THE TRUTH ABOUT INFORMAL ORGANIZATION

Abstract

Chester I. Barnard is generally credited with dividing organizational structure into "formal" and "informal." His thesis has been interpreted by subsequent generations of management writers and social scientists to mean that it is precisely the "informal" approach that, in the final analysis, is the most effective, and therefore the most important, within total organizational behavior. Anything done through the formal organization, it is argued, encounters formidable resistance and serious conflict, whereas administrative directives and communications are readily accepted simply by dispatching them through the channels of the informal organization.