Do Organizations Have Feelings?

by Martin Albrow

Overview

Do Organisations have Feelings? argues that any adequate explanation of the way organizations function for those engaged in business and those who study it must transcend the traditional divide between reason and emotion. The papers in this important collection by one of the leading world authorities in the studies of organizations were written over a period of thirty years. They are now presented together for the first time with an extended commentary and discussion by the author and two specially written chapters to bring the story right up-to-date. Together they provide a fascinating history of the way organizations have reflected changes in society at large as we move into the epoch of globalisation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415115476
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/28/1997
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Martin Albrow has been Eric Voegelin Guest Professor in the University of Munich and is currently Research Professor of Social Sciences at Roehampton Institute London. His other publications include Bureaucracy (1970), Max Weber’s Construction of Social Theory (1990) and The Global Age (1996).

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: THE NECESSITY FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZING Big ideas; small sciences. Passing fashions, enduring problems, For a pragmatic universalism, Persisting sociology Part I Objectivity and reflexivity 1 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONS—OBJECTIVITY OR BIAS? 2 THE DIALECTIC OF SCIENCE AND VALUES IN THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONS 2.1 Utility: organizational science as technology 2.2 Relativity and reality: fundamental assumptions in the study of organizations 2.3 Reflexivity: organizations as theoretical constructs 2.4 Conclusion Part II Reassessing Weber for current uses 3 THE APPLICATION OF THE WEBERIAN CONCEPT OF RATIONALIZATION TO CONTEMPORARY CONDITIONS 3.1 Developing the rationalization thesis 3.2 Two contemporary cases of rationalization 3.3 The bounds of rationality 4 REDEFINING AUTHORITY FOR POST-WEBERIAN CONDITIONS 4.1 The pivotal place of legal-rational authority in modernity 4.2 On not amending Weber’s concept of authority 4.3 Changing concepts for a changed world 4.4 A concept of authority for postmodern organizing Part III Feeling for new organization 5 SINE IRA ET STUDIO—OR DO ORGANIZATIONS HAVE FEELINGS? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Organization before bureaucracy 5.3 The Weber puzzle 5.4 Passionate bureaucrats and loving entrepreneurs 5.5 A theoretical site for feelings 5.6 Conclusion 6 REVISING ACCOUNTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL FEELING 6.1 Researching emotionality in organizations 6.2 Organizational goals 6.3 Task performance 6.4 Communication and situational logics 6.5 Emotions and organizational structure Part IV Organizing returns from the social 7 SOCIOLOGY FOR POSTMODERN ORGANIZERS—WORKING THE NET with Neil Washbourne 7.1 Sociology and the social reality of organization 7 2 Three old modern benchmarks for the social 7.3 Environmentalism as postmodern organization 7.4 Organizing work 7.5 Social change narrative 7.6 The Net and recoveries of the social 8 SOCIOLOGY FOR ORGANIZATION IN THE GLOBAL AGE 8.1 The non-modernity of the sociology of organization 8.2 Deconstructing the theory of the modern organization 8.3 Postmodern organizing or the sociology of postmodernity 8.4 The postmodern condition of organization 8.5 Epochal change and organizational narratives