THE CONCEPT OF IDEAL TYPES AS A METHOD OF UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR.

Man has purpose to his actions inorganic objects do not. The objects of the physical sciences respond to stimuli according to established laws yet there appears to be no such regularity to the behavior of man. In spite of this complicating factor, management and organizations, like all other areas of systematic inquiry, assumes the responsibility of formulating generalizations from which consequences can be deducted and predictions made. This quest for a predictive theory has freely employed both the empirical and rational methods and has resulted in the derivation of "principles" to be used as guidelines for managerial behavior. The generalized deductive and inductive methods, however, are far too restrictive to describe fully the epistemology of administrative science because they fail to explicitly account for some of the extremely useful variations that have been instrumental in enhancing the understanding of organizational phenomena. The objective of this paper is to examine one of these variations and pinpoint its epistemological value and scientific significance. It is valid to conclude that ideal types of variations are frequently used methods in management and organizations.