Works
- The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, 1964
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Control over zones of uncertainty. Where impersonal rules fix most outcomes in advance, people gain power by controlling the zones of uncertainty that remain. In the state-owned factory Crozier studied, production was tightly regulated, production workers were barred from repairing their own machines, and the maintenance men, who alone could deal with breakdowns, kept a large measure of parallel power.
What it explains
Crozier explains why people low in the hierarchy can hold real power when they control the one thing others cannot predict or fix. Those who reduce an organization's critical uncertainty gain influence over those who depend on them.