Systems Leadership: Creating Positive Organisations

By Catherine Burke, Ian MacDonald, Karl Stewart, et al.

Book Overview

The new edition of this influential and bestselling book is concerned with how people come together to achieve a productive purpose. Survival and success in business and social terms have always depended upon our ability to form and sustain social organisations. People have a deep need to be creative and to belong. By creating positive organisations we can fulfil these needs and build a worthwhile society. One of the failures of organisations is precisely the lack of efficient and effective social organisation, which is what this whole book is about. Poor social organisation, including poor leadership, are major drivers of poor productivity and lead people to give up or retreat into a minimalist approach of just doing what is needed to get by and survive.

The authors provide a language for developing, discussing, thinking and working with propositions about organisations and management. They do not tell you what decision to make but rather present tools to help you consider, analyse and predict the consequences of your decisions.

This new edition is much broader in its application areas - public, private and not-for-profit sectors. It contains new models and propositions with regard to types of social organisation, domains of work and the nature and use of authority. It contains a range of new case studies, and throughout looks at how these ideas can be used to achieve an organisation's purpose while encouraging creative working. It is not a book about fads or fashion but an integrated approach that offers the user the benefit of foresight.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138036579
• ISBN13: 9781138036574
• Release Date: May 2018
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 348 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.8" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Pragmatic and insightful -- good reference

This is a very readable and pragmatic book for anyone interested in understanding how people contribute to the organization's ability to act intelligently, learn, and produce results. The book exemplifies "knowledge for action" in the sense that Chris Agyris used that term. The reader will pick up insights that are immediately useable and lay the groundwork for a powerful gestalt. The authors focus on how all the puzzle pieces of the organization not only fit together but interrelate. The book is organized so the reader can focus on a particular area of interest, find just enough theory to prepare for a more practical examination, and read about real-world examples. The reader is not bogged down in theoretical details, and does not follow a recipe. Instead, he or she is given enough guidance and freedom to build up knowledge from a personal perspective. Using a background of Elliott Jaques' stratification theory, the book examines how people interact with situations to accomplish work and produce results, why they succeed or fail, and how and why individual and organizational learning occur (or not). The book is richly cross-referenced so the individual can examine a concept across topics, and it has an excellent index. I highly recommend this book for any manager or student of management who is interested in learning organizations, strategy, personnel management, and knowledge management.

Systems Leadership: Creating Positive Organisations

Excellent read. Good balance between theory and practicality. The management approach proffered has successfully underpinned Rio Tinto's management system for more than a quarter century. Whilst the book is based on Elliott Jaques' studies and theories, it is well tempered by the managerial experience of its authors. The book is annoted with numerous stories of Rio's implementation challenges, and the benefits so derived. Not necessarily a "How To" book, but full of good management sense backed by conceptual frameworks.