University of Utah

Western Political Science Association

The Organization as a Political System

Author(s): Robert B. Denhardt
Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 675-686
Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association
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 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM
ROBERTB. DENHARDT
Louisiana State University

HTEHE INTENSE relationship between that which is organizational and that

which is has an theme in recent
political proven annoyingly recurring inquir-
ies into human association. Annoying, that is, for despite the many skillful
attempts to unravel its complexities, the topic continues to present an abundance
of problems. For social analysts no less than for social actors, the increasing afflu-
ence of the bureaucratic phenomenon has proven most deceptive - especially in
collision with the new poverty of politics.1 Yet, curiously, while strong existential
factors seem to tear organization and politics apart, in analytic terms, the two are
being drawn closer and closer together and perhaps becoming more alike.
The likelihood of division between the organizational and political is most
clear when one considers the relation of each sphere to the individual. First of all,
both forms of association not only actively seek the services or contributions of
modern man, but also compete for the individual's devotion and allegiance. To
build a base for such a commitment, attempts are made in each sphere to teach
members and prospective members appropriate patterns of belief and acceptable
standards of behavior. Thus, just as students of political socialization have indi-
cated the extent to which children develop early images of governmental figures
and institutions,2so are other social scientists beginning to document the same type
of learning process with respect to such bureaucratic norms as the cultural trait of
hierarchy.3 Indeed, under special circumstances, it has now been demonstrated
that the instructive power of organization may even surpass that of civic culture.4
The resulting multiplicity of associational roles has at least the potential of creating

The rise of bureaucracy in this country has been described by Robert Presthus, The Organi-
zational Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), esp. Chapter 3. The sublimation
of politics which has occurred in response to extensions of bureaucracy is analyzed by
Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political
Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), Chapter 10.
2Recent major works in the area of political socialization include Richard E. Dawson and
Kenneth Prewitt, Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969); David Easton
and Jack Dennis, Children in the Political System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969);
Robert D. Hess and Judith V. Tomey, The Development of Political Attitudes in Chil-
dren (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1967); an excellent survey of the study
of political socialization is contained in Jack Dennis, "Major Problems of Political
Socialization Research," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (February 1968),
85-114.
3 Herbert G. Wilcox, "The Cultural Trait of Hierarchy in Middle Class Children," Public
Administration Review, 29 (May-June 1968), 222-35. See also Betty E. Cogswell,
"Some Structural Properties Influencing Socialization," Administrative Science Quar-
terly, 13 (December 1968), 417-40; Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Com-
plex Organizations (Glencoe: Free Press, 1961), pp. 141-49; Edgar H. Schein, "Organi-
zational Socialization and the Profession of Management," Industrial Management
Review, 9 (Winter 1968), 1-16.
4Robert B. Denhardt, "Bureaucratic Socialization and Organizational Accommodation,"
Administrative Science Quarterly, 13 (December 1968), 441-50. For a study of politi-
cal socialization in the same cultural setting, see Dean Jaros, Herbert Hirsch, and
Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., "The Malevolent Leader: Political Socialization in an American
Sub-culture," American Political Science Review, 62 (June 1968), 564-75.
675
676 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

