The Tyranny of Stuctureless
Proposition 4. Because attempts to control and coordinate activities in institutionalized organizations lead to conflicts and loss of legitimacy, elements of structure are decoupled from activities and from each other.
American Journal of Sociology • Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony on JSTOR
One key section explains how to create something called “purposeful stupidity”.
I deal with maybe 90% of these problems on every single development approval. https://t.co/1IcJtIR1Yp
If groups do not develop intentional “democratic structuring,” Freeman argued, informal power structures will form, usually reinforcing existing hierarchies and privilege.
Nathan Schneider • Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life
You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure. That means thinking about power differently. It means decoupling it from public prestige. It means thinking collaboratively, about the power of followers not just of leaders. It means, above all, thinking about power as an attribute or even
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