American Anti-Management Theories of Organization: A Critique Of Paradigm Proliferation: 25 (Cambridge Studies in Management, Series Number 25)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 3/16/1995
EAN 9780521479172, ISBN10: 0521479177
Paperback, 278 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
This book offers a critique of recent developments in the study of organizational structure in the USA. There has been a profusion of new paradigms offered in the USA and this has fragmented the field. Many of these paradigms share an anti-management quality, painting managers in an increasingly negative light. This book examines five major, contemporary US organizational theories: population-ecology, institutional, resource dependence, agency and transaction cost economics. Each of these theories and their attendant research is critically examined and severe problems are identified in either theoretical coherence or empirical validity. Lex Donaldson argues that it is possible to reintegrate the field by taking structural contingency theory as the core theory and adding on to it selective propositions from the newer paradigms. He also offers suggestions for needed reforms in the US academic cultural and institutional system.
1. Anti-management paradigms in organization theory
2. Structural contingency theory of organizational adaptation
3. A critique of population-ecology theory
4. A critique of institutional theory
5. A critique of resource dependence theory
6. A critique of organizational economics
7. Towards a unified theory of organizational structure
8. A way forward for organizational structural theory.