Organizations in Action

Organizations in Action PDF Author: James D. Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industrial organization
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
Social theory of management efficiency - covers managerial motivation, decision making, business organization, communication, etc. Bibliography pp. 183 to 192.

Organisations in Action

Organisations in Action PDF Author: Peter A. Clark
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 041518231X
Category : Business enterprises
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Book Description
In an essential area of study for every business undergraduate and reflective manager, this original and ambitious work provides a fascinating examination of organizations from both a post-modern and new organizational economics perspective.

Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action

Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action PDF Author: Aseem Prakash
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492489
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.

Networks and Organizations

Networks and Organizations PDF Author: Nitin Nohria
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 576

Book Description
Networks & Organizations debunks the myth that we are in the midst of an unprecedented era of change & refocuses attention on the timeless problem of management--mobilizing individual & collective action. The authors take a fresh look at what actually happens in organizations & reveal how rhetoric & the search for identity--not structure, systems, & strategies that characterize the design perspective of organizations--are the real motivators of action in organizations. They then offer an alternative view in which robust action (not equilibrium), fit, & alignment should serve as a positive guide for managerial action.

Creative Action in Organizations

Creative Action in Organizations PDF Author: Cameron M. Ford
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452246521
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

Book Description
A strong point in this book is its opening extensive review of creativity in organizations and professions. . . including helpful tabulations of articles that identify the motives, expectations, emotions, means, and opportunities that lead to creative acts. . . . it can provide valuable insights and encouragement to scholars and practitioners who are concerned with developing and tapping creativity in organizations. . . . Management professors and graduate students will find the book helpful. . . . --G. David Hughes in Journal of Product Innovation Management "This book definitely will be appropriate for class use in any setting focused on creativity in organizations. Presumably, these would be specialized upper-division, MBA, or Ph.D. electives. If you are interested in the topic of creativity in organizations, this is the book you must read. It is on the frontiers, and it provides a beacon for future scholarly progress on this topic because of its emphasis on how the organizational setting affects the creative process in the world of work." --Lyman Porter, University of California, Irvine "The book is itself a creative approach to creativity. The editors have attracted a talented and well-respected group of academic contributors. The message that we should abandon the romantic but flawed notion that creativity is principally the product of extraordinary individual acts is delivered forcefully, as is the companion notion that organizational contexts are the real seedbeds of creative behavior." --John R. Kimberly, Henry Bower Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "This is one of the better collections of information about creativity because it is data based, and it provides a useful comparison and contrast of conceptual and practical aspects. By clearly describing the benefits and problems associated with the topics, Creative Action in Organizations obviously practices what it preaches. I would recommend that it be used as a textbook for a graduate-level business course, particularly for an MBA program. In addition, I also recommend that it be used as a text reference for industrial ′training & development′ programs targeted at teaching employees how to develop new businesses, improve existing processes, or become better leaders (viz., corporate leadership development programs)." --Tom Wojcik, Manager, Office of Innovation, Hoechst Celanese Corporation Between the trade deficit, mergers, and the recession, the topic of creativity in organizations has become one of increasing importance. How does a company retool or refine its product with foreign and, often, less costly competition? How does human resources find creative solutions to budgeting, product development, marketing, and training? With pithy and engaging chapters from leading researchers and figures in business, government, and academia, Creative Action in Organizations explores the factors that are critical to the development and promotion of creativity to develop a revised view that is grounded in experience. This volume begins with a literature review (written as a mystery to be solved), followed by essays from researchers (Part II) and practitioners (Part III). Using the chapters as "data," the editors conclude with a content-analysis that presents a look at the most significant themes and offers a framework for conceptualizing creativity in organizations. This profound and fascinating volume is essential for students, professionals, and researchers in management and organization studies, public administration, public policy, evaluation, and psychology, as well as libraries in the above areas.

Collective Action in Organizations

Collective Action in Organizations PDF Author: Bruce Bimber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521191726
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Explores how people participate in public life through organizations. The authors examine three organizations and show surprising similarities across them.

Social Organizations

Social Organizations PDF Author: Göran Ahrne
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446236668
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
In this lively and wide-ranging essay, Göran Ahrne sketches an organizational theory of society. Combining the insights of organization theory with the traditional concerns of social theory, he makes an innovative and creative contribution to both fields. Using a broad definition of organizations, the author shows that what goes on inside, outside and among organizations is central to understanding social relations. Organizations provide people with resources and motives, and they set the frames for human action. Although organizations do not form societies or systems, society is shaped and changed through interaction between organizations. Drawing on various schools of organization theory, including institutional, ecological and contingency theories, the book shows how their synthesis with social theory clarifies the nature and effects of organizational interactions.

