Images of Organization

by Morgan, Gareth

• ISBN13: 9780761906322
• ISBN10: 0761906320
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc

Summary

Images of Organization has already established itself as a classic that has influenced management thinking throughout the world. This Revised Edition takes Gareth Morgan's achievement one step further, providing the kind of organizational 'radar' system needed to negotiate the demands of the twenty-first century.In this monumental work, leading-edge theory is translated into leading-edge practice. The new edition carefully preserves the qualities and strengths of the original, while delivering new insights on today's managerial challenges. Morgan shows the manager how to view the organization by using his renowned creative images and metaphors. In a sequence of path-breaking chapters he demonstrates how to mobilize

Table of Contents

PART I: AN OVERVIEW
Introduction	3	(8)
PART II: SOME IMAGES OF ORGANIZATION
Mechanization Takes Command: Organizations as Machines	11	(22)
Machines, mechanical thinking, and the rise of bureaucratic organization	13	(13)
The origins of mechanistic organization	15	(3)
Classical management theory: designing bureaucratic organizations	18	(4)
Scientific management	22	(4)
Strengths and limitations of the machine metaphor	26	(7)
Nature Intervenes: Organizations as Organisms	33	(40)
Discovering organizational needs	34	(5)
Recognizing the importance of environment: organizations as open systems	39	(5)
Contingency theory: adapting organization to environment	44	(6)
The variety of the species	50	(6)
Contingency theory: promoting organizational health and development	56	(4)
Natural selection: the population-ecology view of organizations	60	(4)
Organizational ecology: the creation of shared futures	64	(2)
Strengths and limitations of the organismic metaphor	66	(7)
Learning and Self-Organization: Organizations as Brains	73	(46)
Images of the brain	74	(4)
Organizations as information processing brains	78	(5)
Creating learning organizations	83	(17)
Cybernetics, learning, and learning to learn	83	(3)
Can organizations learn to learn?	86	(3)
Guidelines for ``learning organizations''	89	(11)
Organizations as holographic brains	100	(15)
Principles of holographic design	102	(13)
Strengths and limitations of the brain metaphor	115	(4)
Creating Social Reality: Organizations as Cultures	119	(34)
Culture and organization	120	(18)
Organization as a cultural phenomenon	120	(2)
Organization and cultural context	122	(7)
Corporate cultures and subcultures	129	(9)
Creating organizational reality	138	(7)
Culture: rule following or enactment?	139	(2)
Organization: the enactment of a shared reality	141	(4)
Strengths and limitations of the culture metaphor	145	(8)
Interests, Conflict, and Power: Organizations as Political Systems	153	(62)
Organizations as systems of government	155	(5)
Organizations as systems of political activity	160	(39)
Analyzing interests	161	(6)
Understanding conflict	167	(3)
Exploring power	170	(29)
Managing pluralist organizations	199	(9)
Strengths and limitations of the political metaphor	208	(7)
Exploring Plato's Cave: Organizations as Psychic Prisons	215	(36)
The trap of favored ways of thinking	216	(4)
Organization and the unconscious	220	(25)
Organization and repressed sexuality	221	(5)
Organization and the patriarchal family	226	(2)
Organization, death, and immortality	228	(2)
Organization and anxiety	230	(6)
Organization, dolls, and teddy bears	236	(3)
Organization, shadow, and archetype	239	(4)
The unconscious: a creative and destructive force	243	(2)
Strengths and limitations of the psychic prison metaphor	245	(6)
Unfolding Logics of Change: Organization as Flux and Transformation	251	(50)
Autopoiesis: rethinking relations with the environment	253	(8)
Enactment as a form of narcissism: organizations interact with projections of themselves	256	(2)
Identity and closure: egocentricism versus systemic wisdom	258	(3)
Shifting ``attractors'': the logic of chaos and complexity	261	(13)
Managing in the midst of complexity	266	(8)
Loops not lines: the logic of mutual causality	274	(9)
Contradiction and crisis: the logic of dialectical change	283	(14)
Dialectical analysis: how opposing forces drive change	285	(6)
The dialectics of management	291	(6)
Strengths and limitations of the flux and transformation metaphor	297	(4)
The Ugly Face: Organizations as Instruments of Domination	301	(46)
Organization as domination	303	(4)
How organizations use and exploit their employees	307	(19)
Organization, class, and control	308	(6)
Work hazards, occupational disease, and industrial accidents	314	(6)
Workaholism and social and mental stress	320	(3)
Organizational politics and the radicalized organization	323	(3)
Multinationals and the world economy	326	(14)
The multinationals as world powers	329	(2)
Multinationals: a record of exploitation?	331	(9)
Strengths and limitations of the domination metaphor	340	(7)
PART III: IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
The Challenge of Metaphor	347	(8)
Metaphors create ways of seeing and shaping organizational life	349	(2)
Seeing, thinking, and acting in new ways	351	(4)
Reading and Shaping Organizational Life	355	(20)
The Multicom case	356	(3)
Interpreting Multicom	359	(12)
Developing a detailed reading and ``storyline''	361	(8)
Multicom from another view	369	(2)
``Reading'' and emergent intelligence	371	(4)
Postscript	375	(4)
Bibliographic Notes	379	(54)
Introduction	379	(2)
The machine metaphor	381	(5)
The organismic metaphor	386	(5)
The brain metaphor	391	(6)
The culture metaphor	397	(4)
The political metaphor	401	(4)
The psychic prison metaphor	405	(7)
The flux and transformation metaphor	412	(9)
The domination metaphor	421	(5)
The challenge of metaphor	426	(1)
Reading and shaping organizational life	427	(3)
Postscript	430	(3)
Bibliography	433	(30)
Index	463	(20)
Acknowledgments	483	(2)
About the Author	485