Analysing Their Structures and Human Resource Practices
This volume presents an authoritative database on the workings of organizations in the United States. It describes the National Organizations Study, the first national survey of organizations in the US using a statistically representative sample. As well as outlining the study and the major conclusions it reaches, the book also looks at specific employment practices - hiring, training, promotion, performance measurement, benefit packages and contingent work - and how they compare between different businesses and business sectors. Differential treatment of employees according to ethnicity and gender is examined as part of the analysis of these topics.
How do organizations learn, change and adapt? The chapters in this book contribute to the development of organizational learning theory in three ways. They delineate its scope, differentiating it from organizational ecology, choice and individual learning; demonstrate the explanatory power of a learning perspective; and illustrate the application of research tools useful for the study of learning.
This book shows researchers how to map an or ganization''s past behaviour and gain insight into how the st ream of past experience becomes a basis for present action. '
This concise overview demystifies the field of organizational development and is arranged in a convenient question and answer format within subject areas. The sequence of topics guides the reader from general statements, basic concepts and values to more specific questions concerning the organization and the manager. A list of suggested reading and training programmes is offered in the last section of the book.
During the past three decades, organization studies have witnessed a succession of theoretical perspectives - contingency theory, resource dependency and population ecology - that focus on one or other aspect of organizations. Only institutional theory highlights the importance of the wider social and cultural environment as the `ground' in which organizations are rooted. This book brings together original work from two different research traditions - continental Europe and the United States - to shed light on the study of organizations. This includes empirical observations, longitudinal analyses, market-based organizational forms, and the concepts of agency and strategy.
Creativity in organizations has become an issue of great importance, but how does a company encourage personnel to find creative solutions to budgeting, product development, marketing and training? With engaging contributions from leading academics and professionals, this book explores the key factors that are critical to the development and promotion of creativity in any organization.
The organizational, social and psychological meanings of contracts, both written and unwritten, are the focus of this volume. The author addresses a number of important topics including contract making, interpretation of contracts, contract violations, strategies for changing contracts and contracts evolving from circumstances relevant to the 1990s. In addition, a thought-provoking discussion of how contracts are linked to an organization's strategy and its human resource practices is included. The book concludes with an assessment of societal trends that point to large scale changes in future employment contracts.
This book on organization theory adopts a distinctive stance. In contrast to the traditional rational approach, it develops a transformational perspective which focuses on the organizational world as a projection of each organizational member's consciousness. While covering all the basic topics of organization theory, the author's approach reflects today's changing management paradigms.