situations of intense psychological stress in which the individual may be torn be-
tween divergent loyalties.5
But the opposition of organization and politics in these areas suggests a serious
predicament: if citizenship is two-pronged-applicable to the member in his
relations with both the organization and the body politic -the function of role
integration typically associated with the perspective of citizenship cannot be ful-
filled in either sphere as it acts independently of the other.6 Neither can provide a
comprehensive frame for meaning in human association, and in turn neither can
provide an inclusive focus for the study of citizen behavior. From this standpoint,
competition between the organizational and the political seems inherent and
inevitable.
These developments tend to suggest an increasing cleavage between the two
modes of association, yet at the analytic level this has not proven to be the case.
Indeed, the rise of bureaucracy, finally modified by a recognition of the pervasive-
ness of human values in complex organizations, has led students of bureaucracy
to broadened interest in subjects once solely the province of the political scientist.7
Such traditional political questions as the relation of authority and obedience, the
juxtaposition of freedom and order, and the quest for the civic good are now
appearing in contexts highly organizational.8 The student of bureaucracy is no
longer concerned solely with the rational and efficient manipulation of social
power.9 He is now compelled to talk also of ideas of order through participatory
administration and freedom through self-actualization; he is asked to comment on
the development of fraternity among workers and responsibility among managers
as steps toward the bureaucratic"good life."'1
5See the comments on interrole conflict in Robert L. Kahn et al., OrganizationalStress
Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity (New York: Wiley, 1964); See also Robert L.
Kahn and Elise Boulding, ed., Power and Conflict in Organizations (New York: Basic
Books, 1964).
' For a view of citizenship as role integration see Wolin, op. cit., pp. 429-34. See also Robert
J. Pranger, Action, Symbolism and Order (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press,
1968), pp. 13-14, 17-32; Robert J. Pranger, The Eclipse of Citizenship (New York:
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), Chapter 5; Joseph Tussman, Obligation and the
Body Politic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), esp. Chapter 2.
7
As just one example of this logic, we may note that Philip Selznick, having suggested that
no organization is completely free of institutionalization (value infusion), then speaks
of the role of the leader in highly political terms. ". . . creative men are needed ... who
know how to transforma neutral body of men into a committed polity. These men are
called leaders; their profession is politics." See Selznick, Leadership in Administration
(New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 61. The implications of Selznick'sview are
traced by Robert J. Pranger, "The Clinical Approach to Organization Theory," Mid-
west Journal of Political Science, 9 (August 1965), 215-34.
8 Parallels between organization theory and political
theory are cited by Herbert Kaufman,
"Organization Theory and Political Theory," American Political Science Review, 63
(March 1964), 5-14. Many of the problems in this area were anticipated in earlier
works. See Dwight Waldo, "Development of Theory of Democratic Administration,"
American Political Science Review, 46 (March 1952), 81-103.
9While the focus of this article is the internal allocation of power in complex organizations,
the power position of large bureaucraciesin the total society should not be overlooked.
See, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1967); Edward S. Mason, The Corporationin Modern Society (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1966).
" A number of these issues are covered in articles contained in a "Symposiumon Alienation,
Decentralization, and Participation," Public Administration Review, 29 (January-
February 1969).
 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 677

