Книги

This paper draws on J.R. Commons theory of institutional change to make some suggestions for integrating the political dimension into an analysis of routines and organisational learning, or the processes that change routines. The programmatic advice offered here remains incomplete, though, as the cognitive aspect of routines is examined from the partial angle of the relational and organisation-specific knowledge that individuals require in order to get the job done. In the concluding section of the paper, the author suggest that research based on the cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition may provide the tools for integrating this latter building-block into a Commons inspired account of routines and organisational learning.

Organizational decisions are characterized by a multiplicity of choice criteria. This property, which in reality affects virtually all human behaviors, prevents use of the standard (neoclassical) theory of decisions based on the maximization of a single criterion. Rather, the outranking methods developed by the French school of operational research make it possible to deal with multicriterial choices and avoid the defects of the naive method. This paper develops a paradigmatic example in order to show the essential effects of the outranking methods and their compatibility with the theory of limited rationality and satisfactory choices.

'Organizational learning, development and planned change cannot be understood without considering culture as a primary source of resistance to change.' Thus argues Schein in the second edition of this seminal book. The work is organized into six parts, dealing with a.what culture is and does; b.the dimensions of culture; c.how to study and interpret culture; d.the role of leadership in building culture; e.the evolution of culture and leadership and; f.learning cultures and learning leaders. Schein's discussion of learning draws explicitly on the thinking of Donald Michael, Tom Malone and Peter Senge and asserts that the leaders of the future will have to be perpetual learners. This is a highly readable book, which pulls together insights from both the academic and practitioner worlds. Its canvass is broad but represents the real depth of understanding that comes from an expert who has spent years developing his knowledge of this topic.

Drawing on a grounded theory research we present a model of organizational improvisation which asserts that this phenomenon is triggered by an unexpected important event brought about by a moderate level of turbulence, relying on a minimal structure and simple resources. The success of improvisation is shown to be affected by the level of equivocality and by the perceived level of task complexity, and results in increased group cohesiveness and faster and less costly future actions. In conclusion the authors argue in favor of a contingency view of organizational improvisation and contend that our model suggests the possibility of a dialectical approach to organizational improvisation.

One of the most important and difficult challenges in dynamic competitive environments is the question of how the organization is structured in order to achieve efficiency, agility, and adaptability simultaneously. This paper presents an effort at theory development, based on in-depth studies of highly knowledge intensive firms, and we propose three key dimensions driving the complexity of organizing: the extent to which tasks (activities) are predefinable ex ante (formerly described as task characteristics), the degree of interdependence between tasks, subtasks, and the people performing the tasks, and the type of coordination required.