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Images of Organization
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Images of Organization

June 2006 | 520 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
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In the twenty years since its first publication, Images of Organization has become a classic in the canon of management literature. The book is based on a very simple premise: that all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that lead us to see, understand, and manage organizations in distinctive yet partial ways. Gareth Morgan provides a rich and comprehensive resource for exploring the complexity of modern organizations internationally: he translates leading-edge theory into leading-edge practice.

New to the Updated Edition: the author has revised all references and updated tables; his new preface situates this classic theory in today's business environment; and instructor's resources to aid classroom teaching are now available on CD-ROM.

Images of Organization challenges and reshapes how we think about organization and management in the most fundamental way. The new Updated Edition makes this monumental work available to a new generation of students and business leaders worldwide.

 
Preface
 
Part I. An Overview
 
Introduction
 
Part II. Some Images of Organization
 
2. Mechanization Takes Command: Organizations as Machines
Machines, Mechanical Thinking, and the Rise of Bureaucratic Organization

 
The Origins of Mechanistic Organization

 
Classical Management Theory: Designing bureaucratic organizations

 
Scientific Management

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Machine Metaphor

 
 
3. Nature Intervenes: Organizations as Organisms
Discovering Organizational Needs

 
Recognizing the Importance of Environment: Organizations as Open Systems

 
Contingency Theory: Adapting Organization to Environment

 
The Variety of the Species

 
Contingency Theory: Promoting Organizational Health and Development

 
Natural Selection: The Population-Ecology View of Organizations

 
Organizational Ecology: The Creation of Shared Futures

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Organismic Metaphor

 
 
4. Learning and Self-Organization: Organizations as Brains
Images of the Brain

 
Organizations as Information Processing Brains

 
Creating Learning Organizations

 
Cybernetics, Learning, and Learning to Learn

 
Can Organizations Learn to Learn?

 
Guidelines for "Learning Organizations"

 
Organizations as Holographic Brains

 
Principles of Holographic Design

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Brain Metaphors

 
 
5. Creating Social Realty: Organizations as Cultures
Culture and Organization

 
Organization as a Cultural Phenomenon

 
Organization and Cultural Context

 
Corporate Cultures and Subcultures

 
Creating Organizational Reality

 
Culture: Rule Following or Enactment?

 
Organization: The enactment of a Shared Reality

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Cultural Metaphor

 
 
6. Interests, Conflict, and Power: Organizations as Political Systems
Organizations as Systems of Government

 
Organizations as Systems of Political Activity

 
Analyzing Interests

 
Understanding Conflict

 
Exploring Power

 
Managing Pluralist Organizations

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Political Metaphor

 
 
7. Exploring Plato's Cave: Organizations as Psychic Prisons
The Trap of Favored Ways of Thinking

 
Organization and the Unconscious

 
Organization and Repressed Sexuality

 
Organization and the Patriarchal Family

 
Organization, Death, and Immortality

 
Organization and Anxiety

 
Organization, Dolls, and Teddy Bears

 
Organization, Shadow, and Archetype

 
The Unconscious: A Creative and Destructive Force

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Psychic Prison Metaphor

 
 
8. Unfolding Logics of Change: Organization as Flux and Transformation
Autopoiesis: Rethinking Relations With the Environment

 
Enactment as a Form of Narcissism: Organizations Interact With Projections of Themselves

 
Identity and Closure: Egocentrism Versus Systemic Wisdom

 
Shifting "Attractors": The Logic of Chaos and Complexity

 
Managing in the Midst of Complexity

 
Loops, Not Lines: The Logic of Mutual Causality

 
Contradiction and Crisis: The Logic of Dialectical Change

 
Dialectical Analysis: How Opposing Forces Drive Change

 
The Dialectics of Management

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Flux and Transformation Metaphor

 
 
9. The Ugly Face: Organizations as Instruments of Domination
Organization as Domination

 
How Organizations Use and Exploit Their Employees

 
Organization, Class, and Control

 
Work Hazards, Occupational Disease, and Industrial Accidents

 
Workaholism and Social and Mental Stress

 
Organizational Politics and the Radicalized Organization

 
Multinationals and the World Economy

 
The Multinationals as World Powers

 
Multinationals: A Record of Exploitation?

 
Strengths and Limitations of the Domination Metaphor

 
 
Part III. Implications For Practice
 
10. The Challenge of Metaphor
Metaphors Create Ways of Seeing and Shaping Organizational Life

 
Seeing, Thinking, and Acting in New Ways

 
 
11. Reading and Shaping Organizational Life
The Multicom Case

 
Interpreting Multicom

 
Developing and Detailed Reading and "Storyline"

 
Multicom From Another View

 
"Reading" and Emergent Intelligence

 
 
12. Postscript
 
Bibliographic Notes
Introduction

 
The Machine Metaphor

 
The Organismic Metaphor

 
The Brain Metaphor

 
The Culture Metaphor

 
The Political Metaphor

 
The Psychic Prison Metaphor

 
The Flux and Transformation Metaphor

 
The Domination Metaphor

 
The Challenge of Metaphor

 
Reading and Shaping Organizational Life

 
Postscript

 
 
Bibliography

Practical yet written well, and I love the toolkit notion and the activities embedded in those

Dr Eileen Zungolo
School Of Nursing, Duquesne University
October 20, 2011
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Very useful book which gives students a different set of lenses through which to view how organisations are structured.

Mr Jim Gritton
School of Health and Social Care, Greenwich University
May 7, 2011
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A fundamentally important book in our graduate and post-graduate programmes.

Dr Hans Müller
Dept of Information Science, University of Stellenbosch
September 14, 2010
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It is still an outstandig book, full of fresh insights.

Professor Werner Nienhueser
Faculty of Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen
May 4, 2010
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Perfectly matched the purpose of the course to look at organizations through various perspectives

Dr John Nirenberg
Management , Walden University
April 24, 2010
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had used the book before and liked it for Doctoral students

Professor Elaine Artman
Tifts College of Edu, Mercer University
March 23, 2010
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adopted this as the core text

Dr Jenna Ward
Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol
October 20, 2009
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