Organizational Traps

Organizational Traps PDF Author: Chris Argyris
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615129
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Anyone who has spent time in an organization knows that dysfunctional behavior abounds. Conflict is frequently avoided or pushed underground rather than dealt with openly. At the same time, the same arguments often burst out again and again, almost verbatim. Turf battles continue for extended periods without resolution. People nod their heads in agreement in meetings, and then rush out of the room to voice complaints to sympathetic ears in private. Worst of all, when people are asked if things will ever change, they throw up their hands in despair. They feel like victims trapped in an asylum. And people often are trapped. But they are not trapped by some oppressive regime or organizational structure that has been imposed on them. They are not victims. In fact, people themselves are responsible for making the status quo so resistant to change. We are trapped by our own behavior. Researchers and practitioners have often reflected on these things, but there is a puzzle. On the one hand, there is substantial agreement that these traps are counterproductive to effective performance. On the other hand, there is almost no focus on how organizational traps can be prevented or reduced. This book argues that whatever theory is used to describe and understand such organizational traps should be used to design and implement interventions that reduce and prevent them. Argyris is one of the world's leading management scholars whose work has consistently shed light on orgainzational problems. This book is essential reading for MBAs, managers, and consultants.

Organizational Traps

Organizational Traps PDF Author: Chris Argyris
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615129
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
Anyone who has spent time in an organization knows that dysfunctional behavior abounds. Conflict is frequently avoided or pushed underground rather than dealt with openly. At the same time, the same arguments often burst out again and again, almost verbatim. Turf battles continue for extended periods without resolution. People nod their heads in agreement in meetings, and then rush out of the room to voice complaints to sympathetic ears in private. Worst of all, when people are asked if things will ever change, they throw up their hands in despair. They feel like victims trapped in an asylum. And people often are trapped. But they are not trapped by some oppressive regime or organizational structure that has been imposed on them. They are not victims. In fact, people themselves are responsible for making the status quo so resistant to change. We are trapped by our own behavior. Researchers and practitioners have often reflected on these things, but there is a puzzle. On the one hand, there is substantial agreement that these traps are counterproductive to effective performance. On the other hand, there is almost no focus on how organizational traps can be prevented or reduced. This book argues that whatever theory is used to describe and understand such organizational traps should be used to design and implement interventions that reduce and prevent them. Argyris is one of the world's leading management scholars whose work has consistently shed light on orgainzational problems. This book is essential reading for MBAs, managers, and consultants.

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps PDF Author: Jennifer Garvey Berger
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503609782
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Author and consultant Jennifer Garvey Berger has worked with all types of leaders—from top executives at Google to nonprofit directors who are trying to make a dent in social change. She hears a version of the same plea from every client in nearly every sector around the world: "I know that complexity and uncertainty are testing my instincts, but I don't know which to trust. Is there some way to know what to do when I can't know what's next?" Her newest work is an answer to this plea. Using her background in adult development, complexity theories, and leadership consultancy, Garvey Berger discerns five pernicious and pervasive "mind traps" to frame the book. These are: the desire for simple stories, our sense that we are right, our desire to get along with others in our group, our fixation with control, and our constant quest to protect and defend our egos. In addition to understanding why these natural impulses steer us wrong in a fast-moving world, leaders will get powerful questions and approaches that help them escape these patterns.

Managing Industrial Knowledge

Managing Industrial Knowledge PDF Author: Ikujiro Nonaka
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1847876625
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Managing Industrial Knowledge illuminates the complex processes at work in the creation and successful transfer of corporate knowledge. It is now generally recognized that the competitive advantages of firms depends on their ability to build, utilize and protect knowledge assets. In this volume many of the foremost international authors and pioneers of the study of knowledge in firms present their latest work and insights into organizational knowledge and innovation. In a world where markets, products, technologies, competitors, regulations, and even societies change rapidly, continuous innovation and the knowledge that produces innovation have become key. The chapters in this keynote volume shed new light on the contextual factors in knowledge creation, the links between knowledge and innovation in all aspects of business life and the processes by which these may be fostered or lost in organizations.

