Getting strategies and structures right for changing market conditions and successfully matching strategies and structures with each other, are crucial. This volume reviews and develops the extensive literature in the areas of business policy and organizational behaviour, taking the subject further by breaking down boundaries between subject areas within management studies; by adopting a dynamic approach to organizational issues; and by synthesizing the disparate, often confusing research findings in this area into a general theoretical approach which can be assimilated by managers faced...

This book presents an integrated view of the three main approaches to organization - classical, human relations and systems - showing what each has of value to contribute and how they complement each other. The three approaches are introduced, followed by critical analysis. The main classical problems are reviewed in the light of the systems approach. Finally there is a comparative summary in tabular form, an illustrative systems study and a decision schedule.

A pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and behaviour Mary Parker Follett authored a number of books and numerous essays, articles and speeches on human relations, political philosophy, psychology and management. The first woman invited to address the London School of Economics, this book includes five lectures delivered to the newly-formed Department of Business Administration at the LSE in 1933, as well as six given by Parker Follett a the Taylor Society in New York in 1926.

The United States Internal Revenue Service introduced a multi-million dollar program to automate its operations in the early 1980s. This book describes a multidisciplinary study of the experiences of several thousand users in this program, based primarily on questionnaires, observation and interviews. The case study gives valuable guidance to managers and their consultants involved in planning introduction of new office technology, as well as providing more academic insights into aspects of human behaviour under changing working conditions.

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.

In this volume the authors develop a systematic and chronologically based critique of the major concepts, figures and schools in organization. Themes discussed include:

• the development of scientific management and the responses of Gramsci and Lenin to it
• the meaning of Mayo and the Human Relations School
• the development of typological systems and contingency models of the organization
• key concepts of goals, environment and technology.

This collection highlights a number of directions in which organization theory could develop. It also argues the need for an historical analysis of the sociology of organizations. Other issues discussed are the ideological stance of contemporary organization theory and the limiting framework that tends to ignore the wider social context in which organizations exist.

Organizations do not have goals - only people do. Furthermore, people within the same organizations have different goals. This book takes this as its starting point, recognizing that organizations are a dynamic coalition of individuals and groups competing and co-operating as they each pursue their various objectives. Power is a fundamental part of organizational behaviour but many previous studies failed to recognize its centrality. This book remedies this.