Obviously, by asking such questions as these, organizational analysis is brought

closer to its nearby sister discipline, political science. But this fact in turn means
that the distinction between the two has become increasingly confused. The field
of organization theory is purported to seek an explanation of the behavior of indi-
viduals and groups within organizations, which are defined as systems having a
"complex hierarchical structure, that operates in an amorphous environment with
which it continually interacts."1 A political system, on the other hand, seeks to
explicate a system of behavior involving "those interactions through which values
are authoritatively allocated for a society."12
The interchange of terms, the borrowing of ideas, and the transfer of concepts
have clouded disciplinary boundaries to such an extent that many persons have
begun to wonder if there is really any reason for maintaining the distinction. Some
writers have described the body politic simply as a special case of human organiza-
tion, while others have chosen to characterize the complex organization as a total
political system.'3 This latter approach - the organization as a political system-
will provide the focus for this paper; it will be argued here that concepts organiza-
tionally derived prove less than adequate when viewed as political terms. In other
words, we will caution against the assumption that notions of associationalbehavior
can be divorced from their disciplinary heritage. Finally, we will suggest that an
analysis of individual political interactions within the organizational setting might
prove valuable to both organizationalanalysisand political science.
As Robert Dahl indicated some years ago, there are many ways to view the
theoretical relation between the organizational and the political.14 One familiar
approach to these questions views modem organizations as political systems of the
first order, then seeks to apply the vocabulary of politics to the movement of these
associations through time and space. The clarity and simplicity of this line of
reasoning has, of course, led to a proliferation of studies bound by their adherence
to a view of organizationsas governments.15An especially lucid presentation of this
focus is a recent and highly provocative inquiry by William Scott into several
valuational issues posed by "Technology and Organization Government."16 Since
" Richard M. Cyert and Kenneth R. MacCrimmon, "Organizations,"in Gardner Lindzey
and Ellist Aronson, Handbook of Social Psychology (2nd ed.; Reading, Massachusetts:
Addison-Wesley), p. 568.
1 David
Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), p. 21.
3 For example, in a recent essay, Herbert Simon, drawing on his decision-makingapproach
to organizational theory, concludes that decision-making is not "some highly special
aspect of the political process, but... its central core." In the same volume Anatol
Rapoport comments, "... if political science is a science of organization,it will advance
when general organizationtheory advances." See David Easton, ed., Varieties of Politi-
cal Theory (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 15, 140-41.
14Robert A. Dahl, "Businessand Politics: A Critical Appraisal of Political
Science," Ameri-
can Political Science Review, 53 (March 1959), 1-34.
15For
example, see Richards Eells, The Governmentof Corporations(New York: Free Press
of Glencoe, 1962); Walton Hamilton, The Politics of Industry (New York: Knopf,
1957); Grant McConnell, Private Power and AmericanDemocracy (New York: Knopf,
1966), Chapter 5. For an early statement of this problem, see Charles E. Merriam,
Public and Private Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944); a signifi-
cantly different but related approach is that of James G. March, The BusinessFirm as
a Political Coalition,"Journal of Politics, 24 (November 1962), 662-78.
1
William G. Scott, "Technology and OrganizationGovernment: A Speculative Inquiry into
the Functionality of Management Creeds," Academy of Management Journal, 11 (Sep-
678 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

Scott's article illustrates most vividly the problems arising from the conjunction of
organizational realities and political symbolisms, it provides an excellent point of
departure for a discussion of the applicability of the language of politics to the
realm of the complex organization.
For Scott, as well as for a long tradition of social and political scientists basing
their work on Harold Lasswell's definition of politics as "who gets what, when,
how," politics quite simply involves power, no more, no less.7 If politics is power,
it is argued, then large and complex organizations must surely represent politics
in extreme. That is, if it is true that modern bureaucracies are vast and compre-
hensive arrangements for the distribution of social power, a fact most difficult to
contradict, then such associations must be without question essentially political in
nature.'8 As complex organizations serve not only in resource allocation, but also
in the "authoritative allocation of values" for their membership, they develop
important political overtones.19 They are, in brief, governmental systems.
The logic is quite clear, yet there may be something lost in the quick transla-
tion of organizational systems into political systems. True enough, politics involves
power relationships. Yet politics may also embrace much more, including for
example notions of order and community which cut across the entire range of
human interactions in ordered association. At the same time, however, the organi-
zational has much to recommend itself; for this focus also embraces more than
simply power relationships, specifically centering on the execution of some type of
object or product. If this is the case, organization implies action directed toward
a specified object, while the political may be reserved for those elements of action
which directly affect the nature of human association itself. In this way, just as the
often-sounded argument that political bodies are merely special forms of organiza-
tion falls somewhat short, so the argument that organizationsare prima facie politi-
cal systemsalso leaves something to be desired.
All of this suggests that when we speak of complex organizations as govern-
mental systems, we are speaking neither of the whole range of political possibilities
nor the entire span of organizational attributes. Rather we are focusing, for
analytic purposes alone, on a carefully limited number of special variables, those
common to both dimensions of inquiry. Thus, in the postulation of organizations
as governments, the eventual system is formed by the "selective perceptions" of
the political eye as it views complex organization. This way of looking at the prob-
lem of the organizational and the political, however, means that subsidiarypolitical
concepts, including notions such as "democracy"or "ideology" cannot be simply

