Ways of looking at organizations

Abstract

This book is about practice rather than theory; about the problems that arise in organizing and about what can be said about them that could be useful to the practising manager. However even the most practical managers can think about a problem more easily if they have some frame of reference that will help them to decide what kind of problem it is. Like the physician looking at a patient, they need to diagnose the class of malady. It may be a defect in the circulation system, when knowledge of its working and of the imbalance to which it is subject would be useful; or it may be a digestive problem, in which case a different area of knowledge woud be appropriate. They might even decide that the malady is both a circulatory and a digestive one. Admittedly, knowledge of how the human body works is much more advanced than our understanding of the working of human organizations. Even so, theories of organization can give the manager greater insight into the nature of organizational problems.