Structure And Dynamics Of Organizations And Groups

This book places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda, and introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists deliver this agenda more successfully. It is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels.

Steffen Blaschke reconsiders the three major concepts knowledge, learning, and memory in the light of social systems theory. He complements autopoietic organization theory with a clear-cut distinction between individual and organizational knowledge, learning, and memory.

In Reading the Room, renowned systems psychologist and family therapist David Kantor applies his theory of structural dynamics to help leaders and coaches understand and improve communication within their teams. He helps readers understand how and why they and their teams communicate differently when faced with low-stakes or high-stakes situations, and he provides a framework to help improve leadership behavior in high-stakes situations. Acknowledging that early personal history and adult relationships have an impact on individual leadership and communication, the author discusses how leaders’ awareness of their personal histories can help them become more effective in their leadership teams. Armed with the information outlined in this groundbreaking book, coaches and leaders will be able to: intervene effectively to produce positive change in both the group’s dynamics and its outcomes, help people in the room alter their behavior to better reach their aspirations, identify the recurring sequences of behavior taking place in a group, understand why differing individual preferences for boundaries and rules affect their conversation, and much more. Written to help readers understand the reasons why leaders and teams get along—or don’t—when they communicate in a group, this book will serve as the leader’s “go-to” resource for insight and perspective in leading their team.

Synthesizes the empirical literature on organizationalstructuring to answer the question of how organizations structure themselves --how they resolve needed coordination and division of labor. Organizationalstructuring is defined as the sum total of the ways in which an organizationdivides and coordinates its labor into distinct tasks. Further analysis of theresearch literature is neededin order to builda conceptualframework that will fill in the significant gap left by not connecting adescription of structure to its context: how an organization actuallyfunctions. The results of the synthesis are five basic configurations (the SimpleStructure, the Machine Bureaucracy, the Professional Bureaucracy, theDivisionalized Form, and the Adhocracy) that serve as the fundamental elementsof structure in an organization. Five basic parts of the contemporaryorganization (the operating core, the strategic apex, the middle line, thetechnostructure, and the support staff), and five theories of how it functions(i.e., as a system characterized by formal authority, regulated flows, informalcommunication, work constellations, and ad hoc decision processes) aretheorized. Organizations function in complex and varying ways, due to differing flows -including flows of authority, work material, information, and decisionprocesses. These flows depend on the age, size, and environment of theorganization; additionally, technology plays a key role because of itsimportance in structuring the operating core. Finally, design parameters aredescribed - based on the above five basic parts and five theories - that areused as a means of coordination and division of labor in designingorganizational structures, in order to establish stable patterns of behavior.(CJC).

Abstract: A key focus of the 4th Edition is on organization outcomes and their effects on individuals, groups of individuals, communities, and society in general. The initial chapter of the book devoted to organizational outcomes provides a framework for examining the internal structure and function of organizations as well as the environments in which they operate. The author then discusses the nature and types of organizations from a variety of perspectives including a discussion of the ontological debate as to the true existence of organizations. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the structure issues of complexity, formalization, centralization, context, and design. Chapters 5 through 8 address the processual components of organizational analysis, specifically, power, leadership and decision making, communications, and organizational change.

Using research related to group psychology along with the practical lessons being learned by the numerous business organizations adopting teams, this book addresses the complex issues associated with teams, and how students can develop the necessary tools to increase their effectiveness as team designers, leaders and members. The book combines research summaries with extended case descriptions of actual teams in business organizations. The authors focus on the key issues that are critical to team success, without overemphasizing unnecessary psychological theory. The case studies are adapted from Business without Bosses, a book written by Charles Manz and Henry Sims and published by Wiley. These cases have been well received by students and business leaders. This is an integrated textbook that combines knowledge from both research and practice into a model that provides students with an opportunity to learn about teams in an efficient yet comprehensive manner.