The Economics of Poverty Traps

The Economics of Poverty Traps PDF Author: Christopher B. Barrett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657430X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

Organization Theory

Organization Theory PDF Author: Oliver E. Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195098307
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This collection of papers is edited by renowned business thinker Oliver Williamson, who is currently Transamerica Professor of Corporate Strategy at the School of Business Administration at Berkeley. The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chester I. Barnard's remarkable and still influential book, The Functions of the Executive, was celebrated with a seminar series at the University of California, Berkeley in the Spring of 1988. Eight of those lectures are published here. The contributors include organization specialists and sociologists (Barbara Levitt and James March; W. Richard Scott; Glenn Carroll; Jeffrey Pfeffer), an anthropologist, a political scientist, and two economists (Mary Douglas; Terry Moe; Oliver Hart; Oliver Williamson). An important contribution to organization theory, this volume reports on recent progress in this field, and projects a productive research future.

Overcoming Organizational Defenses

Overcoming Organizational Defenses PDF Author: Chris Argyris
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Organizational defences that exist in most organizations can inhibit organizational performance. This book shows how to diagnose the organization to expose the weaknesses. Each chapter contains advice about how to reduce organizational defences to bring about improved involvement and performance.

Research in Organizational Change and Development

Research in Organizational Change and Development PDF Author: William A. Pasmore
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1780520239
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In this diverse volume new methodologies are introduced, such as the strategic fitness process for engaging leaders in better understanding the reactions of employees to strategic change efforts (Beer); Jazz as a metaphor for organizational improvisation (Bernstein & Barrett); and new theories for understanding change processes (Gomez & Ballard).

Rebels at Work

Rebels at Work PDF Author: Lois Kelly
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491903910
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Ready to stand up and create positive change at work, but reluctant to speak up? True leadership doesn’t always come from a position of power or authority. By teaching you skills and providing practical advice, this handbook shows you how to engage your coworkers and bosses and bring your ideas forward so that they are heard, considered, and acted upon. Authors Carmen Medina and Lois Kelly—once rebels themselves—reveal ways to navigate your workplace, avoid common mistakes and traps, and overcome the fears that may be holding you back. You can achieve more success and less frustration, help your organization do better work, and—most important—find more meaning and joy in what you do.

Handbook of Organizational and Entrepreneurial Ingenuity

Handbook of Organizational and Entrepreneurial Ingenuity PDF Author: Benson Honig
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1782549048
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The editors of this Handbook, Benson Honig, Joseph Lampel and Israel Drori, define organizational ingenuity as •the ability to create innovative solutions within structural constraints using limited resources and imaginative problem solvingê. They exam

The Kenotic Organization

The Kenotic Organization PDF Author: Brian E. Ruffner
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1664267212
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Although organizations frequently proclaim the desire for change, renewal and transformation, few ever fully embrace those ideas, failing to rise above more than mere mediocrity and never realizing even a fraction of their true potential. Certainly, many pontificate on the nature of organizations as they live and breathe, so to speak; yet, few question how the organization ought to be. This ought belies the existential and ethical dimensions of organizing and, as such, points to a discipline not often associated with the organizational realm–theology. To this end, the concept of the kenotic organization offers a much-needed antidote to the syndrome described above. Drawing on the divine Trinitarian kenosis observed in the creation event and witnessed in the Incarnation, the simultaneous actions of self-limiting and pouring out inform the organizational cause and expose a deeply entangled organizational mesh enveloping the entire cosmos which can serve as a catalyst to excite preferred organizational behaviors. It is, in fact, the humility of Trinitarian kenosis, the willingness to withdraw but also at once pour out the individual essence, that generates the thrust necessary to escape the gravitational pull of convention which typical inhibits organizational flourishing.