Organizations_ A Very Short Introduction

What it’s about

Mary Jo Hatch's accessible introduction reveals that organizing is something everyone does, from arranging a closet to running a multinational. Building on the reader's own experience, she distinguishes the 'three Os'—organization (a state), organizations (entities), and organizing (an ongoing process)—and uses four powerful metaphors (machine, organism, culture, psychic prison) to illuminate how scholars from economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and the arts understand organizational life. Along the way she explains design, hierarchy, bureaucracy, technology, environment, institutions, culture, power, identity, and networks, while grappling with deep questions about who organizing serves and where it is heading in a globalizing, post-industrial world. Curious readers gain a stimulating conceptual toolkit for seeing organizations everywhere and thinking critically and creatively about them.

The through-line

Who it’s for

A curious general reader who participates in organizations daily and wants to understand how and why organizing works.

The problem

Organizations are everywhere yet poorly understood, leaving the reader without concepts to make sense of how they function. The reader feels that organizational life is confusing, abstract, or even oppressive, and lacks a vocabulary to think clearly about it.

The plan

1. Distinguish the three Os: organization, organizations, and organizing.
2. Use the four metaphors to imagine organizations in richer ways.
3. Learn how design, structure, technology, and environment shape organizing.
4. Understand how meaning, institutions, and culture construct organizational reality.
5. Examine power, politics, and identity to see who organizing serves.

The payoff

The reader gains a rich conceptual toolkit for seeing and analyzing organizations everywhere. · The reader can think critically and creatively about organizing in work and life. · The reader appreciates both scientific and artistic ways of knowing organizations.

See our guide

• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →
• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →
• Build A People Analytics Function →
• Design The Organization And Change It →
• Do Research That Holds Up →
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →

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Additional reading

• Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic and Postmodern Perspectives · Mary Jo Hatch (with A. Cunliffe)

  It is the author's own comprehensive academic textbook, providing deeper discussions on nearly all topics covered in this introductory volume.

• Images of Organization · Gareth Morgan

  The classic work on using metaphors to understand organizations, which is a central rhetorical and conceptual device used throughout this book.

• The Social Psychology of Organizing · Karl E. Weick

  The foundational text for the concepts of sensemaking and enactment, which are crucial for understanding the process-based view of 'organizing' rather than static 'organizations'.

• Institutions and Organizations · W. Richard Scott

  A key text explaining institutional theory, which the book uses to describe how organizations conform to their environments to gain legitimacy.

• Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations · Jeffrey Pfeffer

  A foundational text on power and politics in organizations, expanding on the themes of resource dependence and political behavior discussed in Chapter 4.

• The Social Construction of Reality · Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann

  The seminal work that explains how reality is created through social interaction, a core concept for understanding organizational culture and symbolism.

Featured in these guides

• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →Cited source
• Build A People Analytics Function →Cited source
• Design The Organization And Change It →Cited source
• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →Cited source
• Do Research That Holds Up →Cited source
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →Cited source
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →Cited source