Robert L. Katz was Assistant Professor at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College, when this article was published in the September-October 1974 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Later he taught at Harvard Business School and Stanford University, wrote several textbooks, and helped found various companies.

"It is the purpose of this article to suggest what may be a more useful approach to the selection and development of administration." This approach focuses on what effective administrators do (the skills for carrying out their jobs) and not on what good executives are (traits and characteristics). "A skill implies an ability which can be developed, not necessarily inborn, and which is manifested in performance, not merely in potential." Katz argues that effective administration rests on three basic skills: (1) Technical skill, which involves specialized knowledge, analytical ability within that specialty, and facility in the use of the tools and techniques of the specific discipline.; (2) Human skill is the executive's ability to work effectively as a group member and to build cooperative effort within the team he leads. This has more recently become known as emotional intelligence or EQ (See Daniel Goleman's 'Emotional Intelligence', 1995).; and (3) Conceptual skill involves the ability to see the enterprise as a whole. The author discusses the relative importance of each of these skills on the different levels within organizations. On the basis of his findings, Katz also discusses the implications for action, for executive development, for executive placement, and executive selection. "It is undoubtedly true that certain people, naturally or innately, possed greater aptitude or ability in certain skills." But Katz's skills-based approach means that we should be able to improve our administrative effectiveness. He provides insights how to development all three skills.

This article is a true Harvard Business Review Classic. It is still very valid, even after all those years. Perhaps the language is now somewhat outdated, but Katz provides some great insights into the different requirements of effective leaders and managers. Great recommendation for people entering the management field, such as MBA-students, but also human resources departments. The authors uses simple US-English.

The Katz and Kahn classic provides readers with an in-depth look at the systems, and modalities prevalent in organizations. It provides a clear map of the impact organizations have on their people, and consequently the impact the people have on the organization. Of particular usefulness were the chapters on power and authority, and role behaviors. While the perfect organization may never exist, Katz and Kahn have gone a long way towards giving their readers a better way of asking the right questions of organizations. Many of their points are germane not only in the era during which it was written, but will become more critical to e-commerce businesses as they realize that there is business to conduct after the initial honeymoon with the product.

I first read The Social Psychology of Oganizations, by Katz & Kahn, in Spring 1973, as a required reading for Organization Theories Core Course at New York University, Wagner Graduate School Of Public Administration. Based upon my readings and use of this text book for both academic and later business research, I strongly believe that this structurally detailed, powerful and insightful book is a required core, basic studies reading for High School, College, University, Graduate Students and Post Graduate Studies.
The Key Stone to this book is the concept of the Ying, Yang, the polarized interaction,interrelationship(s) of both the Formal and the Informal Organizations within both Public and Private Economy Sector Organizations.
"The formal Goals of the Formal Organization are not necessarily those of the Informal Organization and vice a versa."
This landmark research work by Katz & Kahan, greatly enhances, sensitizes and helps the reader to conceptually organize, catalogue organizations and individuals by both types of organizational hierarchy and types of individuals' characterietics, so that we may more easily deal with both Formal and Informal Organizations and Individuals in a smoother, more rational, less emotional manner.
I teach an Executive Project Managment course in both the Public and Private sectors of the Economy. When teaching Project Management to the US Department of Defense, the US Navy, NAVSEA, I have always recommended the supplemental research use of The Social Psychology of Organizations by Daniel Kats, Robert Louis Kahn, as I do when teaching and consulting within the private sector of the economy.
Katz & Kahan's, The Social Psychology of Organizations, provides the reader with a rich, detailed, structured framework,indeed a structured compartmentalized baseline, against which we can compare multiple types of diversified organizations and multiple types of diversified individuals, as we meet them throughout the lifetime course our public and private lives.
Since a corporation is indeed a Formal Organization, and the corporation is a "Living Entity", then this work allows the reader to understand the diversified (sometimes disfunctional) personalities of the Formal Organization vs. the Informal Organization, corporate culture as they relate to us as the individual having to work and live wihtin their corporate contexts, paramaters and according to their unique set of corporate cultural rules and their respective formal and informal regulations.
From a Psychological perspective, The Social Psychology of Organizations by Katz & Kahan, both fore-warns and fore-arms individuals vis a vis their interactions and inter-relationships with, within large corporations, large social structures and one on one with individuals.
What a true treasure-trove of organizational knowledge, behavior, insights this organizational research really is. This is a timeless piece of organizational research work, as relevent today in 2002, as it was in 1968, 1973 and will be in 2013 and on.
Thank you for the opportunity to review thie fine piece of work.

Clearly the bible of organizational psychology

This book is a must to have in your resources for a parent or those who work with kids. My daycare children LOVE the activities that have come from this book! Believe me, it will keep them busy for a while!

Our school has an annual family math & science night where classrooms have age-appropriate activities for kids & families to do together. This book is laid out so well it was easy to present them in a class. Am buying a copy for our school!