Whatever happened to “bureaucracy”: Empirical studies of the 1970s

Problems with defining the structure of the organization are the topic of this research. At the beginning of the seventies Hage and Aiken wrote: “Characteristics of organizations do not occur randomly; they are found together in definite patterns.” The purpose of this paper is to begin to make these non‐random patterns explicit. Such a task involves three steps: (1) defining “the” characteristics of organizations, (2) examining the empirical relationships of these characteristics, and (3) summarizing the findings. This paper focuses on step one. The structural elements of organizations as they appeared in the empirical studies of the 1970s as published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Pacific Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and The Academy of Management Journal are presented. Based upon these findings implications for steps two and three above are suggested.