June 1980, volume 25 Organizations are frequently likened to biological organisms for purposes of analysis. It is argued that the organismic analogy is deficient on descriptive, normative, and heuristic grounds: that is, it fails to provide a satisfactory picture of organizational reality, entails suspicious implications for organizational change, and impedes organizational inquiry. A historical competitor, the social contract analogy, is proposed to be a superior analytic device.*
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Michael Keeley (1980) studied this question.
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