Permanently Failing Organizations Author:Marshall W. Meyer, Professor Lynne G. Zucker Why do organizations succeed or fail in pursuit of their explicit goals? Do effective organizations displace inefficient and ineffective ones? Does organizational performance improve with age? Contrary to the theory long espoused by economists that inefficient organizations are constantly being replaced by the more efficient, instances of perman... more »ently failing organizations abound.In this volume, the authors closely examine performance and draw on the best of both sociology and economics to explain why some organizations perform well and others perform badly. They first separate the concept of organizational performance from that of organizational persistence. Then, bringing in sociological concepts of power, collective action and revolution, they develop a theory of why - and how - organizations tend towards failure and how they survive in spite of it. Meyer and Zucker contend that management plays a critical role in the movement towards or away from poor performance, yet persistence is determined by the often competing interests of owners, managers, workers and the public.Replete with examples of high-persistence, low-performance organizations and provocative, theoretical insights, this book is an important addition to the theoretical literature on organizations.« less