Reinventing Hierarchy and Bureaucracy


Book Description

This volume brings together leading scholars in the field of organisation studies to reflect on the universal phenomena of hierarchy (vertical organisation of tasks) and bureaucracy (rule-bound execution of tasks), resulting in a colourful kaleidoscope of thought-provoking, critical and refreshingly non-mainstream analysis.




Banishing Bureaucracy


Book Description

The sisters are back in full form--ready, willing, and able to lend their shared wisdom, encouragement, and homegirl attitude to help women get through the minute-to-minute obstacle course called daily living.




Reinventing the Organization


Book Description

Your Company Isn't Fast Enough. Here's How to Change That. The traditional hierarchical organization is dead, but what replaces it? Numerous new models--the agile organization, the networked organization, and holacracy, to name a few--have emerged, but leaders need to know what really works. How do you build an organization that is responsive to fast-changing markets? What kind of organization delivers both speed and scale, and how do you lead it? Arthur Yeung and Dave Ulrich provide leaders with a much-needed blueprint for reinventing the organization. Based on their in-depth research at leading Chinese, US, and European firms such as Alibaba, Amazon, DiDi, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Supercell, and Tencent, and drawing from their synthesis of the latest organization research and practice, Yeung and Ulrich explain how to build a new kind of organization (a "market-oriented ecosystem") that responds to changing market opportunities with speed and scale. While other books address individual pieces of the puzzle, Reinventing the Organization offers a practical, integrated, six-step framework and looks at all the decisions leaders need to make--choosing the right strategies, capabilities, structure, culture, management tools, and leadership--to deliver radically greater value in fast-moving markets. For any leader eager to build a stronger, more responsive organization and for all those in HR, organizational development, and consulting who will shape and deliver it, this book provides a much-needed roadmap for reinvention.




Thickening Government


Book Description

Government is under enormous pressure to change. Call it reinventing, reengineering, or plain old change, but the mandate remains the same: produce more with less, and satisfy the customer while doing it. Yet, successful reform must involve more than exhortation and slogans. Paul Light argues that a failure to pay attention to the thickening of government over the past half century may doom any reinventing effort. The federal government has never had so many leaders. There are more layers of management between the top and bottom of government, with more administrative units and occupants at each layer. Bill Clinton is further from the frontlines of government than any president in American history. If the past decades are any indication, he will exit a presidency that is even thicker. Light presents a revealing look at how thick the bureaucracy really is, how and why thickening occurs, what difference it might make, and what can be done to both reverse the process and keep the thickening from growing back. Light shows how the management layers between the top and bottom of government—between air traffic controllers and the Secretary of Transportation, food inspectors and the Secretary of Agriculture, and so on—have steadily increased. In 1960, for example, John F. Kennedy's senior-most appointments came in four layers: secretary, under secretary, assistant secretary, and deputy assistant secretary. By 1992, the number of layers had tripled. In the meantime, the number of occupants at each layer grew geometrically; the number of assistant secretaries jumped from 81 to 212. A government of managers means the president has very little direct access or control over what happens far below, a basic problem of accountability. Information gets distorted on the way up, and guidance gets lost on the way down. Thickening often creates so many bureaucratic baffles that no one can be held accountable for any decision; mid-level workers may have so many bosses that they effectively have none. Light concludes that practically nothing by way of quality management, service-government, or employee involvement can work with these towering government agencies. But practically nothing will fail if a radical "down- layering" is undertaken now.




Banishing Bureaucracy


Book Description

David Osborne's 1992 bestseller, Reinventing Government, was a landmark book that identified ten principles characteristic of innovative, entrepreneurial, 21st century public organizations and governance. This essential sequel goes one step further, outlining five strategies that have the power to transform public systems and organizations into such organizations, thereby achieving dramatic increases in effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and capacity to innovate. In an age of disillusionment with public service, Banishing Bureaucracy offers inspiring stories of organizations that really work and provides specific recipes for effective change. Here is a road map by which reinventors can actually make "reinvention" work.




