Administrative Rationality, Social Setting, and Organizational Development

A scale of structural requisites of administrative rationality is hypothesized, tested with a sample of thirty-four organizations in varied social settings, andinterpreted as measuring cumulative specificity of organizational roles and their motivation by internal organizational devices. Institutional correlates ofthe scale are explored and suggest that independence from the social setting is positively correlated with rationality. Ascriptive elements in the social setting are found to be negatively related to rationality. Certain hypotheses concerning organizational development are proposed in light of the findings.