Experiencing Organizations

Told through the fresh, sharp eyes of new organizational recruits, these sometimes comic, often traumatic, but always vivid and revealing accounts of organizations have much to say to learners and old hands alike. Grouped in sections on `images', `winning and losing' and `survival and injuries', the narratives encompass a wide gamut of themes and issue. These include: power and politics in organizations; organizational cultures and change; gender and discrimination; appearances and realities; leaders and followers; and emotion, motivation and stress. The authors also focus on the coldly competitive features of businesses where processes such as restructuring, rationalization and downsizing are increasingly commonplace.

Throughout, commentaries by Stephen Fineman and Yiannis Gabriel highlight particular points of analysis and learning, while each chapter concludes with questions for discussion and a selected bibliography enabling further reading.

Hersteller:	SAGE Publications
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Stephen Fineman is Professor of Organizational Behaviour, School of Management, University of Bath

CONTRIBUTORS' AFFILIATIONS OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA:

Gillian Bendelow University of Warwick

Karen P Harlos University of Otago, Dunedin

Avraham N Kluger The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Berry Mayall University of London

Anat Rafaeli Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa

Varda Wasserman The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Yiannis Gabriel is Professor of Organizational Theory at Bath University. Yiannis has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Yiannis is well known for his work into organizational storytelling and narratives, leadership, management learning and the culture and politics of contemporary consumption. He has used stories as a way of studying numerous social and organizational phenomena including leader-follower relations, group dynamics and fantasies, nostalgia, insults and apologies. He has also carried out extensive research on the psychoanalysis of organizations.

 

Yiannis is founder and coordinator of the Organizational Storytelling Seminar series, now in its fourteenth year (See http://www.organizational-storytelling.org.uk/), the author of nine books and numerous articles. He is elected to the board of EGOS and is currently Senior Editor of Organization Studies. His enduring fascination as a researcher lies in what he describes as the unmanageable qualities of life in and out of organizations.

`The success of the book, according to the authors, on whether the readers will find the material interesting, amusing, moving, alarming; "in short, whether it resonates with their own experiences and interests" (p. 188). On this count, it would be very odd if the book is not successful.... a stimulating and unpretentious additon to the literature on organizational behaviour' - Industrial Relations Journal

`Even though behavioural theories on organizations have been around for quite a while, live reality is different. Experiencing Organizations is a book that collects cases: cases narrated by newcomers to organizations and students on internships. They are, in the authors' words, "unusually frank expressions of real experience", and, I would add, very rewarding to read' - Organization Studies

`Some revealing insights into what really happens in organizations, seen through the eyes of new recruits' - Long Range Planning

`This book is a wonderful antidote to those dry and colorless tomes that pass as introductory texts of organizational behavior. Order it, read it, use it!' - Larry Hirschhorn, Center for Applied Research, Philadelphia

`Ingenious and original. Young people's vivid first-hand accounts of the daily dramas of business life, economically and intelligently balanced with sympathetic commentary, thought-provoking questions and scholarly reference' - Nigel Nicholson, London Business School

`The stories by students of observations and experiences from their first internships in organizations are rich and evocative. Coupled with cogent interpretations and thoughtful discussions by Fineman and Gabriel, Experiencing Organizations is a first-rate vehicle for teaching and learning about organizational life' - Peter Frost, University of British Columbia, Vancouver