tember 1968), 301-14. Scott's views are restated with some elaboration in William G.
Scott, "Organization Government: The Prospects for a Truly Participative System,"
Public AdministrationReview, 29 (January-February1969), 43-53.
"Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1936).
18
It must be rememberedthat we are concentrating here on bureaucraciesas political socie-
ties rather than bureaucraciesin political societies. See footnote 9 above.
19David Easton, whose definition of politics is quoted
here, has suggested the possibility of
"parapolitical" arrangements, similar but not identical to complete political systems.
See David Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-
Hall, 1965), pp. 50-56.
 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 679

assumed to take on the full and complete meaning in an organizational frame that
they might hold when used in more clearly political contexts.
As an illustration of possible difficulties which may arise here, we may follow
Scott's lead in examining the question of organizational ideology. Given the
tenuous analytical status of organizations as political systems, the question of
ideology is first an empirical one, to be examined both in terms of its existence and
its derivation. In the present case, the presence of certain managerial ideologies, or
at least managerial creeds, seems well established.20Especially if ideology is broadly
taken to consist merely of statements of fact masking value, then the fact that the
various mechanisms employed by management in its attempts to secure acts from
the organization's members (the subjects) seem to derive from standard patterns
of belief gives a strong indication of the existence of ideology.2'
Scott's argument is of particular relevance at this point. Organizational
ideologies, he suggests, have existed for many years, although they have rarely
been recognized as such. The scientific management and human relations schools
provided two early but essentially similar approaches to organizational ideology,
each resulting in a justification of the management establishment. More recently,
however, industrial humanism, a creed supposedly based on faith in the common
man (the worker) and aimed at an ultimate sharing of organizational power, has
been suggested as an alternative to the earlier schools. However, as Scott rightly
points out, the promises of industrial humanism have proven greater than its
programs and ultimately the new creed becomes a handmaiden to the technician-
oriented management science and, in a larger sense, to the technical imperative,
Ellul's La Technique.22
The important and inescapable, yet usually neglected fact is that whatever the
substance of these ideologies, they are necessarily imposed. That is to say, these
managerial creeds are neither developed nor accepted through the spontaneous
participation of even a significant portion of the membership, much less the total
number. Instead, the various components of ideology are subtly taught the mem-
bers by the managerial elite. (Significantly, a major portion of the ideology relates
to the matter of instruction; members are socialized into acceptable patterns of
belief and action- and by acceptable one must mean managerially acceptable.23)
But even the managerial elite is not fully responsible for the development of these

0 See
Scott, "Technology and Organization Government," pp. 301-2. Following Scott's
practice, we will make no firm distinction between "creeds" and "ideologies." It should
be realized, however, that other circumstances might require greater precision. Various
meanings of "ideology" are presented by Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology (New York:
Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), pp. 13-16.
2A
slightly different approach to the matter of organizational ideology is contained in
Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 237-46. See
also Charles Press and Alan Arian, eds., Empathy and Ideology: Aspects of Administra-
tive Innovation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966); Victor Thompson, Modern Organi-
zation (New York: Knopf, 1965), Chapter 6.
Scott, "Technology and Organization Government," passim. See also Jacques Ellul, The
Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1965).
2For the relation of learning theory to various theories of organization, see Robert B. Den-
hardt, "Organizational Citizenship and Personal Freedom," Public Administration Re-
view, 28 (January-February 1968), 48-52. See also the references in footnotes 3 and 4
above.
680 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

