Organization takes place in a tangled world, intermeshed by changing markets, products, standards, technologies, institutions and social groups. Coming to grips with the complexity and fluidity of organization and management is a persistent problem for scholars and practitioners alike, which is why process issues have received renewed interest in r

Coming to grips with the actual complexity and fluidity of organization and management is a persistent problem for scholars and practitioners alike, which is why process issues have received renewed interest in recent years. This book, aimed at scholars and higher level students, frames some of these issues in novel and instructive ways.

Social life is a collective process, virtually all shaped in contemporary industrial nations by formal organizations and recognized social institutions. Understanding Organizations takes a fresh look at the sociology of organizations, blending classic theories with contemporary studies and debates.

This book presents a novel and comprehensive process theory of organization applicable to 'a world on the move', where connectedness prevails over size, flow prevails over stability, and temporality prevails over spatiality.The framework developed in the book draws upon process thinking in a number of areas, including process philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology, and science and technology studies. Salient ideas from these schools are carefully woven into a process theory of organization, which makes the book not only a thought provoking theoretical contribution, but also a much-needed glimpse into the challenges of organizing in a complex and moving world. Taking a distinctly temporal view of organizational life the author shows how actors continually carve out their temporal existence from being in the flow of time. This on-going work, in which technologies, concepts, and social actors take part, is crucial for the making of any type of organizational formation. A key construct of the book is that of events, which provide force, movement, and historicity to organizational life. The book is suitable for scholars and advanced level students in organization studies, management studies, technology studies, and sociology. It contains a number of practical examples to illustrate the theoretical framework.

Business processes are the production lines of the new economy. When they fail us, our products and services fail our customers, and our business fails its owners. The more businesses change, the more they must concern themselves with their stakeholder relationships and manage their processes so that technologies and organization designs have a common business purpose. This book shows you how to deliver integral processes and helps you build a fully process-managed enterprise. The Process Management Framework provides the strategic guidance and tactical steps to make the switch. Encompassing eight phases, the Framework migrates organizational and process transformation through strategy, design, realization, and actual operations. For each phase, this book provides detailed descriptions of the steps, their inputs, outputs, guides, and enablers, as well as the tricks, traps, and best practices learned by experienced practitioners. It also covers the related disciplines of managing programs, risk, quality, projects, and human change, and how process management is the key to ensure a fit among all these areas. For those of you about to embark on a process journey, this book provides a compelling call to action, a guide for management, and an invaluable reference. Learn the concepts and transform your business! See why process management is an inevitable trend that won't go away. Understand why relationship management needs effective processes to work. Define your stakeholders and determine their needs. Discover what other organizations have done to manage processes successfully. Explore a complete framework for managing business, process, and human change. Apply your knowledge to manage process projects effectively and efficiently. Learn what to do and what to avoid in every step. Develop processes to align technology, organization, and facility transformation. Gain cross-organizational acceptance of process and personal change. Anticipate objections and proactively manage stakeholder concerns.

Explores the concept of complexity and analyses how organizational governance can contribute to environmental sustainability. A common theme in these chapters is that organizations actively engage with their environments. Consequently, organizational responses are partly the result of iterative processes with the environment.

Taking a systems perspective, this book enables the student to make sense of business behaviour by demonstrating how interrelated business processes determine the success of an organisation.