A reexamination of Barnard's theory of organization

Abstract

In November and December of 1937, a series of eight lectures was delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston by a practicing executive, Chester I. Barnard. The enthusiastic response to the lectures prompted a decision by the Harvard University Press to publish them in book form under the same title, and in 1938 there appeared The Functions of the Executive (Barnard, 1938). Not only was this series of lectures and the text lauded in 1937 and 1938, the latter has since come to be recognized as a landmark in the evolution of our understanding of organizations. Barnard's work provides an historical bridge between the mechanistic and somewhat harsh scientific management era of Frederic Taylor and the more recent behavioral insights that now characterize management thought. Provided in one volume was a wealth of ideas subsequently captured and exploited by more contemporary organizational theorists. Many of these concepts are as profoundly appropriate today as they were forty years ago.