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Organization Theory and Design

1 stars (Didn't receive what I paid for) - The seller advertised that they had a hardcover version and I recieved a paperback, international version.....False advertising!!!!!! 5 stars (The learning book) - " Organization Theory and Design " is a book every corporate member that has aspirations to better understand and contribute to his organization should own. I used this book studying a basic course of organizational behavior after the professor had referred to it as "the best text on the market". I found out he was right - the book is extremely well-written and its contribution to my understanding of the subject is invaluable. As it happened, I partly read older versions of the book to find out how every few years Daft updates his analysis, insights and examples of the ever changing and evolving world of organizations; for instance, the past example of IBM that served as the major opening example of an organization that has gone from the top of the world to the brink of disintegration in the beginning of the 90's, is replaced in this 8th edition with Xerox. Daft continues and presents the most recent developments in organizations' design - structures and management methods that have only emerged lately in response to the turbulences in the environments and competition worldwide. By making the changes in every edition "Organization theory and design" wins the title of this review - "the learning book" - that mirror images the main theme of this work - "the learning organization". Almost no organization can stand still in today's reality - managers and workers have to constantly think of better ways of doing things and learn from every source that bears knowledge and can give the organization a better competitive advantage. Things have never moved so fast and threats and opportunities have never been so immense. Competitors have to be efficient and different to survive and stay on the top. The structure of the book is designed to convey its ideas in the best p...
South-Western College Pub :: Business & Economics & Organizational Behavior :: Organizational sociology :: Organizational Behavior :: Organization :: Management - General :: Entrepreneurshi :: Organization Theory and Design

 

Organizational Behavior

2 stars (There are much better books out there) - ?·Very little focus on individual behavior in organizations - I know this is not a psychology text, but, Jex (2002), or one of the other psych authors (Osland, 2000) could have used for this course with much better coverage and not alter the course objectives to a great extent. ?·For a 2003 edition of text, the citations were very much out of date. The chapter on leadership for example (Chapter 14, which had a total of 53 citations) had only seven references within the last five years; 1998 or greater. ?·I am not of the opinion that this was a graduate text. The stories, pictures, essay and "effective manager" were not intellectual in their added information. In many cases the added material didn't correspond to the text (see chart on page 48 and subsequent text explanation). Another example would be on page 157 they ask the reader to refer to Figure 8.2 and then explain the chart with text that isn't even related to the major sections of this chart. oNot one of the Effective Manager boxes has references; where did all this good advice come from? ?·Typo's abounded in the text, they always do - but check out page 233 Chapter summary - it's not the right chapter; this appears agan with chapter 19. I really had the feeling that this was written by three people who did not do a line-by-line update of the 7th edition. ?·Of very serious concern would be the author's inclusion of sources in their writing. This infuriated me to no end. Page 63 under Gender "However, women are reported to be more conforming and to have lower expectations of success than men do." That is a very serious statement and it contains no citation - what reports, who, where, when? Another example is on page 85 when discussion perceptual differences in managers and employees - not citations given, even when stating that the differences are significant. oJust to show that I did not cull these examples only from the front of the book, Pg 274 "Recent wor...
Wiley :: Organizational theory & behaviour :: Business & Economics & Organizational Behavior :: Organizational Behavior :: Management - General :: Management :: Entrepre :: Organizational Behavior