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Discovering Organizations is recommended as core reading by module leaders who seek an engaging, thought-provoking introduction to organizational theory and organization studies. This text operates as a springboard to help readers appreciate the complexity of organization and then have the confidence to delve deeper by reading a range of additional texts, articles, and cases.
"Our capacity for organization is quite remarkable. I think the organizations we build are among our greatest achievements ... My aim in writing this book is to help people better understand the organizations that surround them and how they work ... by starting at the literal beginning - with where, when, and why we humans started to get organized and the sort of organizations we established." -- Robin BurrowAs well as building students' understanding of how we have organized ourselves in the past, and how we organize ourselves now, this textbook looks optimistically to the future of organizations. It will aim to provoke and appeal to students' enthusiasm and excitement about what the future may hold for organizations with down-to-earth and relevant examples.
List of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Special Thanks
- 1: Humans and Organizations
- PART 1: The Big Four
- 2: Public Organizations
- 3: Private Organizations
- 4: Informal Organizations
- 5: Criminal Organizations
- PART 2: How Organizations Work
- 6: Record-Keeping, Rules and the Invention of Bureaucracy
- 7: Formality, Rationality, and Organizations
- 8: Power, Control and the Motivation to Work
- 9: Resistance and the Informal Side of Organizations
- Index
About the author
Dr. Robin Burrow is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at the University of York in the School for Business and Society. Burrow's research is concerned with the lived realities of work in extremely challenging organizational contexts.
Summary
This is a book about organizations. It is about how we humans work together and get things done in more or less purposeful and systematic ways - from corporations and factories to social clubs and activist groups to market merchants and organized crime.
Additional text
This book is what I have been searching for over the past 5 years. It offers students a comprehensive, engaging and accessible doorway into organisation theory.