creeds; ideological schemes such as those reviewed by Scott are only rarely the
products of efforts of active participants in the administrativeprocess. More often,
these patterns of belief are the result of social scientific inquiry within the terms of
a particular paradigm of science. The distinction is one quite similar to Robert
Lane's separation of "latent" and "forensic"ideologies: 24 while the manager rarely
concentrates the conscious constructing of ideological systems,the analyst of organi-
zation puts forward highly articulate, well-structured ideas about life in organiza-
tions.25
Now in terms of the persuasivenessof these types of ideologies, this conten-
tion is one of serious consequence. For if one explores the various logical pathways
involved in a view of organizational ideology as derived from social inquiry, it soon
becomes apparent that the "unnerving" conclusions reached by Scott and others
are merely symptomatic of a larger and more complex set of difficulties related
directly to the disciplinary structureof organizational analysis. Iu turn, the conclu-
sions of organization research- despite their profound impact on administrative
behavior--may prove less satisfactory when viewed as political ideologies of
organization governments.
II
In The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Thomas Kuhn argues that for any
science there exist universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time
provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. These
patterns of thought, which Kuhn terms scientific "paradigms," provide models
from which spring particular traditions of scientific research.26While the paradigm
serves an important function in limiting research, it may also lead to difficulties.
For example, the contemporary paradigm of organizational theory clearly restricts
theorists of organizational behavior in their consideration of certain highly value-
laden topics related to organizational participation. Nowhere is this suggestion
more clearly demonstrated than in connection with the various ideologies of man-
agement. For to attempt to speak of managerial styles as political ideologies is to
demand more than these constructsare intended to supply.
Speaking more broadly, practically any speculation into political questions
which begins with the paradigm of organizational analysis seems quite limited from
the outset. For in the beginning the subject of the inquiry is defined in such a way
as to preclude "democratic"types of conclusions. Organizational behavior is taken
to be that human behavior taking place within the confines of organization; organi-

24
Lane, op. cit., p. 16.
Some might argue here that, at least in theory, these important belief-sets are not directors
of action, as the term ideology implies, but simply reflectors of prior behavior. In
reality, however, this is not the case, as we shall see momentarily. For a comment on the
interplay of theory and ideology, see Thomas P. Jenkin, The Study of Political Theory
(New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 10-11.
2Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1962),
passim. For an application of Kuhn's ideas to the study of organization, see Martin
Landau, "Sociology and the Study of Formal Organization," in Dwight Waldo and
Martin Landau, The Study of Organizational Behavior: Status, Problems, and Trends,
Papers in Comparative Administration, No. 8 (Washington: American Society for
Public Administration, 1966).
 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 681

zation is in turn defined in highly authoritarian terms, involving notions such as

superior domination, hierarchical patterns of authority, and a view of organization
as a method or instrument. Obviously, assuming this basic orientation, it becomes
extremely improbable if not in fact impossible for the theorist of organization to
depart significantly from this pattern, for instance, in the direction of increased
organizational "democracy." As Michels so rightly commented, organization
means oligarchy, the dominance of a small elite over a larger, but subordinate,
mass.27 By limiting the focus of the discipline, the paradigm of organizational
analysis automatically restricts the obtainable results to notions of highly struc-
tured rule.
Clearly this argument should not be construed as a condemnation of current
efforts in organizational research. Quite to the contrary, the existence and guid-
ance of a standard paradigm has proven invaluable in the development of the disci-
pline; by suggesting problems and by focusing on important topics, the paradigm
has considerably aided the increase in our knowledge of organizational behavior.
The point here is simply that the discipline is not equipped to handle certain types
of questions. This being the case, to say that the resulting theories are somewhat
less than ideal when viewed as political ideologies and judged by the standards of
democratic theory is no more than we should expect. Research performed under
a set of assumptions inherently justifying managerial domination could hardly be
expected to reach any other conclusion and should not be expected to match the
evaluative requirementsof democracy. Ultimately, scientific management, human
relations, industrial humanism, or a combination of these are essentially variations
on a single theme, a paradigm of social thought based on the power of the mana-
gerial elite.
While the argument presented here suggests one explanation of this phenome-
non, there are still several important pieces of the puzzle missing. First, we must
return to the frequent objection that students of organizational behavior are pri-
marily concerned with the objective analysis of organizational behavior, that they
do not deal in prescription. This suggestion may be commented upon from several
standpoints. First, concealed beneath the trappings of the scientific method, there
is without question a strong undercurrent of normative thought dealing with
organizational behavior. (We should note that the same argument has been used
with reference to political scientists who have discovered pluralist power structures
in American cities.) A number of recent writers have commented on the "health"
of various types of organizations.28 Such a clinical approach to social inquiry is,
of course, a most legitimate exercise in scientific analysis, yet it should be under-
stood carefully before being either undertaken or condemned.29 Above all, the
potentialities of organization must not be confused in any sense with the realities of
such association.
27Robert
Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of
ModernDemocracy,trans.Edenand CedarPaul (Glencoe:FreePress,1915).
28See, for example,WarrenG. Bennis,ChangingOrganizations (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1966), Chapter 3.
29The clinicaltraditionin socialresearchis
long-standing.See EmileDurkheim,The Rules
of Sociological Method, trans. S. A. Solovay and J.J. Mueller, ed. G. E. G. Catlin
(Glencoe:FreePress,1950), esp. ChapterIII.
682 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

