The models in this group are organisation theory's attempt to explain a puzzle every employee has noticed: organisations are built to be rational and rarely behave that way. The models give different reasons, and together they describe organisations as coalitions, as learning systems that harden with success, and as populations that live and die by their environment.
Coalitions, not machines
The first family abandons the picture of an organisation as a machine with one goal. Cyert and March's Behavioral Firm treats it as a coalition of groups bargaining over goals, with slack that absorbs conflict. The Garbage Can Model goes further: in ambiguous settings, problems, solutions and decision-makers meet more or less by chance. Loose Coupling and Organizational Decoupling explain how an organisation's talk, decisions and actions can each satisfy different audiences. Institutional Isomorphism and Legitimacy over Efficiency explain why organisations in a field come to look alike: they adopt structures that seem proper, whether or not those structures work.
Success hardens into rigidity
The second family is the most practically important. March's Exploration versus Exploitation describes a trade-off every organisation faces: refining what works pays now, searching for something new pays later and uncertainly. The Competency Trap, Success Trap, Core Rigidities and the Icarus Paradox all describe the result: the capabilities that produced success crowd out the learning that would sustain it. Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma shows well-run firms losing to cruder entrants precisely because they listen to their best customers. Threat Rigidity and Dropping Your Tools show the same hardening under pressure, as with the firefighters who died carrying equipment they could have dropped.
Authority, motivation and voice
A third family concerns people. Barnard's Acceptance Theory holds that authority exists only where subordinates accept it. Theory X and Theory Y contrasts managers who assume people avoid work with those who assume they seek it. Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty describes the choices members have when an organisation declines, and Employee Silence explains why voice is so often withheld. Emotional Labour and Interpretive Labour name work that goes unrecorded: producing prescribed feelings, and understanding a superior who need not understand you.
Populations and practices
The ecological models, from Hannan and Freeman to Density Dependence, treat organisations as populations selected by their environment, with inertia as the price of reliability. The cross-cultural entries show that different traditions solve the same problems differently: Japan's Ringi builds consensus by circulating a proposal for written approval, and Sontaku describes subordinates acting on what a superior would want without being told. Scott's Legibility explains why states and large firms simplify what they govern, and what the simplification destroys.
Where it applies
These models are the working tools of strategy and change management. The exploration-exploitation trade-off tells a board why a profitable firm should still fund experiments that mostly fail. The innovator's dilemma explains why incumbents set up separate units to pursue disruptive products. Exit, voice and loyalty helps managers read rising resignations as a signal rather than a nuisance. Legibility warns anyone building dashboards that what can be counted will crowd out what cannot.
Where it is argued over
The classic models are largely accepted as frameworks; the disputes concern the newer and more cynical ones. The Gervais Principle and Immoral Mazes were published on blogs and generalise from selected cases. Graeber's B******t Jobs finds less support in representative surveys than in the testimony that prompted it. Groupthink, Tuckman's Stages and Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory are widely taught, and later tests have given them mixed or weak support. Burnham's Managerial Revolution and the Iron Law of Liberalism carry political arguments as well as organisational ones.
Why it is worth knowing
Most people meet organisations from the inside, where their behaviour looks like the decisions of particular people. These models show the forces those people are subject to: coalitions that must be kept together, successful routines that resist change, and environments that select what survives. That view is more forgiving of individuals and more demanding of structures, which is usually where lasting change has to happen.
The entries behind this essay: Model in Organizations & Bureaucracy. Every subject has its essays on the essays page.