ABSTRACT
Every organized human activity—from the making of pots to the placing of a man on the moon—gives rise to two fundamental and opposing requirements: the division of labor into various tasks to be performed, and the coordination of these tasks to accomplish the activity. This chapter examines the point that complex organizations require diverse organizational forms in order to adequately perform various types of work, and to cope with many challenges stemming from uncertainty and conflict that are built into our system of democratic governance. The literature on organization theory and behavior provides important insight for public administrators about complex yet coherent ways in which people live and work together. Important developments in organization theory mark the turn of the twentieth century. First, in Western Europe, scholars such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Wilfredo Pareto studied the transformation of work from an individual, craft-based approach to a corporate, complex organizational undertaking.