Secondly, while most students of organizational behavior attempt to maintain

the utmost objectivity in their research, they cannot control its use. The results
of the research, it turns out, do react back upon organizational behavior, if only
in the sense that practitioners (or applied scientists) make use of the derivatives
of this knowledge.30 In other words, the results of scholarly research become an
important part of the intellectual environment within which management must
operate. Whatever its successes or failures, the well-known application of Mac-
Gregor's Theory Y in the Non-Linear Systems company provides an excellent
illustration of the way organizationsadopt new "ideologies."31
Finally, it is important to realize that in all these undertakings,there is a strong
limiting factor, the demands and assumptions of the disciplinary paradigm. No
doubt industrial humanism, for example, is sincere in its desire for individual self-
actualization and personal development; yet again by the nature of the discipline
this utopianism must have limits, the limits of increased profit, performance, or
managerial discretion.32 Disregard for these organizational limits would imply
the analyst's disavowal of the accepted paradigm. Of course, there is nothing
necessarily inconsistent in this position; indeed it is essential in scientific advance.
However, new advances in organizational analysis hardly seem to amount to
Kuhn's "scientific revolutions."33

III
The implications of this reasoning for political science are many. To suggest
that organizational analysis is somewhat limited in its consideration of the political
side of man's involvement in complex organizations is in no way to negate the
importance of the effort, for the transfer of notions of political order to the realm
of organization implies a much broader concern for the political nature of life in
organizations. There is in such attempts an implicit acknowledgement that, within
the setting of modem bureaucracy, there is much that transcends the organiza-
tional effort and is basically political. Admittedly, most of what occurs here is
related strictly to organization- rational achievement through cooperative effort
-yet much also deals more broadly with politics- the associative ordering of
man's existence. To the extent that political as well as organizational activities may
be extracted from the same institutional complex, the political and the organiza-
tional viewpoints may be viewed as coequal dimensions of analysis, each focusing
on those events which prove important to its own concerns, and each applying its
own relevant standardsof judgment.
Certainly the interplay of organizational goals and bureaucratic rationality
provides an instructive commentary on this latter problem. In the view of con-
30Scott's conclusions are of particular relevance here. Scott, "Technology and Organization
Government," p. 314.
' Arthur H.
Kuriloff, "An Experiment in Management," Personnel, 40 (November 1963),
8-17.
82Strauss has criticized new schools of managerial thought for exceeding these limits. See
George Strauss, "Some Notes on Power Equalization," in Harold J. Leavitt, ed., The
Social Science of Organizations (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 53-57.
3 Kuhn, op. cit., Chapter 9. These new forces may, on the other hand, indicate conditions
of anomaly.
 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 683

temporary organization theory, man alone is viewed as essentially limited, posses-

