Overview

Based on data regarding corporate mortality, organizations are built to fail: a conclusion critical to managers, employees, stockholders, consultants, customers, vendors, competitors, and therefore all of us who transact with and depend on organizations. Yet, literature about organizational management tends to focus on education and inspiration, and to bristle with optimism about the potential success of applying its wares. Ignored, in virtually all of this literature is the reality that personnel may or may not be inherently self-interested, but certainly join business organizations in order to serve individual rather than organizational interests. Individual self-interest is advanced through control of various processes in order to rationalize that self-interest as a productive, organizational purpose, which not simply suppresses opposition but also conceals or even demonizes that opposition. These processes include such familiar organizational functions as individual and organizational goal-setting, job and organizational design, leadership, hiring, performance appraisal, compensation, promotion, communication, corporate culture, and change. At all levels, therefore, the organization's long-term interest is undermined by the goals of the very members of whom it is comprised—it is built to fail. And through control of its various internal processes and elimination of opposition, the organization pursues self-destructive goals without knowing it.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonathan Klein
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Praeger Publishers Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9781567202977

ISBN 10:   1567202977
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   30 May 2000
Recommended Age:   From 7 to 17 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Failure in Purpose The Corporate Suicide Mission: The Emergence of Organizational Purpose The Structure and Content of Failure The Enemy Within: Organizational Members and Their Jobs Dressed for Success, Qualified to Fail: Staffing the Organization Failure in Methods and Function The Psychopathology of Leadership The Training and Evaluation of Incompetence Failure as Its Own Reward The Process of Failure Together We Fall Partners in Crime The Company of Strangers: Organizational Communication and the Lack of It The Outcome of Failure The Smoking Gun: Life Inside the Monopoly The Ritual of Change The Blind Leading the Blind: Learning How to Fail The Agony of Defeat: The Hidden Costs of Organizational Failure Beyond Failure Learning from Failure: Saving Organizations from Themselves The End of Organization as We Know It: Survival in the Postorganizational World Epilogue Appendices Further Reading Index

Reviews

Jonathan Klein has produced an intriguing, thought-provoking book that considers carefully the present state and future of business organizations. The timeliness of the volume cannot be disputed. It is well documented and very logically presented...It is a scholarly volume yet very readable... It should be available in academic and public libraries and read by anyone studying organizational behavior. - Personnel Psychology

<p>Jonathan Klein has produced an intriguing, thought-provoking book that considers carefully the present state and future of business organizations. The timeliness of the volume cannot be disputed. It is well documented and very logically presented....It is a scholarly volume yet very readable.... It should be available in academic and public libraries and read by anyone studying organizational behavior. - <p>Personnel Psychology

This book is a MUST READ. ...with the release of Corporate Failure by Design: Why Organizations are Built to Fail, Dr. Jonathan Klein takes his rightful place among the best and brightest of business writers and analysts in the 21st century! No other author has used insight and research skills to so eloquently state the true dysfunctional nature of the organization, and the very fact that each organization is literally designed for failure right from the start. I guarantee that you will find Dr. Klein's book enlightening... a real eye opener! -Richard S. Hockett Founder/President Creative Business Solutions

Author Information

JONATHAN I. KLEIN has served on the faculty at the Graduate School of Management at Rutgers University, where he won the Horace de Podwin Award for research excellence, at Pepperdine University, and at California State University, Los Angeles. Klein currently teaches at the University of Southern California, the California School of Professional Psychology, and at California Lutheran University. In addition, he serves as Director of the Doctorate in Business Administration program at American International University in Los Angeles, and as a consultant to corporate management.

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