We live in a highly
organizational world. As consumers, clients, customers or, perhaps most significantly, as
employers or employees, we depend on formal organizations. How do such organizations work
and why do people within them behave the way they do?
This invaluable resource book
provides the answers, bringing together the selected writings of leading authorities on
the cutting edge of the thinking, practice and research of organization theory. Spanning
seventy years, from Max Weber's seminal writings on bureaucratic organization to the
latest management thinking represented by C. Handy and T. Peters, Organization Theory is
now in its fourth edition and has been thoroughly revised, with almost half of the present
selection representing new contributions on the subject. New writers include C. A.
Bartlett and S. Ghoshal, K. E. Weick, P. J. DiMaggio and W. W. Powell, A. Pettigrew, P.
Senge and G. Morgan.
There are five separate but
highly interrelated sections, each with a short introduction to the readings selected:
organization structure, the organization in its environment, management and
decision-making, people in organizations and organizational change and learning. Together
with its companion volume, Writers on Organizations, written by Derek S. Pugh and David J.
Hickson, Organization Theory has become an indispensable classic for student and manager
alike.