The Resurrection of Taxonomy to Aid the Development of Middle Range Theories of Organizational Behavior

Since the publication of Katz and Kahn’s The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966) and Thompson’s Organizations in Action (1967), the open systems model has dominated the thinking of scholars interested in organization theory. Although a number of authors, such as Scott (1961), had discussed the systems view of organizations before 1966, Katz and Kahn’s book was the first major exemplar of the systems model, and the one probably most often cited since then in connection with the systems paradigm. For Katz and Kahn, the stated purpose of applying the systems model to organizations was to facilitate the integration of so-called “macro” and “micro” concepts, thereby fostering some commonality of terms and concepts. Further, they hoped that the systems model would escape a commonly alleged fault of earlier approaches to the study of social organization, namely, a tendency to rely on analogies and metaphors that were not entirely appropriate (Katz and Kahn, 1966: 9).