Blackwell Reference Online

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By organizational failure is usually meant failure against some measure of performance, or failure to achieve a goal that is normally expected. Thus, a company can be identified as failing if it is not profitable, or a school if it does not educate students to a required level, or in sufficient numbers. Clearly, such measured organizational failure might be purely nominal (and/or imposed), an artifact of the application of performance criteria, rather than a substantive failure of organization as such. Thus, the internal working of an organization might be highly efficient given the resources available; but, nonetheless, because it does not reach a prescribed level of performance, it is deemed to fail. If the price of an indispensable commodity suddenly makes production at a saleable price impossible for a firm, failing profitability is almost inevitable and, for a small or new organization, bankruptcy (the most commonly used indicator of failure) is likely. Of course, it may be also that an organization that is failing to perform against the customary criteria of success is also failing in some more fundamental way. If there are organizational problems that management has failed to resolve and which detract from measured performance, then there is a correspondence between measured and substantive organizational failure. But failure to perform against particular criteria is ... log in or subscribe to read full text