The Bureaucratic Experience: The Post-Modern Challenge: The Post-Modern Challenge

ISBN-13: 9780765610102 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 304 str.

Ralph P. Hummel

Opis

Everyone has trouble with bureaucracy. Citizens and politicians have trouble controlling the runaway bureaucratic machine. Managers have trouble managing it. Employees dislike working in it. Clients can't get the goods from it. Teachers have difficulty getting a grip on it. Optimists argue that soon all of this will be fixed. The new Fifth Edition of Ralph P. Hummel's classic text maintains just the opposite - that despite all the current rhetoric from proponents of total quality management, corporate reengineering, and the new public management, it's still "business as usual" for bureaucracies. The persistent reality of organizational structure remains resilient in the face of feel-good trends and values. For this edition the book has been thoroughly revised and updated, with two key changes: each of the six core chapters has been trimmed and edited to consolidate and streamline the important organizational theory developments since the book's initial publication; and, each chapter contains newly added critiques of the postmodern theory of modern organizations, pursuing the theme that postmodernism covers up the persistent reality of organizational structure.

Spis treści

Foreword; Acknowledgments; Prologue; 1. Understanding Bureaucracy; Bureaucratic Experiences; Bureaucratic Patterns; Modern Self-Critique; Post-Modern Critique; A Brief Survey of Post-Modernism; A Case in Point: Post-Modernism Meets Sewage; The Danger; The Politics of Good and Evil; 2. Bureaucracy as Society: Loss of the Social; How People Act; What the Experts Say; Bureaucracy as Society; 3. Bureaucracy as Culture: 'Economics'; What Is Culture?; What People Value; What the Experts Say; Post-Modern vs. Modern Critique; The Economic Culture of Bureaucracy; 4. The Psychology of Bureaucracy: Organization as Psyche; Structuring the Psyche; Post-Modern Analysis; A Dis-Ease of the Soul; How People "Feel": Patrolman Williams; What the Experts Say; The Psychology of Bureaucracy; 5. The Language of Bureaucracy: Virtual Words; Speaking the Unspeakable; How People Speak; What the Experts Say; Bureaucratic Language; 6. The Thought of Bureaucracy: Failure of Imagination; Thinking; How Bureaucrats Think; What the Experts Say; Bureaucratic Thinking; Aesthetics: The Rise of Know-How; 7. Bureaucracy as Polity: Politics as Administration; Unlearning Politics; How People Politick; Bureaucrats as Transformers; The Politization of Bureaucracy; What the Experts Say; A Way from Bureaucratized Politics Epilogue; Bibliography; About the Author; Index.

O autorze

Ralph P. Hummel