In the Interest of Others

In the Interest of Others PDF Author: John S. Ahlquist
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848652
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
A groundbreaking study of labor unions that advances a new theory of organizational leadership and governance In the Interest of Others develops a new theory of organizational leadership and governance to explain why some organizations expand their scope of action in ways that do not benefit their members directly. John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi document eighty years of such activism by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia. They systematically compare the ILWU and WWF to the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, two American transport industry labor unions that actively discouraged the pursuit of political causes unrelated to their own economic interests. Drawing on a wealth of original data, Ahlquist and Levi show how activist organizations can profoundly transform the views of members about their political efficacy and the collective actions they are willing to contemplate. They find that leaders who ask for support of projects without obvious material benefits must first demonstrate their ability to deliver the goods and services members expect. These leaders must also build governance institutions that coordinate expectations about their objectives and the behavior of members. In the Interest of Others reveals how activist labor unions expand the community of fate and provoke preferences that transcend the private interests of individual members. Ahlquist and Levi then extend this logic to other membership organizations, including religious groups, political parties, and the state itself.

SCT? in Action

SCT? in Action PDF Author: Susan Porter Gantt
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595346774
Category : Conflict (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
Susan P. Gantt, Ph.D., CGP, ABPP, is the Director of the Systems-Centered Training and Research Institute, a psychologist in private practice in Atlanta, and a faculty member in the Emory University School of Medicine. Yvonne Agazarian, Ed.D., FAGPA, CGP developed a theory of living human systems and its systems-centered practice and founded the Systems-Centered Training and Research Institute. She received the Group Psychologist of the year award from the American Psychological Association in 1997. As this book amply demonstrates, SCT has turned out to have powerful organizational applications. With its theory of living human systems rather than a separate theory of organizations or of organizational behavior, it uses concepts that easily map onto organizational life. It looks at systems as a whole but also in parts. It stresses the importance of understanding boundaries and contexts. It continually focuses on task, and, perhaps, most important of all, it offers a sophisticated understanding of roles, which includes work roles in organizations. It well may be, as more consultants working in organizations become more familiar with the concepts and methods SCT offers, the SCT approach will come to seem indispensable to the resolution of conflict. -Ken Eisold, Ph.D. Yvonne Agazarian has long been established as one of the major theoreticians within group and organizational psychology. In this book, she and Susan Gantt have gathered together enriching and stimulating papers within the SCT tradition with the aim of showing us how it works in practice. They have certainly succeeded. SCT is about creating a new culture in which both people and the aims of the organization are strengthened and supported. For those working with organizations, either as leaders or consultants, this book will prove to be a stimulating and reliable companion. -Christer Sandahl, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME), Karolinska Institute, Stockholm

Organizations Evolving

Organizations Evolving PDF Author: Howard E Aldrich
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1849202087
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
`Howard Aldrich and Martin Ruef's tour de force shows us how the evolutionary approach can explain change not only in organizational populations, but within sectors and within organizations. Aldrich and Ruef display an astonishing command of the management literature, using vivid illustrations from cutting edge research to show how the processes of variation, selection, retention, and struggle operate within organizations and across them. A lucid and engaging book that should appeal both to the newcomer to organization theory and to the old pro' - Frank Dobbin, Harvard University A keenly anticipated Second Edition of an award winning classic, Organizations Evolving presents a sophisticated evolutionary view of key organizational paradigms that will give readers a unified understanding of modern organizations. This Second Edition is an up-to-date survey of the literature, as well as an overview of the new developments across organization studies. It contains new sections on organizational forms, community evolution and methods for studying organizations at multiple levels. The field of organization studies contains many contending paradigms that often puzzle and perplex students. This book is a stunning synthesis of the major organizational paradigms under the umbrella of organizational theory. Scholars and students will find it an excellent guide to the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches, as well as an outstanding review of the best recent empirical research on organizations. The book includes many helpful features, such as: - Review questions and exercises that will consolidate reader's learning - A methodological appendix that assesses common research methods - Engaging cases that bring principles and concepts to life This Second Edition is a rich resource for study, discussion and debate amongst organizational scholars and postgraduate students of organizations.