- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc (7 Aug 1986)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0803928300
- ISBN-13: 978-0803928305
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 323,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Gareth Morgan's book is designed to develop the art of reading and understanding organizations. He works from the premise that our theories and explanations of organizational life are based on metaphors that lead us to see and understand organizations in distinctive, yet partial ways. He demonstrates how the use of different metaphors provides new ways of managing and designing organizations. His book also stands as a treatise on metaphorical thinking that contributes to both the theory and practice of organizational analysis.
From the Publisher
Images of Organization has already established itself as a classic that has influenced management thinking throughout the world. This New Edition takes Gareth Morgan's achievement one step further, providing a rich and comprehensive resource for exploring the complexity of modern organizations.
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 managers how to view their organizations by using his renowned creative images and metaphors. In a sequence of path-breaking chapters, he demonstrates how to mobilize the insights of different metaphors: to manage and design organizations in new ways; to develop novel understandings of the relationships between organization and environment; to create learning organizations with the intelligence of a living brain; to explore the intricacies of corporate culture and politics of organizational life; to understand the unconscious dimensions of organization; to translate the implications of the new science of chaos and complexity into practical management strategies; and to confront and deal with the negative impacts that organizations often have on society and the natural world.
No other management book covers so much ground while developing the implications for management with such force. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
Effective managers and professionals in all walks of life have to become skilled in the art of "reading" the situations they are attempting to organize or manage. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Effective managers and professionals in all walks of life have to become skilled in the art of "reading" the situations they are attempting to organize or manage. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fundamental reference book on models of organizations. While others try to sell their own pet theory, Morgan presents them all, exposing them to thorough scrutiny.
Any manager or student of management frequently gets confronted with situations that demand an ability to 'read' what is going on, and to generate responding answers and actions. Effective 'reading' needs models. Most of us rely on one or two favoured theories that habitually frame our thinking. However the choice of model is itself a limiting act - think in terms of mechanistic processes and you are limited to machine-based solutions.
Faced with a flavour-of-the-month theory - quality management, knowledge management, chaos theory, whatever - you can turn to this book and understand what type of theory it is - its assumptions, its benefits, its limitations.
Working in the other direction is slightly less comfortable. If you want the latest thinking on a particular perspective, you will find it summarised here, though not always accompanied by comprehensive signposts to follow-on reading.
Altogether quite awesome in its breadth.
Any manager or student of management frequently gets confronted with situations that demand an ability to 'read' what is going on, and to generate responding answers and actions. Effective 'reading' needs models. Most of us rely on one or two favoured theories that habitually frame our thinking. However the choice of model is itself a limiting act - think in terms of mechanistic processes and you are limited to machine-based solutions.
Faced with a flavour-of-the-month theory - quality management, knowledge management, chaos theory, whatever - you can turn to this book and understand what type of theory it is - its assumptions, its benefits, its limitations.
Working in the other direction is slightly less comfortable. If you want the latest thinking on a particular perspective, you will find it summarised here, though not always accompanied by comprehensive signposts to follow-on reading.
Altogether quite awesome in its breadth.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The strong point of this book is that it strengthens your personal radar -the ability to 'read' organizations. Probing what is really going on and the underlying influences. A classic book in its field.
The basis of this book is that you cannot understand complex organizations, in any meaningful way through a single perspective. People in organizations operate on many perspectives. Each view of the world creates its own understanding of the organizational problems, solutions and daily pattern of interaction. The time spent on this book will enable you to far better understand what is going on around you than your peers.
A leading Canadian University running a progamme on Organization design has used this material and also drawn on the following:
* Designing Effective Organizations. This is a UK book from Ashridge. Which contains nine tests of organizational design. A useful and more pragmatic resource, in its style than this book. (See my other reviews)
This book can be complex and hard going in places. This is balanced by the many different insights provided. Many readers might find chapters 7 and 9 a step to far, and skip them.
The core message perhaps is - limit your thinking and you will limit your range of options. Each way of seeing/viewing organizations will produce distinctive insights, with their own pattern of strengths and limatations. The challenge is to integrate the insights and then develop an action strategy that can suit your own purpose.
For an alternative view on organizational politics/dynamics see:
* Who really matters: The core group theory of power, privilege, and success. (See my other reviews)
This was suggested to me by a leading practitioner in the Organization Design/Change Management field from a very large UK organization at a meeting of the Organization Design forum. The key point is that you may have done all the strategy/planning stuff but overlooked the core power base, in which case you could screw up, and you will wonder what went wrong. I have seen this happen several times.
Stan Felstead - Interchange Resources - UK.
The basis of this book is that you cannot understand complex organizations, in any meaningful way through a single perspective. People in organizations operate on many perspectives. Each view of the world creates its own understanding of the organizational problems, solutions and daily pattern of interaction. The time spent on this book will enable you to far better understand what is going on around you than your peers.
A leading Canadian University running a progamme on Organization design has used this material and also drawn on the following:
* Designing Effective Organizations. This is a UK book from Ashridge. Which contains nine tests of organizational design. A useful and more pragmatic resource, in its style than this book. (See my other reviews)
This book can be complex and hard going in places. This is balanced by the many different insights provided. Many readers might find chapters 7 and 9 a step to far, and skip them.
The core message perhaps is - limit your thinking and you will limit your range of options. Each way of seeing/viewing organizations will produce distinctive insights, with their own pattern of strengths and limatations. The challenge is to integrate the insights and then develop an action strategy that can suit your own purpose.
For an alternative view on organizational politics/dynamics see:
* Who really matters: The core group theory of power, privilege, and success. (See my other reviews)
This was suggested to me by a leading practitioner in the Organization Design/Change Management field from a very large UK organization at a meeting of the Organization Design forum. The key point is that you may have done all the strategy/planning stuff but overlooked the core power base, in which case you could screw up, and you will wonder what went wrong. I have seen this happen several times.
Stan Felstead - Interchange Resources - UK.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was a set text for a Masters degree I did a couple of years ago. It is one of the books that impressed me the most, as it does an excellent job of identifying and unpicking the different lenses that have been applied to organisations over the years. In particular, the chapters on organisations as psychic prisons and as flux & change I found particularly powerful.
Morgan does an excellent job of analysing the most common metaphors for organisation, and offers the reader both the pros and cons of each, in a way that I found particularly accessible and unlike most books I have read in this area.
Highly recommended, and even if you can only pick up one of the earlier additions, worth having as they do not differ too much.
Morgan does an excellent job of analysing the most common metaphors for organisation, and offers the reader both the pros and cons of each, in a way that I found particularly accessible and unlike most books I have read in this area.
Highly recommended, and even if you can only pick up one of the earlier additions, worth having as they do not differ too much.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Images of organisations - the power of metaphor
This is a very accessible book, and an easy read. I am thoroughly enjoying it. Gets underneath the standard perceptions to the heart of what an organisation is. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Chris J
Organisations as metaphors - interesting discussion
For those who have been around the houses with organisational redesign this book is a refreshing challenge to traditional thinking. Read more
Published 16 months ago by N. J. Parker
Great litterature, but with potential for improvements
I was first introduced to Gareth Morgen's images of organization in an introduction course in Organization and Manangement at my first term of a bachelor program in Management. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Jan Øystein Thorsnæs
a "Must Have" Classic
In my opinion, this is one of the classic books on organisations. If you want to learn how to think "outside the box" and better understand how organisations function, then you... Read more
Published on 9 Oct 2009 by Ian Robson
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