by taking him as a precursor to the cyberneticians
Barnard pushes the thesis that organisations rationalise decision making (individuals engage in subjective rationality, and collective organisations makes the rationality (more) objective), which is somewhat more ambitious than a collection of best practice. I'd give Barnard the nod of being the actual godfather of systematic management thought, although, as usual, Weber did the actual heavy lifting - it is probably an exaggeration to say that all management researchers are doing is adding footnotes to Weber, but not by much. Chandler is more of the godfather of management strategy in a meaningful sense. Both belong to the cybernetic tradition you grapple with. And both are underrated. Chandler in particular is poignant. The visible hand is a much better metaphor for a theory of the firm than the invisible hand is for the working of the market.