In collaboration with a psychologist

In collaboration with a psychologist (G. M. Stalker), Burns has studied the attempt to introduce electronics development work into traditional Scottish firms, with a view to their entering this modern and rapidly expanding industry as the markets for their own well-established products diminished. The difficulties these firms faced in adjusting to the new situation of continuously changing technology and markets led him to describe two ideal types of management organizations, which are the extreme points of a continuum along which most organizations can be placed. The mechanistic type of organization is adapted to relatively stable conditions. In it, the problems and tasks of management are broken down into specialisms within which each person carries out his or her assigned, precisely defined task. The hierarchy of control is clear, and the responsibility for overall knowledge and coordination rests exclusively at the top of