This book looks at Chester I. Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to organization theory by examining his life, career, experience, intellectual relationships, philosophy, method, and theory. Barnard (1886–1961) is considered an innovator in the field with the publication of his seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, in 1938. But why was Barnard able to publish such a groundbreaking book despite the fact that he was a practitioner, not an academic researcher? In pursuit of that question, this book carefully investigates the background of his ideas about management, such as his experience, philosophy, and method. It then traces the process of how Barnard built his concepts of organization as it examines his books, published papers, unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence and systematically summarizes how he built his theory of organization and management. Finally, the author explores how Barnard’s theory has the potential to be developed and put into practice by examining his important works after his publication of The Functions of the Executive, which is well known as abstract and difficult. Readers of this present book will come away with a clearer and more systematic understanding of Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to the field.

Most of Chester Barnard’s career was spent in executive practice. A Mount Hermon and Harvard education, cut off short of the bachelor’s degree, was followed by nearly forty years in the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. His career began in the Statistical Department, took him to technical expertness in the economics of rates and administrative experience in the management of commercial operations, and culminated in the presidency of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company. He was not directly involved in the Western Electric experiments conducted chiefly at the Hawthorne plant in Cicero, but his association with Elton Mayo and the latter’s colleagues at the Harvard Business School had an important bearing on his most original ideas. Barnard’s executive experience at AT&T was paralleled and followed by a career in public service unusual in his own time and hardly routine today. He was at various times president of the United Services Organization (the USO of World War II), head of the General Education Board and later president of the Rockefeller Foundation (after Raymond Fosdick and before Dean Rusk), chairman of the National Science Foundation, an assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, a consultant to the American representative in the United Nations Atomic Energy Committee, to name only some of his public interests. He was a director of a number of companies, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a lover of music and a founder of the Bach Society of New Jersey.

This book looks at Chester I. Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to organization theory by examining his life, career, experience, intellectual relationships, philosophy, method, and theory. Barnard (1886–1961) is considered an innovator in the field with the publication of his seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, in 1938. But why was Barnard able to publish such a groundbreaking book despite the fact that he was a practitioner, not an academic researcher? In pursuit of that question, this book carefully investigates the background of his ideas about management, such as his experience, philosophy, and method. It then traces the process of how Barnard built his concepts of organization as it examines his books, published papers, unpublished manuscripts, and correspondence and systematically summarizes how he built his theory of organization and management. Finally, the author explores how Barnard’s theory has the potential to be developed and put into practice by examining his important works after his publication of The Functions of the Executive, which is well known as abstract and difficult. Readers of this present book will come away with a clearer and more systematic understanding of Barnard’s theoretical and practical contributions to the field.

Barnard was prompted by Vilfredo Pareto's seminal four volume work Mind and Society to apply his theories of sociology to management studies. Barnard's study of interaction between people in economic settings was contentious in that he concluded that human behaviour within these settings is largely non-economic and instead approaches ritualistic symbolism.

This book explains Chester Barnard’s management theory clearly, faithfully, and systematically. When Barnard published The Functions of the Executive in 1938, it caused a paradigm shift in the research area of management. He aimed to clarify what executives should do, and how and why, as he argued that executive functions and processes are deeply related to specialization, incentive, authority and communication, decision making, and responsibility and leadership. Thus, The Functions of the Executive is essential reading for management students. This book serves as an introductory guide for undergraduate and graduate students to help them understand Barnard’s management theory. In addition, the book enables researchers to understand how Barnard developed his theory. He accumulated a great amount of experience in managing diverse organizations in both the private and public sectors. Then he gradually shifted his focus from scalar organizations, authority, and vertical communication to lateral organizations, responsibility, and horizontal communication. Finally, this book offers businesspeople helpful insights to create an innovative style of management. As a practitioner, Barnard recognized not only the importance of science but also that of art and value. Experienced businesspeople use not only formal knowledge but also their behavioral and personal knowledge, intuition, business sense, value, and executive art to understand the whole situation, balance conflicting factors, and produce creative solutions. Thus, this book also explores the management abilities that businesspeople need to develop.

Includes excerpts from seminal works and summaries of key theoretical models that form the basis of the field of organization theory.

In response to the needs of lecturers, the acclaimed Handbook of Organization Studies has been made available as two major paperback textbooks. In this, the first of a two-volume paperback edition of the landmark Handbook of Organization Studies, editors Stewart Clegg and Cynthia Hardy survey the field of organization studies. Studying Organization is an ideal textbook around which to build courses on organization theory and research methodology. Central to the enterprise has been a concern to reflect and honour the manifest diversity of the field, including recognition of the extent to which the very notion of a single field of organization studies is debated. Part One locates the study of organization by reviewing some of the most significant theoretical paradigms to have shaped our understanding. The second part reflects on the relationships between theory and research in organization studies.