Over the past two decades, organization studies has become increasingly pluralistic, with a series of highly charged debates across intellectual `divides'. It is these debates and their consequences for the current position and future development of organization studies that Rethinking Organization addresses. The first section reviews and evaluates the most significant theoretical developments of the last two decades, focusing in particular on the various ways in which `organization' has been conceptualized as the basis for organizational analyses. The second section examines a range of issues related to the major transformations in organizational forms currently occurring throughout advanced industrial societies. Fi

"The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Deep inside, we sense that more is possible. We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time, in the past, when humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness, it has achieved extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals? A few pioneers have already cracked the code and they show us, in practical detail, how it can be done. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories."--Page [4] of cover.

The purpose of this book is to reimagine the concept of culture, both as an analytical category and disciplinary practice of dominance, marginalization and exclusion. For decades culture has been perceived as a ‘hot topic’. It has been written about and deployed as part of ‘a search for excellence’; as a tool through which to categorise, rank, motivate and mould individuals; as a part of an attempt to align individual and corporate goals; as a driver of organizational change, and; as a servant of profit maximisation. The women writers presented in this book offer a different take on culture: they offer useful disruptions to mainstream conceptions of culture. Joanne Martin and Mary Douglas provide multi-dimensional holistic accounts of social relations that point up similarity and difference. Rather than offering totalising or prescriptive models, each author considers the complex, polyphonic and processual nature of culture(s) while challenging us to acknowledge and work with ambiguity, fluidity and disruption. In this spirit writings of Judi Marshall, Arlie Hochschild, Kathy Ferguson, Luce Irigaray and Donna Haraway are employed to disrupt extant management cultures that lionise the masculine and marginalise the concerns, perspectives and contributions of women and the diversity of women. These writers bring bodies, emotions, difference, resistance and politics back to the centre stage of organizational theory and practice. They open us up to the possibility of cultures suffused with multifarious potentiality rather than homogeneity and faux certainty. As such, they offer new ways of understanding and performing culture in management and organization. This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

A positive revolution in change: appreciative inquiry / David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney -- Positive image, positive action: the affirmative basis of organizing / David Cooperrider -- Appreciative inquiry in organizational life / David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva -- Five theories of change embedded in appreciative inquiry / Gervase Bushe -- Advances in appreciative inquiry as an organization development intervention / Gervase Bushe -- The "child" as agent of inquiry / David L. Cooperrider -- Resources for getting appreciative inquiry started: an example OD proposal / David L. Cooperrider -- An appreciative inquiry into the factors of culture continuity during leadership transactions: a case study of LeadShare, Canada / Mary Ann Rainey -- Survey guided appreciative inquiry: a case study / Rita F. Williams -- Initiating culture change in higher education through appreciative inquiry / Robert L. Head and Michele M. Young -- Saving tomorrow's workforce / Chrisopher Anne Easley, Therese Yaeger, and Peter Sorensen -- Appreciative inquiry with teams / Gervase R. Bushe -- A field experiment in appreciative inquiry / David A. Jones -- Appreciative inquiry meets the logical positivist / Peter F. Sorensen [and others] -- Is appreciative inquiry OD's philosopher's stone / Thomas C. Head [and others] -- Postmodern principles and practices for large scale organization change and global cooperation / Diana Whitney -- Organizational inquiry model for global social change organizations / Jane Magruder Watkins and David Cooperrider -- From deficit discourse to vocabularies of hope; the power of appreciation / James D. Ludema

What is organizational culture? Why does it matter? This book demonstrates that conventional wisdom on this fundamental business topic has surpassed its usefulness. The author wants neither to praise scholarship on culture nor to bury it – rather he wants to build something fit for purpose by reflecting on the power of stories and storytelling. Rethinking Organizational Culture argues that that the entrenched models of organizational culture wrench thinking, feeling, and action from a context that intuition warns us are complex and problematic. Arguing that novels and novelists offer an opportunity to redeem ‘organizational culture’, the text invites readers to recognise that stories of organization offer connections with organizational profanity, organized polyphony, and the organizationally prosaic. A stimulating and provocative read, this book will be welcomed by students, scholars, and reflective practitioners across the business field.

The management of international organizations is attracting growing attention. Most of this attention is highly critical of both the UN system and International NGOs. Sometimes, this criticism lacks depth or reflects insufficient understanding of these organizations, or is based on narrow, and sometimes biased, internal political concerns of a particular country. International relations theory has insufficiently studied the type of linkages that these organizations provide between international decision-making and Northern fundraising on the one hand, and practical action in the South on the other. As a result, current theory too rarely focuses on the inner functioning of these organizations and is unable to explain the deficiencies and negative outcomes of their work. While the authors identify and describe the pathologies of international organizations in, for example, international diplomacy, fundraising, and implementation, they also stress positive elements, such as their intermediary role. The latter, in particular, could form the basis of more efficient and effective policies, in addition to other recent trends, also described in this volume, that hold hope for a stronger functioning of these organizations in the future. This book presents a long overdue empirical and theoretical overview of criticism on and cures for these organizations. It provides a fundamental rethinking of current approaches to the management of international organizations.

Recently the field of organization studies has been plagued by intense, disruptive controversy about what counts as knowledge. This book, written by the major researchers and voices in the field of organization studies, attempts to respond to this controversy by offering the topic of "generative uncertainty" as the primary vehicle for rethinking about this issue. The authors prefer admitting uncertainty to making unwarranted assumptions. The ideas about questioning the possibility of knowledge that is certain goes back to before the time of Socrates. This unique, historical look at the study of organization studies will be of interest to all students and scholars of this field.

Many of today's organizations "live in public"; they devote extensive resources to branding, catching the public eye, and capitalizing on the age of transparency. But, at the same time, a growing number of companies and other collectives are flying under the radar, concealing their identities and activities. This book offers a framework for thinking about how organizations and their members communicate identity to relevant audiences. Considering the degree to which organizations reveal themselves, the extent to which members express their identification with the organization, and whether the audience is public or local, author Craig R. Scott describes collectives as residing in "regions" that range from transparent to shaded, from shadowed to dark. Taking a closer look at groups like EarthFirst!, the Church of Scientology, Alcoholics Anonymous, the KKK, Skull and Bones, U.S. special mission units, men's bathhouses, and various terrorist organizations, this book draws attention to shaded, shadowed, and dark collectives as important organizations in the contemporary landscape.

This excellent book remaps the limits and possibilities of change, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective and critical review of key literature and empirical research, it will help students contextualize this complex subject area and independently evaluate future prospects for effective change agent roles in organizations Presenting an interdisciplinary exploration of competing discourses, the book uses two overarching conceptual continua: centred agency-decentred agency and systems-processes, thereby allowing a more intensive focus on agency and change. Well-written with challenging content, this book is essential reading for those interested in the origins, development and future prospects for change agency in an organizational world characterized by increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.

The increasing interaction of multinational corporations, international organizations and transnational interest groups, such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International are analyzed in relation to the global political economy.