Person

Philip Selznick

Sociologist of leadership, institutional integrity, and how organizations acquire character and mission.

Why this matters

Selznick connects legitimacy and purpose—when institutions become more than their formal rules.

Works

book

Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

Selznick, Philip. *Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation*. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.

Related books

Book

How Serious Systems Learn

Disciplines for Acting Without Certainty

A handbook for teams and institutions that need to learn in motion, improve under pressure, and make better decisions without waiting for perfect information.

Book

Living in Sediment

How Structures Outlive Their Reasons

We live inside inherited systems built for constraints that no longer exist. When structures survive after their reasons disappear, meaning drifts—and the danger is forgetting the sediment is sediment.

Book

When Authority Outlives Accountability

A Lens for Moral Leadership

A leadership lens on how authority can persist after accountability erodes, and what moral leadership requires to restore integrity in that gap. For institutional persistence after harm, see When Accountability No Longer Expires (upcoming).

Book

When Moral Seriousness Scales

Judgment Under Distance and Pressure

An exploration of how moral responsibility changes under scale, speed, and institutional distance, and how to preserve humane judgment anyway.