The Theory Of Organisations

The Theory and Philosophy of Organizations makes a major contribution to the debate on the status of organizational theory as a discipline. The volume is divided into three sections exploring issues under the headings `theory', `anasis' and `philosophy'. In each, the limitations of `traditional' or `scientific' organizational paradigms are illuminated and new forms of interpretation offered.

This broad, balanced introduction to organizational studies enables the reader to compare and contrast different approaches to the study of organizations. This book is a valuable tool for the reader, as we are all intertwined with organizations in one form or another. Numerous other disciplines besides sociology are addressed in this book, including economics, political science, strategy and management theory. Topic areas discussed in this book are the importance of organizations; defining organizations; organizations as rational, natural, and open systems; environments, strategies, and structures of organizations; and organizations and society. For those employed in fields where knowledge of organizational theory is necessary, including sociology, anthropology, cognitive psychology, industrial engineering, managers in corporations and international business, and business strategists.

Public sector organizations are fundamentally different to their private sector counterparts. They are multi-functional, follow a political leadership, and the majority do not operate in an external market. In an era of rapid reform, reorganization and modernization of the public sector, this book offers a timely and illuminating introduction to the public sector organization that recognizes its unique values, interests, knowledge and power-base. Drawing on both instrumental and institutional perspectives within organization theory, as well as democratic theory and empirical studies of decision-making, this text addresses five central aspects of the public sector organization: goals and values leadership and steering reform and change effects and implications understanding and design. This volume challenges conventional economic analysis of the public sector, arguing instead for a democratic-political approach and a new, prescriptive organization theory. A rich resource of both theory and practice, Organization Theory for the Public Sector: Instrument, Culture and Myth is essential reading for anybody studying the public sector.

If organisations are not working as well as they could, it is because they are still being managed by obsolete principles rooted in the Industrial Age. Until now, management has been a very one-dimensional discipline, in which only profits mattered. Having eyes fixed squarely upon the bottom line has endangered the planet, increased inequality, and disengaged employees. It is an unsustainable situation that calls for the radical redesign of management philosophical foundations. This book shows how to liberate organisations from the constraining assumptions and structures that hold them back, and how to build more conscious, humane, efficacious, and responsible forms of enterprise. 3D Management is an application of Ken Wilber’s ground-breaking Integral Theory that embodies the next stage of management evolution: smarter, nimbler, wiser, fairer, and fitter for the forthcoming metamodern times. This disruptive theory denies the imperialism of the bottom line and replaces it with a harmonic triumvirate that takes profit, people, planet, and purpose into account equally. An integral organisation is made up of three fundamental and irreducible dimensions: science, arts, and ethics, which refer respectively to the techno-economical, developmental, and moral aspects of organisational reality. These three aspects are woven together into an essential unit by the spiritual dimension, which strives for unity and meaning. 3D Management is a summum bonum of these four key dimensions to achieve sustainable excellence, spur organisational development, and create radically engaging workplaces, as well as making a better world. The text features more than 60 vanguard organisations, harbingers of the teal consciousness that will define the future of management. “One thing is certain: the more a truly integral business catches on, the more whole and fulfilled that humanity’s future will be. And 3D Management will have helped pave the way.” (from Ken Wilber’s foreword)

Building theories of organizations is challenging: theories are partial and "folk" categories are fuzzy. The commonly used tools--first-order logic and its foundational set theory--are ill-suited for handling these complications. Here, three leading authorities rethink organization theory. Logics of Organization Theory sets forth and applies a new language for theory building based on a nonmonotonic logic and fuzzy set theory. In doing so, not only does it mark a major advance in organizational theory, but it also draws lessons for theory building elsewhere in the social sciences. Organizational research typically analyzes organizations in categories such as "bank," "hospital," or "university." These categories have been treated as crisp analytical constructs designed by researchers. But sociologists increasingly view categories as constructed by audiences. This book builds on cognitive psychology and anthropology to develop an audience-based theory of organizational categories. It applies this framework and the new language of theory building to organizational ecology. It reconstructs and integrates four central theory fragments, and in so doing reveals unexpected connections and new insights.

This summary of theory and practice is inspired by the belief that cut and dried solutions to management problems are inappropriate and that every set of circumstances requires a unique synthesis of experience and relevant theories. In this book the authors have reviewed the main texts and theories of organization and have added the lessons learned from an unrivalled volume of practical experience, garnered from some 900 consultants working in more than twenty countries.

Peter F. Drucker argues that what underlies the current malaise of so many large and successful organizations worldwide is that their theory of the business no longer works. The story is a familiar one: a company that was a superstar only yesterday finds itself stagnating and frustrated, in trouble and, often, in a seemingly unmanageable crisis. The root cause of nearly every one of these crises is not that things are being done poorly. It is not even that the wrong things are being done. Indeed, in most cases, the right things are being done—but fruitlessly. What accounts for this apparent paradox? The assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit reality. These are the assumptions that shape any organization's behavior, dictate its decisions about what to do and what not to do, and define what an organization considers meaningful results. These assumptions are what Drucker calls a company's theory of the business. The Harvard Business Review Classics series offers you the opportunity to make seminal Harvard Business Review articles a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world—and will have a direct impact on you today and for years to come.