Various Ways to Look at Organizations
Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright 1997-2007.Probably everyone in the workplace has their own conception of what "organization" means. As with most highly complex terms, everyone is right and everyone is wrong.
The concept of organizational culture is much like an organizational "personality". Organizations, like people, have life cycles.
Many people view organizational learning much like we view organisms to be learning. Organizations can accumulate and manage knowledge as well. There are a variety of books that describe other traits of organizations much like traits of people, e.g., depressed organizations, addictive organizations, etc.
One of the most common ways to look at organizations is as organizational systems. (This is the view that was used in this library when describing the concept of an organization.) This view is becoming common among professionals who study, teach and write about organizations. Practitioners who work with organizational management to improve organizations also tend to view organizations as systems. Note that machines, organisms, persons, groups, families, family dynasties are all systems, too.
Two people can be looking at the very same organization, but
have completely different perspectives and language about the
same organization. Unless you know the various ways to view organizations,
you'll miss all the perspectives -- you'll miss the more accurate
truth about the organization you're studying. You'll only see
"one view of the elephant -- you'll grab the elephant's trunk
and think it's a snake."
Organizational
Lens -- How Different People Can View the Same Organization Very
Differently
For the Category of Organizational Development:
Related Library Topics
Recommended Books
Managing Organizational Change
Managing Organizational Change
Field
Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in for-profit or government organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.
Field
Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development With Nonprofits
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in nonprofit organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.
The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.
Growing Your Organization
The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.
Also See
Capacity Building (Nonprofit) -- Recommended Books
