This concise text introduces an integrated view of all project management-related activities in an organization, called Organizational Project Management (OPM). Practical cases from several organizations, as well as popular theories such as the Resource-Based Theory and Institutional Theory provide for an insightful yet realistic understanding of OPM as an integrative tool for organizations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who’s-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics – examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

Managing as a form of human action has an inherent link with philosophy, which is also concerned with choosing the right action and the best way to lead our lives. Management theory and philosophy can join forces in epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), ethics, and cultural theory. The epistemology of management concerns the question of how management can improve its ability to create knowledge about managing companies and about using management theory in the task of managing. Management ethics investigates the question of what the right management actions are. The cultural theory of management examines how corporate culture can increase the cooperation within the firm and how the cultural surplus value of products and brand management can increase the firm’s value creation in its products. This book introduces the readers to central approaches in this new field, which represents a synthesis of management and philosophical theory.

What is the relationship between philosophy and organization theory (OT)? This title includes the papers that explore connections between several streams in philosophy and OT. It explores the question: What does a particular philosophy contribute to OT?

During the last thirty years, biophysicist and philosopher Henri Atlan has been a major voice in contemporary European philosophical and bio-ethical debates. In a massive oeuvre that ranges from biology and neural network theory to Spinoza's thought and the history of philosophy, and from artificial intelligence and information theory to Jewish mysticism and to contemporary medical ethics, Atlan has come to offer an exceptionally powerful philosophical argumentation that is as hostile to scientism as it is attentive to biology's conceptual and experimental rigor, as careful with concepts of rationality as it is committed to rethinking the human place in a radically determined yet forever changing world. --Book Jacket.

Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend’s bestseller first among eighty books that “every manager must read.” This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend’s timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who’s-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics – examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

Process approaches to organization studies focus on flow, activities, and evolution, understanding organizations and organizing as processes in the making. They stand in contrast to positivist approaches that see organizations and phenomena as fixed, static, and measurable. Process approaches draw on a range of ideas and philosophies. The Handbook examines 34 philosophers and social theorists, both those commonly linked to process thinking, such as Whitehead, Bergson and James, and those that are not as often addressed from a process perspective such as Dilthey and Tarde. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work (with a focus on the processual elements), and the potential contribution to organization and management research. For students and scholars in the field of Organization Studies this book is an entry point into the work of philosophical thinkers and social theorists for whom the world is far from being a solid place.

The Handbook of Philosophy of Management addresses the philosophical foundations of management in theory and practice. It covers established branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, epistemology, moral philosophy, political and social philosophy, philosophy of education, philosophy of practice, and philosophy of science. The Handbook’s broad scope maps out the field and provides a forum where philosophy can be meaningfully applied to the study of management in all its forms. The original, peer-reviewed research published here sheds new light on the complexities of management theory and practice, beyond what hitherto has been possible with the sole application of the social sciences. As philosophy provides a meta-framework for moving beyond paradigm fragmentation within management research and education, this allows researchers and practitioners to find harmony (and discord) in the perspectives revealed by a philosophical lens.

This book offers a comprehensive account of vitalism and the Romantic philosophy of nature. The author explores the rise of biology as a unified science in Germany by reconstructing the history of the notion of “vital force,” starting from the mid-eighteenth through the early nineteenth century. Further, he argues that Romantic Naturphilosophie played a crucial role in the rise of biology in Germany, especially thanks to its treatment of teleology. In fact, both post-Kantian philosophers and naturalists were guided by teleological principles in defining the object of biological research. The book begins by considering the problem of generation, focusing on the debate over the notion of “formative force.” Readers are invited to engage with the epistemological status of this formative force, i.e. the question of the principle behind organization. The second chapter provides a reconstruction of the physiology of vital forces as it was elaborated in the mid- to late-eighteenth century by the group of physicians and naturalists known as the “Göttingen School.” Readers are shown how these authors developed an understanding of the animal kingdom as a graded series of organisms with increasing functional complexity. Chapter three tracks the development of such framework in Romantic Naturphilosophie. The author introduces the reader to the problem of classification, showing how Romantic philosophers of nature regarded classification as articulated by a unified plan that connects all living forms with one another, relying on the idea of living nature as a universal organism. In the closing chapter, this analysis shows how the three instances of pre-biological discourse on living beings – theory of generation, physiology and natural history – converged to form the consolidated disciplinary matrix of a general biology. The book offers an insightful read for all scholars interested in classical German philosophy, especially those researching the philosophy of nature, as well as the history and philosophy of biology.