When Things Go Wrong : Organizational Failures and Breakdowns

by Helmut K. Anheier

• ISBN13: 9780761910480
• ISBN10: 0761910484
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc

Summary

'The editor has worked well to achieve a coherent product which will serve as the authoritative and leading text in its area. The future research agenda is to combine economic and non-economic performance measures, as well a to differentiate failure as process and failure as an outcome.' - Gerald Vinten, Southampton Business Institute, British Academy of Management News This book deals with the the multi-faceted nature of organizational failure through examination of the organizational, political, cognitive and structural aspects of the phenomenon. 'Failure' is presented as a relative concept where the expectations and strategies of stakeholders make claims on the performance of the organization and the notion of success. The book also issues a challenges to future research in this field: It advocates using a combination of economic and non-economic performance measures in the assessment of organizational tendencies toward success and failure, and stresses the need for differentiation between failure as a process and failure as an outcome.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION - Helmut K Anheier and Lynne Moulton

Organizational Failures, Breakdowns and Bankruptcies

An Introduction

PART TWO: ORGANIZATIONS AND FAILURE - Lynne G Zucker and Michael R Darby

Costly Information

Firm Transformation, Exit, or Persistent Failure - David Wilson, David J Hickson and Susan J Miller

Decision Overreach as a Reason for Failure

How Organisations Can Overbalance - Mark Hager et al

"Tales from the Grave"

Organizations' Accounts of Their Own Demise - Renate Mayntz

Organizational Coping, Failure, and Success

Academies of Sciences in Central and Eastern Europe

PART THREE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FAILURE AND BANKRUPTCY - Wolfgang Seibel

Successful Failure

An Alternative View of Organizational Coping - Kevin J Delaney

Veiled Politics

Bankruptcy as a Structured Organizational Field - Mark Bovens et al

The Politics of Blame Avoidance

Defensive Tactics in a Dutch Crime-Fighting Fiasco - Terence C Halliday and Bruce G Carruthers

Creating the Agents of Corporate Rescue

Professionalization of Insolvency

PART FOUR: THE COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTION OF FAILURE - Lee Clarke and Charles Perrow

Prosaic Organizational Failure - Marshall W Meyer

Permanent Failure and the Failure of Organizational Performance

PART FIVE: STRUCTURAL FAILURES - Frank P Romo and Helmut K Anheier

Success and Failure in Institutional Development

A Network Approach - Helmut K Anheier and Frank P Romo

Stalemate

A Structural Analysis of Organizational Failure

PART SIX: CONCLUSION - Helmut K Anheier and Lynne Moulton

Studying Organizational Failures