If one suspends the presumptive notion that a rational organizational scheme is a normative idealization with a simple import, i.e., demanding literally what it says it demands; and if one views a rational organizational scheme without information about what it is ostensibly meant to be, then it emerges as a generalized formula to which all sorts of problems can be brought for solution. In this sense there is no telling what determinations a formal organizational scheme contains prior to the time that questions are actually and seriously addressed to it.More important than the open capacity and applicability of the formula is, however, the fact that problems referred to the scheme for solution acquire through this reference a distinctive meaning that they would not otherwise have. Thus the formal organizational designs are schemes of interpretation that competent and entitled users can invoke in yet unknown ways whenever it suits their purposes. The varieties of ways in which the scheme can be invoked for information, direction, justification, and so on, without incurring the risk of sanction, constitute the scheme’s methodical use. In the following we propose to discuss some examples of possible variations in the methodical use of organizational rationalities.