Rosabeth Moss Kanter Organization Quotations

if networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women.

Not everyone in an organization is in a position to accumulate power through competent performance because most people are just carrying out the ordinary and the expected - even if they do it very well. The extent to which a job is routinized fails to give an advantage to anyone doing it because 'success' is seen as inherent in the very establishment of the position and the organization surrounding it. Neither persons nor organizations get 'credit' for doing the mandatory or the expected.

The importance of discretion increases with closeness to the top of a hierarchical organization.

I wonder whether there has been too much emphasis on teaching women to conform, to fit into the system. Certainly that suits conservative organizations in conservative times. But now ... innovation and creativity are necessary.

Innovative organizations provide the freedom to act which arouses the desire to act.