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Seeing Organizational Patterns

Seeing Organizational Patterns: A New Theory and Language of Organizational Design
By Robert W. Keidel
2005/03 - Beard Books 
1587982595 - Paperback - Reprint -  220 pp.
US$34.95 

Provides a helpful and comprehensive framework upon which to develop an organizational strategy.

Publisher Comments

Categories: Banking and Finance

This title is part of the Smart Management list.

Every manager in every sector and at every level is challenged by organizational complexities. This book explains that most organizational issues are a balance of three variables: individual autonomy, hierarchical control, and spontaneous cooperation. By learning to frame issues as tradeoffs among these variables, one can see underlying patterns that previously had not been visible--and thereby make more intelligent analyses, choices, and commitments than would otherwise be possible.

From the back cover blurb:

Today, as was true in 1995 when this book first appeared, every manager in every sector and at every level is challenged by organizational complexities-- demands and data from all directions. In order to make sense of this complexity, managers, consultants, and academics have devised a multitude of organizational models. However, nearly all of these models turn out to be of limited real-world utility because either they oversimplify reality by focusing on just one or two variables or they are themselves as complex as the reality they are trying to simplify. Seeing Organizational Patterns present a third option--a new prism for viewing organizational design that is neither simplistic nor unduly complicated.

Robert Keidel explains that most organizational issues are a balance of three variables: individual autonomy, hierarchical control, and spontaneous cooperation. By learning to frame issues as tradeoffs among these design variables, one can see underlying patterns that previously had not been visible--and thereby make more intelligent analyses, choices and commitments than would otherwise be possible. It is easy to see why this book was nominated for the Academy of Management's 1996 George R. Terry Book Award.

From Harold W. Burlingame, Senior Vice President, AT&T:

Keidel identifies the organizational design challenges facing today's global corporations and provides a helpful and comprehensive framework upon which to develop organizational strategy.

From Ian Scott, Director, Organization & Business Practices, The World Bank:

Keidel's triadic framework for understanding organizational issues is elegant, robust, and in my experience , broadly applicable. More important, it works. This book should find a place beside the best known, most read books on organization and management.

From Charles B. Wang, Chairman & CEO, Computer Associates International: 

Keidel doesn't simplify management complexities--he clarifies them. [This] is must reading for serious students who demand rigorous analysis.

Robert W. Keidel is Visiting Professor of Management at LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, where he teaches (Executive) MBA courses in strategy, technology, and organization. He is also the principal of Robert Keidel Associates in Wyncote, PA. He was a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; faculty Fellow at the US Office of Personnel Management; and Program Consultant at the National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life. He is the author of three other books and numerous articles. He holds a B.A. from Williams College and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the Wharton School.

Other Beard Books by Robert W. Keidel:

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
PART 1. UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
1. The Triadic Nature of Organization 3
2. Varieties of Design Failure 15
3. Triangulating Autonomy, Control, and Cooperation 27

PART 2. FRAMING ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

4. Organizational Strategy 49
5. Organizational Structure 65
6. Organizational Systems 77

PART 3. DESIGNING FOR TOMORROW

7. Toward an Organizational Pattern Language 99
8. A New Organizational Form 121
Appendix A: Notes on Design Methods 143
Appendix B: Theoretical Trial 149
Notes 181
Index 201
The Author 205

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