Hannan and Freeman examine the ecology of organizations by exploring the competition for resources and by trying to account for rates of entry and exit and for the diversity of organizational forms. They show that the destinies of organizations are determined more by impersonal forces than by the intervention of individuals.

This comprehensive text provides a detailed review and analysis of the building-block theories in the macro-organizational behavior field. John Miner has identified the key theories that any student or scholar needs to understand to be considered literate in the discipline. Each chapter includes the background of the theorist represented, the context in which the theory arose, the initial and subsequent theoretical statements, research on the theory by the theory's author and others (including meta-analysis and reviews), and practical applications. Special features, including boxed summaries of each theory at the beginning of each chapter; two introductory chapters on the scientific method and the development of knowledge; and detailed, comprehensive references, help make this text especially useful for every student and scholar in the field.

This book provides a timely and comprehensive response to the widely acknowledged serious failings in our current knowledge of organizational leadership and culture, providing an ecologically inspired approach which unifies knowledge and practice across all of the pivotal organisational elements of leadership, culture, teamwork, creativity, complexity and wisdom. Drawing on case studies from Australia and New Zealand, Branson and Marra argue that just as ecosystems are systems of connected elements through which the energy needed to maintain the health of the system must readily flow, an organisation is also a connected system that equally requires a healthy flow of energy in order to achieve its core purpose. Their theory of organizational ecology describes how organizational connectivity, as revealed by the quality of the relationships among the people and the parts of the organization, provides the conduit through which the essential energy (in the form of knowledge, information, ideas, innovation, and support sharing) must flow. Through the application of the theory of organizational ecology, Branson and Marra illustrate how a leader must grow their leadership knowledge and wisdom in order to develop the organization's people and culture so that it is fully able to accomplish the desired vision, mission and core purpose.

Building theories of organizations is challenging: theories are partial and "folk" categories are fuzzy. The commonly used tools--first-order logic and its foundational set theory--are ill-suited for handling these complications. Here, three leading authorities rethink organization theory. Logics of Organization Theory sets forth and applies a new language for theory building based on a nonmonotonic logic and fuzzy set theory. In doing so, not only does it mark a major advance in organizational theory, but it also draws lessons for theory building elsewhere in the social sciences. Organizational research typically analyzes organizations in categories such as "bank," "hospital," or "university." These categories have been treated as crisp analytical constructs designed by researchers. But sociologists increasingly view categories as constructed by audiences. This book builds on cognitive psychology and anthropology to develop an audience-based theory of organizational categories. It applies this framework and the new language of theory building to organizational ecology. It reconstructs and integrates four central theory fragments, and in so doing reveals unexpected connections and new insights.

This book is a collection of the best seventeen papers from the first Management Theory Conference held at the University of the Pacific in San Francisco, California, on September 27 and 28, 2013. The authors of these papers are some of the best management researchers in the world, including: Anette Mikes, Robert S. Kaplan, and Amy C. Edmondson (Harvard Business School); Sarah Harvey (University College London); Randall S. Peterson (London Business School); Jack A. Goncalo and Verena Krause (Cornell University); Karen A. Jehn (University of Melbourne); Yally Avrahampour (London School of Economics and Political Science); Tammy L. Madsen (Santa Clara University); and Sim B. Sitkin (Duke University). All of the papers in this book present the latest theoretical developments that were discussed at the first Management Theory Conference. The purpose of the conference was to help address the shortage of new management and organization theories. The mission of the conference was to facilitate, recognize, and reward the creation of new theories that advance our understanding of management and organizations. The conference was held to motivate management researchers to create new theories and to provide researchers with a supportive forum where those new theories could be presented, discussed, and published. Chapter Seventeen is the winner of the Wiley Outstanding New Management Theory Award. Authors Chris P. Long, Sim B. Sitkin, and Laura B. Cardinal present a theory to explain the drivers of managerial efforts to promote trust, fairness, and control. They theorize how superior-subordinate conflicts stimulate managers’ concerns about managerial legitimacy and subordinate dependability in performing tasks, and hypothesize how managers attempt to address these concerns using trustworthiness-promotion, fairness-promotion, and control activities. This book also contains written summaries of the two keynote addresses that were given at the conference by Roy Suddaby (editor of Academy of Management Review) and Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford University), which comprise Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen. Professors Suddaby and Pfeffer present a fascinating debate of the future and new directions of management and organization theories.

Describes the organizational aspects of contemporary society, explaining how organization occurs not only inside formal organizations, but also outside and among them.