Philip Selznick

Philip Selznick (1919 to 2010) was an American organizational theorist and a professor of sociology and law at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he earned a bachelor degree at City College of New York in 1938, a master degree at Columbia University in 1942 and his doctorate in sociology at Columbia in 1947. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles until 1952 and then at Berkeley from 1952 to 1984, first in sociology and later also in the School of Law. His work spans organizational theory, the sociology of law and public administration, including the cooptation theory that anticipated organizational ecology, and books such as TVA and the Grass Roots, Leadership in Administration and The Moral Commonwealth.