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9780691034676

Prisoners of Myth : The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1930-1990

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780691034676

  • ISBN10:

    0691034672

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 1994-09-01
  • Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
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List Price: $70.00
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Summary

Prisoners of Myth is the first comprehensive history of the Tennessee Valley Authority from its creation to the present day. It is also a telling case study of organizational evolution and decline. Building on Philip Selznick's classic work TVA and the Grass Roots (1949), a seminal text in the theoretical study of bureaucracy, Erwin Hargrove analyzes the organizational culture of the TVA by looking at the actions of its leaders over six decades - from the heroic years of the New Deal and World War II through the postwar period of consolidation and growth to the time of troubles from 1970 onward, when the TVA ran afoul of environmental legislation, built a massive nuclear power program that it could not control, and sought new missions for which there were no constituencies.
The founding myth of multipurpose regional development was inappropriately pursued in the 1970s and '80s by leaders who became "prisoners of myth" in their attempt to keep the TVA heroic. A decentralized organization, which had worked well at the grass roots, was difficult to redirect as the nuclear genii spun out of control, TVA autonomy from Washington, once a virtue, obscured political accountability. Based on rich interview materials and historical documents from TVA archives, this study develops an important new theory about institutional performance in the face of historical change.

Author Biography

Erwin C. Hargrove is Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
History and Theoryp. 3
Visions of an Institutionp. 19
Lilienthal's TVA: The Politics of Leadershipp. 42
The Development of TVA Organizational Culturep. 65
The Organization in Actionp. 85
Consolidating Leadership: Clapp and Vogelp. 117
Rise and Fall of the Dynamop. 155
The Politics of Organizational Renewalp. 195
Denouementp. 242
Reflectionsp. 281
Notesp. 307
Indexp. 355
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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