sing only "bounded rationality."34 Only through his participation in organized
endeavor can the individual approximate any sort of rational existence. Thus, the
"rational individual is, and must be, an organized and institutionalized indi-
vidual."35 Yet the rationality in which the member of organization participates
is neither that of the whole social order nor that of the individual's total life
involvements. That is, this rationality is not that defined in terms of what reason
may dictate for society, even assuming an ultimate value of technological progress.
At the same time, this rationality is not extended to the member's other, non-
organizational activies. The individual is made more rational only in his limited
abstract role as an organizationalmember.
The rationality of bureaucracy is then internal to itself and is measured in
terms of efficiency, a relationship between that which is sought and that which is
achieved. Because of this, a prerequisite of such rationality is a specified organi-
zational goal, an end against which accomplishment may be measured. Again,
there is no necessity that this goal or direction coincide with that of the political
whole; indeed, it may be in complete opposition to the existing political order.
(As Lenin demonstrated so clearly, organization can serve the ends of revolution
as well as those of stability.36) Ultimately, as the study of organization becomes a
study of a self-contained rational efficiency, there is no need to consider the broader
effects on either society or the individual.
Obviously, this type of restriction is one under which political analysis cannot
afford to operate, for this is a mode of thought offered as expanding to the whole
of the social order and to the full extent of the individual's associational involve-
ments. Yet, just as organizational analysis has been restrainedby its own paradigm
of thought from investigating certain aspects of personal participation in organized
life, so has political science tended to neglect these same considerations- though
for different reasons. The discipline has quite simply been unable to generalize
beyond the limiting focus of its own thinking.
Traditionally, the study of politics has been conceived as one related to action
within a particular institutional setting, typically that of the state. That is, political
behavior has been defined as that behavior taking place within the environment
provided by public government. The ancient Greek conception of politics, for
example, was limited to those problems of order involving the common interests of
all members of the society. Since these common interests were vested solely in the
institution of the city-state, it was only in reference to that special conglomerate
that politics had meaning. Political action could only be defined through its situa-
tional context and in the Greek world, the only accepted context for political action
was the city-state. In response to changing space-time necessities, however, politi-
cal discoursewas soon transformedin such a way as to include other environmental
frameworks, such as the empire or nation-state. Changing conditions and new
patterns of life made necessarynew conceptions of that which was to be considered

34Herbert
Simon, Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957), p. 198.
35 Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior (2nd ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 102.
'3 This aspect of Levin's work is considered by Wolin, op. cit., pp. 421-29.
684 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

political yet the change was not one of redefining politics, but rather one of relo-
cating it.
Despite the assumption of varied environmental settings within which action
would be designated as political, the orientation of nearly all political commenta-
tors prior to the twentieth century was alike in the adoption of an institutionally
based aproach to the subject of political action. A significant corrollary to this
demarcation of the political was, in most cases, the view that one and only one
institution, broadly defined as public government, could properly be considered
the framework within which political action was to be operative. It is this latter
qualification which modem political analysis has strikingly violated. In this con-
text, David Easton has commented:
Although in the past, political science was able to define an institutional area of interest dis-
tinct from the other disciplines, it had difficulty in showing that its understandingof political
phenomena possessed a theoretical coherence as isolable as political interactions themselves.
Moder theory has had to do precisely that in order to establish its own validity and justify
its own existence as an area of enquiry. In other words one of the major tasks of theory has
been to identify a set of behaviors that is could describe as political, and, in the process, to
construct an analytic system or a theory that would help to explain the behavioral reality."
In reorienting the disciplinary focus, contemporary political theorists have
sought to develop definitional constructs based on an understanding of "the politi-
cal act," usually one performed in "power perspectives"or one associated with the
"authoritative allocation of values."38 This suggests that it may now be possible
for political science to focus its full analytical potential on the problems of man's
participation in organized groupings lying outside the realm of public government.
No longer must political analysis be restricted to cases of organization directly con-
nected with the state, i.e., public administrative bodies or legislative systems; it may
now extend as well to man's involvement in numerous other associations such as
corporate or voluntary organizations. In these contexts as well as in those more
familiar to the political scientists, actions are performed with overtones of power
and relate to the allocation of values. Here also special modes of political activity
arise and become appropriate subjects of inquiry for students of politics.
Recognizing that politics occurs in many settings, there seems much to be
gained from a political analysis of organizational involvement- just as much
has already been gained from organizational studies of political structures.39 Both
as a theoretical concern and as a focus for behavioral research, this approach offers
several potentially productive areas. Among these, aspects of politics in organiza-
tions might be viewed with reference to the particular "civic culture" (i.e., the
culture of organization) in which they reside.40 Certainly the organizational setting
described here and elsewhere presents a variety of distinct and distinctive cultural
attributes which impinge on those aspects of associative behavior which may be
3 David Easton, "Alternative Strategies in Theoretical Research," in
Easton, Varieties of
Political Theory, p. 5.
38See footnotes 17 and 19 above.
39As just one of the many contributions in the latter direction, note the organizational
approach to the study of political parties used by Samuel J. Eldersveld,Political Parties:
A Behavioral Analysis (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964).
40Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1963).
 THE ORGANIZATION AS A POLITICAL SYSTEM 685

