ABSTRACT
This chapter will describe what happened when a naval bureau in Washington changed the objectives of one of its laboratories on the west coast. The change was, in essence, from applied research to development. If the personnel of the department had behaved as “obedient employees,” they would simply have changed their behavior to conform to the new policy. But these employees were engineers and scientists who had professional opinions about their work and about the organization. The change in policy produced a sharpening of factions, a power struggle, an extensive reorganization, and the resignation of a number of persons. In this series of changes the actors were mainly the scientists and engineers in top staff and line positions. Each man had a set of beliefs about his professional work, about the organization and its goals, and about the other persons in the organization. The alignment and conflict of persons holding these beliefs produced a number of changes in the organization which had little to do with the purported aims of the policy change.
