Organizational Growth

Katz and Kahn (1978 Chapter 4) note three stages in organizational growth:

Stage 1: Primitive collective response to common problems (coming from the environment).
Stage 2: Insurance of Stability of Structure (informal norms, rules, authority structures)
Stage 3: Elaborated supportive structures (subsystems, differentiation) and Adaptive systems to respond to environmental changes

They see organizations has having four methods for growth:
1. Size (without structural change) -- add people
2. Intraorganizational replication of units (new stores, plants, more clients)
3. Differentiation and specialization to improve productivity (weber model)
4. Merger with other organizations

Organizational Decline
Inflexibility and rigidity are primary causes for organizational death (p. 81)