DROP YOUR TOOLS - AN ALLEGORY FOR ORGANIZATIONAL STUDIES

The failure of 27 wildland firefighters to follow orders to drop their heavy tools so they could move faster and outrun an exploding fire le d to their death within sight of safe areas. Possible explanations for this puzzling behavior are developed using guidelines proposed by Jam es D. Thompson, the first editor of the Administrative Science Quarter ly. These explanations are then used to show that scholars of organiza tions are in analogous threatened positions, and they too seem to be k eeping their heavy tools and falling behind. ASQ's 40th anniversary pr ovides a pretext to reexamine this potentially dysfunctional tendency and to modify it by reaffirming an updated version of Thompson's origi nal guidelines.(.)