Paul R. Lawrence

Paul Roger Lawrence (born April 26, 1922 in Rochelle (Illinois) ; † November 1, 2011 in Bedford (Massachusetts) ) was an American sociologist and at the time of his death the retired Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Lawrence gained fame through his work Organization and Environment (1967) , co-authored with Jay Lorsch . The book is considered a key work in contingency theory .

Life

Howard and Clara Lawrence's son was born on April 26, 1922 in Rochelle, Illinois . He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan . Here he attended the Community College of Grand Rapids from 1939 to 1941, even after graduating from high school , and moved to the private Albion College , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1943 . His main subjects were sociology and economics with a minor in psychology .

Shortly after the United States entered World War II , Lawrence joined the United States Navy . The Navy transferred him to Harvard Business School to train as quartermaster . These courses were credited towards his studies on his return to Harvard. He achieved the rank of lieutenant until he left military service in 1946 . He worked as an assembly worker for an automotive supplier for some time before returning to Harvard to resume his studies.

In 1947, Lawrence graduated from Harvard Business School with a Masters of Business Administration . He stayed as a doctoral student at the HBS and continued studying under his supervisor Fritz Roethlisberger until he received his doctorate in 1950. From 1950 he went through the career of a lecturer. In 1951 he began teaching, in 1956 he became an assistant professor and was given a full professorship in 1961. In 1967 he followed his doctoral supervisor as Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Organizational Behavior . He would hold this chair until his retirement in 1991.

Originally, he was driven by his interest in human relationships in the industrial environment. This interest stems from his youthful experiences with the labor unrest in the automotive industry, for which he imagined better solutions. However, this interest quickly brought him into contact with organizational behavior and the reasons why people in organizations behave as they do. In this area, Lawrence earned a reputation as a pioneer.

As a researcher, his interests were traditionally shaped, ranging from motivation and control , intra-organizational integration, change management , governance, and the revitalization of mature companies and economic sectors. He rarely worked alone, but preferred the inspiration of his fellow researchers, from John P. Kotter to Amitai Etzioni to his most successful and fruitful collaboration with Jay Lorsch.

Organization and Environment

Lawrence published several pioneering works with Lorsch, including Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration , published in 1967 . In this work the two oppose the idea that there is one best form of organization. You contrast this view with an approach in which the form is decided depending on various factors, the contingencies. Their investigation showed that successful companies were structured very differently, although the differences could be explained by environmental factors.

Much attention was paid to the parts of their work that described the methods of integration. While all companies relied to some extent on communication in paper form through direct contact and along formal lines, some companies had developed special forms, for example temporary integration teams or permanent departments with the sole task of ensuring integration between different departments of a company. Since the companies achieved comparable market positions, Lawrence and Lorsch concluded that the efforts of the companies must also be equivalent in similar environmental conditions. Conversely, the structure of the company was based on the tasks it was supposed to perform. There seemed to be two guidelines for this organization:

Division of labor made task fulfillment efficient and
Coordination between departments to achieve organizational goals.

The work was recognized as the best management book by the Academy of Management in 1967 and cited in more than 2000 academic articles. Lawrence continued some of these investigations in later work with other colleagues.

In 1999, a chair at Harvard Business School was named after Lawrence, the Paul R. Lawrence Professorship.

bibliography

Books

1952 Administering Changes: A Case Study of Humnan Relations in a Factory with HO Ronken
1960 A Case Study of High Level Administration in a Large Organization: The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force , with JD Glover
1967 Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration with Jay Lorsch
1969 Developming Organizations: Diagnosis and Action , with Jay Lorsch
1970 Studies in Organizational Design , with Jay Lorsch
1971 Motivation and Control in Organizations , with GW Dalton
1975 Mayors in Action: Five Approaches to Urban Governance , with John P. Kotter
1981 Managing Large Research and Development Programs with HW Lane and RG Beddows
1983 Matrix with SM Davies
1983 Renewing American Industry , with D. Dyer
1990 Behind the Factory Walls: Decisions Making in Soviet and US Enterprises , with CA Vlachoutsicos
1991 Socio-Economics: Toward a New Synthesis , with Amitai Etzioni

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o Jim Aisner: Harvard Business School Professor Paul. R. Lawrence Dies at 89. Giant in the history of organizational behavior and Harvard Business School. Harvard Business School, November 3, 2011, accessed July 16, 2018 .
^ Derek S. Pugh and David J. Hickson : Writers on Organizations . sixth edition. SAGE Publications, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4522-4541-6 , pp. 61-65 .
^ Stefan cooling: key works of organizational research . Springer-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-09068-5 , pp. 396-399 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v Morgen Witzel: Encyclopedia of History of American Management . A&C Black, 2005, ISBN 978-1-84371-131-5 , pp. 324-326 .

personal data
SURNAME	Lawrence, Paul R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Lawrence, Paul Roger (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American economist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 26, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rochelle (Illinois)
DATE OF DEATH	November 1, 2011
Place of death	Bedford, Massachusetts

[HBR2011-11-03-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o Jim Aisner: Harvard Business School Professor Paul. R. Lawrence Dies at 89. Giant in the history of organizational behavior and Harvard Business School. Harvard Business School, November 3, 2011, accessed July 16, 2018 .

[PughHickson2007-2] Derek S. Pugh and David J. Hickson : Writers on Organizations . sixth edition. SAGE Publications, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4522-4541-6 , pp. 61-65 .

[Kuehl2017-3] Stefan cooling: key works of organizational research . Springer-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-09068-5 , pp. 396-399 .

[Witzel2005-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v Morgen Witzel: Encyclopedia of History of American Management . A&C Black, 2005, ISBN 978-1-84371-131-5 , pp. 324-326 .