Welcome to General Rules & Specific Cases

We live in a society of organizations. Big and small, social and informal, large and complex, almost everything is defined, shaped, and mediated by organizations of some variety. If we want to understand how things work, how they could change, and into what, we need to understand how they're organized. That’s the broad terrain I explore here.

A little about me

Professionally I’m a management consultant - mostly strategy and organization design. Although I started my career as an academic (Sociology PhD) researching organizational emergence and change and teaching sociology, political science, and research methods.

I’m now working on bringing these two parts of my life a little closer together via a book project on organizational decision-making.

Why this name?

This newsletter takes its name from a paraphrased quote attributed to Max Weber, early 20th century polymath, founder of sociology, and all round awesome guy.

The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic - [is] that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.

I’ve been a bit of a Weber fanboy since I was undergraduate and have something of a love affair with the bureaucratic form.  This felt like a fitting homage.

<Disclaimer: all opinions are my own and do not represent my employer>