"Philip Selznick has profoundly affected how all serious students of organizations think about their subject.Leadership in Administrationis perhaps his masterpiece: a lucid rigorous yet humane analysis of the essential task of leadership that brilliantly reaffirms the organic value-infused character of a successful enterprise whether private or public. The central concepts of the book--'mission' 'distinctive competence'--have become so much a part of our vocabulary that we sometimes forget they had to be invented and that Selznick invented them. His reminder that the true exercise of leadership transcends a concern with mere efficiency is even more appropriate in today's era of quasi-scientific thought about organizations than it was when presciently he first set it forth in 1957."--James Q. Wilson Harvard University "The reappearance ofLeadership in Administrationwill be most welcome to students of organizations because it provides the most lucid and complete statement available of Selznick's special view of organizations. This view has given rise to the institutionalist school of organizational analysis one of the liveliest and more irrelevant alternatives to mainstream rationalist formulations."--W. Richard Scott Stanford University "Leadership in Administrationhas become a classic in the art of executive leadership. In fact it is stimulating more managerial thought and organizational research today than ever before."--Robert H. Miles Harvard Business School

Preface 1. Introduction
2. Routine and Critical Decisions
3. The Definition of Mission and Role
4. The Institutional Embodiment of Purpose
5. Conclusion Index