Creative organization theory : a resource book.

PART ONE: MINDSTRETCHERS Flexibility and Intelligence What is This? The Need for a Tool Chest Framing and Reframing Seeing the Same Situation in Different Ways What is This? Using Your 'Right Brain' We Learn How to See What is a Paintbrush? What is Truth? Different Assumptions and Organizing Principles Generate Different Designs Developing Multiple Interpretations Understanding Different Viewpoints Escaping From Dominant Ideas Interpreting Patterns, Boundaries and Constraints What is an Organization? Viewing Your Organization as if You Are a Visitor from a Foreign Land Where's The Customer Some Thought Patterns Today's Solutions Shape Tomorrow's Problems Mindstretchers -- Ideas and Solutions PART TWO: READINGS, STORIES AND OTHER RESOURCES The Evolution of Organization Theory Max Weber's Concept of Bureaucracy Taylor, Schmidt and Scientific Management How to Kill Creativity Working Under Mechanized Systems of Production Computers and the Mechanization of Intellectual Work From Bureaucracies to Networks The Emergence of New Organizational Forms Organization Design An Information Processing Perspective Organizational Technologies Organizational Environments The Emergence of Turbulent Environments The Contingency Approach Analyzing Relations Between Organization and Environment Differentiation and Integration One of the Paradoxes of Management Collective Strategy The Management of Interorganizational Relations Tit for Tat A Strategy for Cooperation and Survival Organization and Environment Adaptation or Selection Do Organizations 'Enact' Their Environments? Organizational Growth and Development Just in Time Systems of Management Japanese Management The Art of Self-Regulation The Challenger Disaster A Case of Discouraged Feedback? Information and Misinformation Some Unintended Consequences of Performance Controls Collaboration and Control Peopleless Factories Peopleless Offices Team-Based Manufacturing Digital Tries the Bossless System Growing Large While Staying Small Organizational Learning Innovating Organizations The Case of 3M Culture A Complex and Subtle Language Corporate Culture and Core Values Corporate Culture The Role of Stories Transformational Leadership The Tandem Corporation A Successful Corporate Culture? ServiceMaster Combining Vision and Control Life on the Fast Lane at Datsun Apple Computer and the Politics of Change Politics at Work Some Sources of Organizational Conflict A Perspective on Conflict Management Decision-Making in Conflict Situations Managing Intergroup Conflict Rational for Whom? Powerless Power? Gender and Corporate Politics Game-Playing and the Psychodynamics of Organizational Life Groupthink The Problems of Conformity Some Unconscious Aspects of Organization The Destructive Side of Technological Development Unfolding Contradictions The Bhopal Disaster 'Hooked' on Work The Not-Enough World of Work PART THREE: CASES AND EXERCISES American Football A Case of Mechanistic Organization? arlie Chaplin's Modern Times Eagle Smelting A Visit to McDonald's Judging the Degree of Fit Between Organization and Environment The Paradoxical Twins Acme & Omega Electronics Scholar Educational Products Inc. The Changing Structure of Financial Services Organizations Often Obstruct Learning Product X Arnold The Paradox of Creativity Understanding the Culture of Your Organization Perfection or Bust The Creation and Destruction of the Order of Maria Theresa Sink or Swim Reflections on a Corporate Training Program The Nomizu Sake Company The University as a Political System The Fortress Insurance Company Rainbow Financial Services Global Inc A Roleplay How Politicized is Your Organization? Pluralist Management Meetings, Meetings, Meetings The Sunnyvale Youth Centre Conflict at Riverside The Handgrenade Jersey Packers The Department of Information Services Quality Co-Op Who Builds the Dillworth Extension? The Lakeside Literary Magazine A New Direction for the Upstage Theatre Tipdale Engineering Visibility, Autonomy, Relevance and Relationships Four Factors Shaping Power and Influence Final Offer Problems in the Machine Shop Profit and Organizations A Story of Exploitation?

Gareth Morgan believes that examining organizations and management should be interesting, creative, practical, challenging and directly relevant to the needs of both the organization and the researcher. In an ingenious selection of organizational stories, Morgan presents unique insights drawn from actual corporate (as well as non-profit, public and institutional) experience. These examples illustrate both organizational successes and failures - because we can learn from both. They are interwoven with excerpts from many of the "classics" in organizational literature. His aptly-named "Mindstretchers" entice readers to expand their personal repertoires of approaches to the understanding of, and solutions to, organizational problems and challenges, followed by cases and exercises that challenge us to view organizations in new ways.