Overview

There are five ways of organising: the hierarchical, the egalitarian, the individualistic, the fatalistic and the autonomous. Each approach is a way of disorganising the other four: without the other four, it would have nothing to organise itself against. In Organising and Disorganising, Michael Thompson gives a detailed explanation of the dynamics of these five fundamental arrangements that underlie 'Cultural Theory'. We may believe that our perspective is the right one and that any interaction with opposing views is a messy and unwelcome contradiction. So why should egalitarians engage with individualists, or hierachists with egalitarians? Using a range of examples and analogies, the author shows how the best outcomes depend upon an essential argumentative process, which encourages subversions that are constructive whilst discouraging those that are not. In this way each approach gets more of what it wants and less of what it doesn't want. Michael Thompson calls these best outcomes 'Clumsy Solutions'. The lively style of its presentation and its rigorous attention to detail makes this book suitable for a wide audience - from managers and academic theorists to those who are responsible for effective and enlightened action on challenging global issues.

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Reviews

"... this is a book which is significant and should be widely read by organization theorists. It is in many ways a throw-back to an older style of theorizing - Talcott Parsons is mentioned in passing - but in an age when big-picture theorizing seems to be in retreat - in part because of the decline of the book as a resource for scholarship, which, in turn, is partly due to the triumph of science-based models governing research assessment exercises privileging the journal article - this book is a timely reminder of what a broad, reflective and theoretically coherent social science of organizations can offer. It makes a refreshing change from empiricist, mid-range theoretics, prepositional science fiction, and the multiple-regression of variables without rigorously coherent multivariate theoretical forethought that one sometimes finds in the journals; the marriage of cultural and organization theory could provide a very fruitful springboard for future research."" Stuart Clegg, Journal of Organization Studies August 09 issue."

... this is a book which is significant and should be widely read by organization theorists. It is in many ways a throw-back to an older style of theorizing - Talcott Parsons is mentioned in passing - but in an age when big-picture theorizing seems to be in retreat - in part because of the decline of the book as a resource for scholarship, which, in turn, is partly due to the triumph of science-based models governing research assessment exercises privileging the journal article - this book is a timely reminder of what a broad, reflective and theoretically coherent social science of organizations can offer. It makes a refreshing change from empiricist, mid-range theoretics, prepositional science fiction, and the multiple-regression of variables without rigorously coherent multivariate theoretical forethought that one sometimes finds in the journals; the marriage of cultural and organization theory could provide a very fruitful springboard for future research. Stuart Clegg, Journal of Organization Studies August 09 issue.

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