Jeffrey Pfeffer

The theme of this book, and the underlying premise of the external perspective on organizations, is that organizational activities and outcomes are accounted for by the context in which the organization is embedded.

— Jeffrey Pfeffer

The criticality of a resource can be measured as the ability of an organization to function in the absence of the resource or in the absence of the market for the output.

— Jeffrey Pfeffer

The neglect of context, it is argued, leads to the development of theories that do not have the potential of understanding development and change over time or for understanding the subtle nuances of interaction that are critical in apprehending what is really occurring.

— Jeffrey Pfeffer

According to the resource dependence perspective, firms do not merely respond to external constraint and control through compliance to environmental demands. Rather, a variety of strategies may be undertaken to somehow alter the situation confronting the organization to make compliance less necessary.

— Jeffrey Pfeffer

The theories in this chapter, focusing on the individual level of analysis, differ somewhat from those in the next chapter, in which a more organizational level of analysis is employed. Although all of the theories are essentially cognitive and social definitionist in nature, particularly as developed in the general sociological literature, there are at least two important subgroups within the social constructionist perspective.

— Jeffrey Pfeffer