Images of Organization

by Gareth Morgan

Book Overview

Gareth Morgans book is designed to develop the art of reading and understanding organizations. He works from the premise that our theories and explanations of organizational life are based on metaphors that lead us to see and understand organizations in distinctive, yet partial ways. He demonstrates how the use of different metaphors provides new ways of managing and designing organizations. His book also stands as a treatise on metaphorical thinking...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803928300
• ISBN13: 9780803928305
• Release Date: June 1986
• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 23.0" x 15.0" x 3.2"

Customer Reviews

Single Best MPA Book

This was the single best book of all the books I was required to read for my Masters in Public Administration, and it remains a valued reference in my rather large personal library. Other books I recommend: Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials) Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World The Knowledge Executive The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization

This book can profoundly change your thinking about orgs

This is not a "three steps to understanding organizations" type book. The people posting negative reviews for this were looking for something simple and digestable - this book is not that. However, if you take the time, you will find it profoundly alters your thinking about understanding organizations.This book provides solid theoretical models for understanding what is occuring in organizations. I read this book over 10 years ago and STILL find it the second best and most enlightening thing I have ever read on organizations. This has dramatically aided me in being a very successful business consultant.The foundation of this book is the notion that you cannot understand complex organizations in any meaningful way through a single perspective. People in the organizations operate on many different perspectives. Each view of the world creates its own understanding of the organizational problems, solutions and daily pattern of interaction. This book provides you the tools for understanding organizations through a number of key perspectives or metaphors, and gives you indications on how to perform a multi-perspective systems analysis. If you spend the time with this book, you will find yourself able to understand your surroundings FAR better than your peers.

Strengths and limitations of metaphors.

"While managing and organizing are challenging in the best times, the difficulties are compounding in today's environment of rapid change. If you want to be the type of leader or professional who helps your organization adapt to the multiple demands of an increasingly turbulent world, you need to become aware of the images and assumptions that are shaping your current thinking and develop the capacity to use new ones. You need to develop competencies that allow you to see, understand, and shape situations in new ways. That is the focus of Images of Organization.It is not a 'quick fix' book. It is not a book that offers a simple recipe for tackling organizational problems...The basic thesis underlying the book is a very simple one: that all organization and management theory and practice is based on images, or metaphors, that lead us to understand situations in powerful yet partial ways. When we realize this, we learn to recognize that our favored ways of managing and organizing often lead us to miss out on other ways of managing and organizing. In addition, we recognize that since every metaphor has limitations as well as strengths, we must always be aware of the inherent blind spots that inevitably undermine our effectiveness" (pp.3-4).In this context, Garet Morgan divides his book into three parts.I- In this part, he focuses on the nature of metaphor and its role in understanding organization and management. Here, he argues that using multiple metaphors to understand organization and management gives us a capacity to tap different dimentions of a situation, showing how different qualities of organization can co-exist, supporting, reinforcing, or contradicting one another:* In approaching the same situation in different ways, metaphors extend insight and suggest actions that may not have been possible before.* The insights generated by different metaphors are not just theoretical. They are incredibly practical.* Metaphors lead to new metaphors, creating a mosaic of competing and complementary insights.II- In this part, he demonstrates how metaphor can be used to develop theories of organization and management. In this sense, he shows strengths and limitations of the following metaphors:machine metaphor, organismic metaphor, brain metaphor, culture metaphor, political metaphor, psychic prison metaphor, flux and transformation metaphor, and dominant metaphor.III- In this part, by using theoretical ideas/metaphors, he presents a practical case study that illustrates how we can use the metaphors presented in this book as practical frameworks for reading and shaping organizations.Finally, he argues that Images of Organization is very different from most management books. It has a clear point of view: that metaphor is central to the way we read, understand, and shape organizational life. But at no point will you find that view being brought down to advocacy of a single perspective. There are no right or wrong theories in management in an absolute sens

Absolutely fantastic.

This book allows the reader to formulate his/her own opinion on each type of organization structure. Morgan brings in depth insights into the various forms of organizations through discussions of theories and examples. The book is concise and easy to understand, at the same it challenges readers by asking them to thoroughly exame each concept included in the book. Absolutely fantastic - a great leisure time book for the intelligent.

An outstanding and unique commentary on organizations

What makes this book special is the approach. Morgan considers organizations using different metaphors such as organisations as brains. Each metaphors expands the reader's insight and understanding, and leads to ways of surviving organizational life. This book is a must read text for those studying management or organizational behaviour. All the chapters contain quality references to other work and are backed up by extensive research.