Lawrence, Paul Roger 1922-

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LAWRENCE, Paul Roger 1922-

PERSONAL: Born April 26, 1922, in Rochelle, IL; son of Howard Cyrus and Clara (Luther) Lawrence; married Martha G. Stiles, December 14, 1948; children: Anne Talcott, William Stiles. Education: Attended Grand Rapids Junior College, 1939-41; Albion College, A.B., 1943; Harvard University, M.B.A., 1947, D.C.S., 1950.

ADDRESSES: Home—17 Willard St., Cambridge, MA 02138. Offıce—c/o Cumnock Hall, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02164.

CAREER: Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, faculty member, 1947-1951, assistant professor, 1951-1956, associate professor, 1956-1961, professor of organizational behavior, 1961-1968, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Organizational Behavior, 1968-1991, professor emeritus, 1991—, and past chair of organizational behavior program. Military service: U.S. Naval Reserve, active duty, 1943-46; became lieutenant.

MEMBER: American Sociological Association, Academy of Management.

WRITINGS:

(With Harriet O. Ronken) Administering Changes: A Case Study of Human Relations in a Factory, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1952, reprinted, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1972.

(With James V. Clark) The Changing of Organizational Behavior Patterns: A Case Study of Decentralization, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1958, published with new introduction, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 1991.

(With John Desmond Glover) A Case Study of High Level Administration in a Large Organization: The Offıce of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Management) 1947-1952, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1960.

(With Arthur Nicholson Turner) Industrial Jobs and the Worker: An Investigation of Response to Task Attributes, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1965.

The Behavioral Sciences and Organizational Change, Management Programs Office, Transportation Center, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), 1966.

(With Jay W. Lorsch) Differentiation and Integration in Complex Organizations, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1967.

(With Jay W. Lorsch and James S. Garrison) Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1967, revised edition, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1986.

(With Jay W. Lorsch) Developing Organizations: Diagnosis and Action, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1969.

(With Jay W. Lorsch) Managing Group and Intergroup Relations, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1972.

(With Jay W. Lorsch and Richard E. Walton) Innovations in Work Organizations: A Proposed Research Program, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (Boston, MA), 1973.

(With John P. Kotter) Mayors in Action: Five Approaches to Urban Governance, John Wiley (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Stanley M. Davis, Harvey Kolodny, and Michael Beer) Matrix, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1977.

(With Henry W. Lane and Rodney G. Beddows) Managing Large Research and Development Programs, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1981.

(With Davis Dyer) Renewing American Industry, Free Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Unsportsmanlike Conduct: The National Collegiate

Athletic Association and the Business of College Football, Praeger (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Nitin Nohria) Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

Contributor to academic journals.

EDITOR

(With John A. Seiler, Joseph C. Bailey, and others) Organizational Behavior and Administration: Cases, Concepts, and Research Findings, Dorsey Press (Homewood, IL), 1961, 3rd edition (with Louis B. Barnes and Jay W. Lorsch) published as Organizational Behavior and Administration: Cases and Readings, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1976.

(With Gene W. Dalton and Larry E. Greiner) Organizational Change and Development, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1970.

(With Gene W. Dalton and Jay W. Lorsch) Organizational Structure and Design, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1970.

(With Jay W. Lorsch) Studies in Organizational Design, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1970.

(With Gene W. Dalton) Motivation and Control in Organizations, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1971.

(With Jay W. Lorsch) Organization Planning: Cases and Concepts, R. D. Irwin (Homewood, IL), 1972.

(With Richard E. Walton) HRM: Trends and Challenges, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1985.

(With Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos) Behind the Factory Walls: Decision Making in Soviet and U.S. Enterprises, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1990.

(With Amitai Etzioni) Socio-economics: Toward a New Synthesis, M. E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY), 1991.

The Changing of Organizational Behavior Patterns: A Case Study of Decentralization, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 1991.

