The Organization

Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend’s bestseller first among eighty books that “every manager must read.” This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend’s timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.

Regarded as one of the most important sociological and business commentaries of modern times, The Organization Man developed the first thorough description of the impact of mass organization on American society. During the height of the Eisenhower administration, corporations appeared to provide a blissful answer to postwar life with the marketing of new technologies—television, affordable cars, space travel, fast food—and lifestyles, such as carefully planned suburban communities centered around the nuclear family. William H. Whyte found this phenomenon alarming. As an editor for Fortune magazine, Whyte was well placed to observe corporate America; it became clear to him that the American belief in the perfectibility of society was shifting from one of individual initiative to one that could be achieved at the expense of the individual. With its clear analysis of contemporary working and living arrangements, The Organization Man rapidly achieved bestseller status. Since the time of the book's original publication, the American workplace has undergone massive changes. In the 1990s, the rule of large corporations seemed less relevant as small entrepreneurs made fortunes from new technologies, in the process bucking old corporate trends. In fact this "new economy" appeared to have doomed Whyte's original analysis as an artifact from a bygone day. But the recent collapse of so many startup businesses, gigantic mergers of international conglomerates, and the reality of economic globalization make The Organization Man all the more essential as background for understanding today's global market. This edition contains a new foreword by noted journalist and author Joseph Nocera. In an afterword Jenny Bell Whyte describes how The Organization Man was written.

This is a story of reinvention. Jim Whitehurst, celebrated president and CEO of one of the world's most revolutionary software companies, tells first-hand his journey from traditional manager (Delta Air Lines, Boston Consulting Group) and “chief” problem solver to CEO of one of the most open organizational environments he'd ever encountered. This challenging transition, and what Whitehurst learned in the interim, has paved the way for a new way of managing—one this modern leader sees as the only way companies will successfully function in the future. Whitehurst says beyond embracing the technology that has so far disrupted entire industries, companies must now adapt their management and organizational design to better fit the Information Age. His mantra? “Adapt or die.” Indeed, the successful company Whitehurst leads—the open source giant Red Hat—has become the organizational poster child for how to reboot, redesign, and reinvent an organization for a decentralized, digital age. Based on open source principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, “open management” challenges conventional business ideas about what companies are, how they run, and how they make money. This book provides the blueprint for putting it into practice in your own firm. He covers challenges that have been missing from the conversation to date, among them: how to scale engagement; how to have healthy debates that net progress; and how to attract and keep the “Social Generation” of workers. Through a mix of vibrant stories, candid lessons, and tested processes, Whitehurst shows how Red Hat has blown the traditional operating model to pieces by emerging out of a pure bottom up culture and learning how to execute it at scale. And he explains what other companies are, and need to be doing to bring this open style into all facets of the organization. By showing how to apply open source methods to everything from structure, management, and strategy to a firm's customer and partner relationships, leaders and teams will now have the tools needed to reach a new level of work. And with that new level of work comes unparalleled success. The Open Organization is your new resource for doing business differently. Get ready to make traditional management thinking obsolete.

Using a narrative approach unique to organizational studies, Czarniawska employs literary devices to uncover the hidden workings of organizations. She shows how the interpretive description of organizational worlds works as a distinct genre of social analysis, and her investigations ultimately disclose the paradoxical nature of organizational life: we follow routine in order to change, and decentralize in order to control. By confronting such paradoxes, we bring crisis to existing institutions and enable them to change.

It is often claimed that we live in an expert society, a society where more and more individuals take expert roles in increasingly narrow fields. In contrast to more traditional experts most of these new experts lack generally accepted mechanisms for the certification and legitimation of their expertise. This book focuses on these new as well as established experts and the efforts undertaken to secure and legitimate their expertise. We view these efforts as organizing attempts and study them on four different levels – the society, the market, the organization and the individual. Based on empirical studies on these four levels of analysis, The Organization of the Expert Society makes the argument that current organizing initiatives in the expert society are based in an objectifying view of expertise that risks concealing and downplaying key aspects of expertise. Well-intended organizing initiatives in the expert society thus run the risk of promoting ignorance rather than securing expertise. Focusing on a current, general and global phenomenon, the rise and organization of an expert society. The Organization of the Expert Society will be key reading for scholars, academics and policy makers in the management fields of Organizational Theory, Management Consulting, Organizations & Society, Critical Management Studies as well as the disciplines of Sociology, Political Science and Social Anthropology.

Have you ever wished you had the time and tools to organize your house in a clutter-free, design-conscious, Pinterest-worthy way? From storage solutions and cleaning tips to secret space-saving methods and expert strategies, The Complete Book of Home Organization is packed with the tips and shortcuts you need to effectively organize your home. From small spaces and apartment solutions to how to tackle a big, messy home with a 15-week total home organization challenge, this book covers it all. The Complete Book of Home Organization spells out everything you need to de-clutter your house, store your belongings, and keep your home—and life—in tip-top shape. With high-quality design, intricate detail, and a durable flexicover—this manual is the perfect gift! Organize the 30 main spaces of your home, including the living and dining spaces, bedrooms and bathrooms, guest areas, baby and kids’ rooms, utility spaces and garages, entryways and offices, patios and decks, closets and pet areas! Keep track of your pantry, holiday and craft supplies, weekly menu planning, keepsakes, and schedules. From the basement to the attic, this book covers every nook and cranny. With step-by-step instructions, detailed illustrations, and handy checklists, say goodbye to a messy home and wasted storage space!

Tierney, University of Southern California; and the late J. Douglas Toma, University of Georgia