I believe that in the fashionable world of organizational design, fit remains an important characteristic. The hautes structurieres of New York-the consulting firms that seek to bring the latest in structural fashion to their clients-would do well to pay a great deal more attention to that fit. Machhine bureaucracy functions best when its reporting relationships are sharply defined and its operating core staffed with workers who prefer routine and stability. The nature of the work in this configuration-managerial as well as operating-is rooted in the reality of mass production, in the costs of manual labor compared with those of automated machines, and in the size and age of the organization.