Alternatives to hierarchies


Book Description

Giving on occasions a talk on the subject of this book, one of the queries raised was, 'surely, what you mean are flat hierarchies'. This, I think, gives an indication of how difficult it can be to conceive of organizations which do not have a hierarchical structure. A rather similar response was obtained when, in the 1950's, an account was given to a manager of the British Coal Board of an autonomous composite team of more than 40 miners, who had taken over complete responsibility for a three-shift cycle, and divided the income obtained among themselves. His comment was that this could not possibly work. The new mode of work organization which had been evolved by the miners in several pits in the Durham coal fields was, at the time, well ahead of the prevailing concepts and philosophy of both management and the Trade Union. It did not help matters very much that the detailed accounts were presented in an academic and scientific form (Trist et aI. , 1963; Herbst, 1962). I think that we felt that all the backing of systematic research and data analysis would be needed to present the case for modes of organization, which deviated from conventional practice. However, something was learned from this experience. When at the beginning of the 1960's the Norwegian Work Democratization Project was started, a number of demonstration sites were set up which people could look at, and which could function as centers for diffusion.




Brave New Work


Book Description

“This is the management book of the year. Clear, powerful and urgent, it's a must read for anyone who cares about where they work and how they work.” —Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing “This book is a breath of fresh air. Read it now, and make sure your boss does too.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg When fast-scaling startups and global organizations get stuck, they call Aaron Dignan. In this book, he reveals his proven approach for eliminating red tape, dissolving bureaucracy, and doing the best work of your life. He’s found that nearly everyone, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, points to the same frustrations: lack of trust, bottlenecks in decision making, siloed functions and teams, meeting and email overload, tiresome budgeting, short-term thinking, and more. Is there any hope for a solution? Haven’t countless business gurus promised the answer, yet changed almost nothing about the way we work? That’s because we fail to recognize that organizations aren’t machines to be predicted and controlled. They’re complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released. Dignan says you can’t fix a team, department, or organization by tinkering around the edges. Over the years, he has helped his clients completely reinvent their operating systems—the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture—with extraordinary success. Imagine a bank that abandoned traditional budgeting, only to outperform its competition for decades. An appliance manufacturer that divided itself into 2,000 autonomous teams, resulting not in chaos but rapid growth. A healthcare provider with an HQ of just 50 people supporting over 14,000 people in the field—that is named the “best place to work” year after year. And even a team that saved $3 million per year by cancelling one monthly meeting. Their stories may sound improbable, but in Brave New Work you’ll learn exactly how they and other organizations are inventing a smarter, healthier, and more effective way to work. Not through top down mandates, but through a groundswell of autonomy, trust, and transparency. Whether you lead a team of ten or ten thousand, improving your operating system is the single most powerful thing you can do. The only question is, are you ready?




Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond


Book Description

With contributions from 22 scholars and empirical material from 29 countries within and beyond Latin America, this book identifies subtypes of populism to further understand right-wing populist movements, parties, leaders, and governments. It seeks to examine whether the term populism continues to have any validity and what relationship(s) it has to democracy. Part 1 is an exploration of populism as an analytical concept. It asks how populism can and should be defined; whether populism can be broken down into subtypes; and whether the use of the term within and beyond Latin America in recent scholarship has been consistent. Part 2 focuses on political economy, and specifically whether political economy explanations of both the causes and consequences of right-wing populism fit recent cases in Latin America, Europe, and the Philippines. Part 3 examines institutions, and in particular institutions of coercion and digital communication. It contains chapter studies on various aspects of populism in Brazil, Spain, India, and Italy. Part 4 concerns the coronavirus pandemic and the specific case of right-wing populism in Brazil. It examines the Bolsonaro government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and how that response exacerbated the health crisis and reduced the government’s popularity. Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond is a timely and socially relevant contribution to the understanding of contemporary challenges to democracy. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners eager to understand the rise in right-wing agendas across the globe.




A Sociological Perspective on Hierarchies in Educational Institutions


Book Description

A Sociological Perspective on Hierarchies in Educational Institutions bridges the gap between theory and practice, drawing together research from different perspectives without losing comprehensiveness, accuracy, and in-depth coverage of hierarchy and educational institutions - a novel contribution to Organizational Studies.