(With Mark A. Abramson) Transforming Organizations, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (Lanham, MD), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Over the course of more than forty years, Paul Roger Lawrence made a large contribution to the field of organizational management. As an author, coauthor, or coeditor, he has produced some twenty books. The first, written with Harriet O. Ronken, was Administering Changes: A Case Study of Human Relations in a Factory. The authors followed the effects on factory workers of the introduction of a new technological product; they observed, in the words of Library Journal, "the day-to-day attitudes and relationships of workers, supervisors and management."

Although the specifics were to change over the years, and the emphasis shifted from human relations to organizational behavior, the pattern of case studies, often in collaboration with colleagues, would be repeated during Lawrence's career, sometimes in the form of textbooks such as Organizational Behavior and Administration: Cases, Concepts, and Research Findings (twice reprinted) or Organization Planning: Cases and Concepts.

In contrast, Mayors in Action: Five Approaches to Urban Governance was a comparative study using interviews. Mayors and other informants in twenty cities with populations of over 250,000 were questioned. Four key variables were assessed: the mayors' personalities, their agendas, their ability to mobilize crucial resources, and the cities' organizational and socioeconomic traits. Five broad approaches to urban governance were discerned. The result was a "coalignment" theory. According to this theory, a city is a well-aligned system when the four variables are consistent. Reviewing the book for the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, H. F. Alderfer called it "an important breakthrough in the field of urban government," and a Choice contributor called it "interesting and informative reading." A different interpretation was offered by S. S. Angrist in Contemporary Sociology; Angrist granted that the book was "well-written and amply illustrated" and that "the data are well digested, distilled, and interpreted," but thought that the authors' theory was too much based on "hunches" and wondered whether the mayor was not too small a variable to focus on as an indicator of a city's management situation.

Lawrence, with a different coauthor, used a comparative analytical method again in Renewing American Industry. Seven industries were examined with regard to their ability to adapt to two major forces: changing resource scarcity and new informational complexity. The industries involved were automobiles, steel, hospitals, agriculture, home construction, coal, and telecommunications. A Choice reviewer felt that the analytical approach made the book "superior to many others published on the subject." Library Journal contributor J. Holton Wilson called the volume "a very timely and thoughtful study," and described the research as "thorough" and the writing "clear." In the New York Times Book Review Lincoln Caplan, on the other hand, felt that the authors concentrated too much on graphs and diagrams and not enough on prose. However, he added, "Nevertheless, the process for reviving businesses touted in Renewing American Industry appears to be reliable."

In 1987, Lawrence published another serious examination of a business, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Business of College Football. Here, he cast his eye on what was wrong with college football as an economic institution. He argued that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a cartel which maximizes its economic position by not paying players and is not equipped to police the rule violations that result. A Choice reviewer, A. Ingram, praised the book's analysis of the "symbiotic" relationship between the NCAA and academic institutions, as well as the author's solutions to the problem. Calling Lawrence "an authoritative and astute critic," Ingram "highly recommended [the book] for one who wants to understand the present situation" in the business of the sport.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1975, H. F. Alderfer, review of Mayors in Action: Five Approaches to Urban Governance.

Business Week, June 20, 1983, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 13.

Choice, January, 1975, review of Mayors in Action; September, 1983, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 158; February, 1988, A. Ingram, review of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Business of College Football, p. 938.

Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 1983, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 11.

Contemporary Sociology, July, 1975, S. S. Angrist, review of Mayors in Action.

Economic Books: Current Selections, June, 1988, review of Unsportsmanlike Conduct, p. 53.

HR, June, 2002, review of Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, p. 142.

Journal of Economic Literature, June, 1988, review of Unsportsmanlike Conduct, p. 784.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1983, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 356.

Library Journal, January 1, 1953; March 15, 1983, J. Holton Wilson, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 581; March 1, 1984, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 440; January, 2002, Mary Ann Hughes, review of Driven, p. 133.

New York Times Book Review, October 16, 1983, Lincoln Caplan, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 19.

Science, June 15, 1990, review of Behind the Factory Walls: Decision Making in Soviet and U.S. Enterprises, p. 1428.

Social Forces, June, 1984, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 1137.

Washington Monthly, April, 1990, review of Behind the Factory Walls, p. 58.

West Coast Review of Books, May, 1983, review of Renewing American Industry, p. 48.