Quotes from Philip Selznick

To summarize: organizations are technical instruments, designed as means to definite goals. They are judged on engineering premises; they are expendable. Institutions, whether conceived as groups or practices, may be partly engineered, but they have also a "natural" dimension. They {22} are products of interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of group idealism; they are less readily expendable.

Leadership is not equivalent to office-holding or high prestige or authority or decision-making. It is not helpful to identify leadership with whatever is done by people in high places. The activity we have in mind may or may not be engaged in by those who are formally in positions of authority. This is inescapable if we are to develop a theory that will be useful in diagnosing cases of inadequate leadership on the part of persons in authority.

The idea of "character" as used by personality analysts is not altogether clear, but its usefulness is scarcely in doubt. There seems to be general agreement on four attributes. First, character is a historical product. "The character as a whole," writes Fenichel, "reflects the individual's historical development."[8] Character is the "ego's habitual ways of reacting." In this sense every individual has a unique character.

Second, character is in some sense an integrated product, as is suggested by the term "character-structure." There is a discoverable pattern in the way the ego is organized; and the existence of such a pattern is the basis of character analysis.

Fourth, character is dynamic in that it generates new strivings, new needs and problems. It is largely through the identification of these needs that diagnosis proceeds, as when the discovery of excessive dependency or aggressiveness suggests that the patient has a particular type of character-structure.

Rules apply to foremen and machinists, to clerks, sergeants, and vice-presidents, yet no durable organization is able to hold human experience to these formally defined roles. In actual practice, men tend to interact as many-faceted persons, adjusting to the daily round in ways that spill over the neat boundaries set by their assigned roles.

Leadership, pure and simple, is the assumption of responsibility for the pursuit of excellence in group life.