Works
- Conflicts between staff and line managerial officers, American Sociological Review 15(3), from page 342, 1950
- Men Who Manage: Fusions of Feeling and Theory in Administration, Wiley, New York (318 pages); reissued by Routledge, 2017, 1959
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The informal organization of management
Ideas
Line and staff conflict. From observation in three industrial plants, Dalton treated friction between staff specialists and line managers as one part of a general conflict system among managers and traced it to the staff officers' ambition, the staff's need to justify its existence, and the dependence of staff promotion on line approval. Caveat: One researcher, in plants he disguised; Belasco and Alutto (1969) reported the conflict may be less severe than assumed.