Works
- Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration, 1967
- New Management Job: The Integrator, Harvard Business Review, 1967
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Differentiation and integration. In a comparative study of firms in different industries, Lawrence and Lorsch found that units facing different parts of the environment develop different goals, time horizons, and styles (differentiation), and that high-performing firms matched this with strong integration, unity of effort across those units. The more differentiated the units, the more the firm needed dedicated integrating roles and effective ways of resolving conflict between them.
The integrator role. This practitioner article in Harvard Business Review draws on the same research to describe the integrator, a manager whose job is to coordinate specialized departments that pull in different directions. Secondary summaries report that effective integrators had a balanced orientation between the units they linked, were seen as expert, and drew influence from that knowledge more than from formal rank.
What it explains
Lawrence and Lorsch explain why the person who links specialized units can gain influence across all of them: the more the units differ, the more the organization depends on someone who understands each and can resolve conflict between them.