abstracted as political. For this reason, we would expect that such political actions
would be clearly related to the normative and behavioral character of bureaucracy.
For example, it might be noted that exercisesof personal political power are highly
differentiated in interpersonal exchanges taking place in the organizational setting.
Or one might ask whether the values of creative citizenship are fostered or hindered
by man's involvement in rigorous and impersonalized institutional forms such as
that typically presented by bureaucracy? In any case, to determine in which ways
the organizational influences tend to mold the political processes in bureaucratic
settings should prove a revealing enterprise.
Such an inquiry might, of course, be broadened to comment on the broad
interaction of organizational and political values, especially with respect to the
learning process. For example, socialization research relating to such matters as
political authority might well be extended to include some consideration of the
learning of organizational authority as well. A significant question might be the
extent to which somewhat parallel socialization experiences tend to reinforce or
contradict one another. That is, we might ask whether a strengthened orientation
toward bureaucratic authority might carry over into a deepened respect for regime
authority.41 In a similar vein, one might well ask whether the inculcation of
bureaucratic norms, especially those associated with elitism and hierarchy, acts to
subvert the learning of more democratic political forms. There is every indication
that organizational involvement and political participation are closely related, yet
there has been little study of the personal factors capable of explaining this
relationship.
Finally, assuming the relevance of organizational norms to those of politics,
the political theorist must ask how notions such as pluralism or even democracy
itself are affected by various types of nongovernmental institutional structures. So
far this question has been approached by political scientists largely from the stand-
point of specifying environmental influences on the governmental process. That is,
this field has been dominated by such concerns as the impact of the group on the
political structure or the role of the large organization in shaping public policy.42
What has been neglected has been the political status of the active individual in
relation to others, to relevant organizations, and eventually to the state. To explore
such topics, it may be necessary to expand notions of political order and especially
democratic citizenship to nontraditional areas. That is, theories of democracy may
have to be broadened in such a way as to include aspects of power and decision-
making in organizations as well as in the state. In relation to their members, cor-
porations and other large organizations might then be considered direct contribu-
tors to the political process and therefore subject to critique on the grounds of
democratic theory as well as organizational efficiency.43 Only under these circum-

41For an
intriguing commentary on this problem, see Robert A. LeVine, "The Internatiza-
tion of Political Values in Stateless Societies," Human Organization, 19 (Summer
1960), 51-58. See also Denhardt, "Bureaucratic Socialization," toc. cit.
42 For
example, see David A. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951).
"3Peter Bachrach has written, "It would be ludicrous to argue that the highly complex,
mammoth, industrial corporate structure should or could be organized with the sole
objective of conforming to democratic norms. It would be equally ludicrous to contend
that economic efficiency should be the sole criterion by which to judge the performance
686 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

stances would we be led to such evaluative questions as whether a system containing

a predominance of elitist institutions in capable of complete democracy or how the
citizenship role may be expanded in light of changing institutional restrictions.
Through all of this, however, we must realize that there are inherent differences in
the perspectives provided by the organizational and the political, that each works
from the basis of its own special interest and is directed and limited by it adherence
to this pattern.

of a politico-economic institution." Peter Bachrach, "Corporate Authority and Demo-

cratic Theory," in David Spitz, ed., Political Theory and Social Change (New York:
Atherton Press, 1967), p. 269. See also Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), esp. pp. 101-6.