'Indispensable and subversive' - Simon Caulkin, The Observer
'A highly entertaining polemic.... This slim volume more than lives up to its title' - Stefan Stern, Financial Times
The Fourth Edition of Studying Organizations explains the unfolding consequences for organizations of the global financial and economic crisis, has been updated with examples from the biggest recent news events, and incorporates the latest research studies and up-to-date statistics.
Conceived by Chris Grey as an antidote to conventional textbooks, each book in the ‘Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap’ series takes a core area of the curriculum and turns it on its head by providing a critical and sophisticated overview of the key issues and debates in an informal, conversational and often humorous way.
Suitable for students of organizational studies and management, professionals working in organizations and anyone curious about the workings of organizations.
The accompanying regularly updated blog, read by thousands of people worldwide, keeps the book bang up to date: http://author-chrisgrey.blogspot.co.uk
Need another VSFI book? Click here to browse the entire series
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Why Studying Organizations Matters to Me
Chapter 1: Bureaucracy and Scientific Management
Chapter 2: Human Relations Theory and People Management
Chapter 3: Organizational Culture and Self-Management
Chapter 4: Post-Bureaucracy and Change Management
Chapter 5: The New Capitalism and the End of Management?
Conclusion: Why Should Studying Organizations Matter to You
About the Author :
Chris Grey is Emeritus Professor of Organization Studies at the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, University of London. Before that he held Professorships at the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at Cambridge and has been Velux Foundation Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, Visiting Professor at the Université Paris-Dauphine, France and a Visiting Fellow at the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, Sweden. Between 2010 and 2012 he was a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow. For six years he was Editor-in-Chief of Management Learning and is currently an Associate Editor of Organization and a European Co-editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry. Apart from publishing numerous articles in academic journals, he co-edited Rethinking Management Education (Sage, 1996), Essential Readings in Management Learning (Sage, 2004) and Critical Management Studies: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2005), co-authored Making Up Accountants (Gower Ashgate, 1998) and is the author of Decoding Organization. Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He currently has an eclectic mix of research interests, including the organization of intelligence and security agencies, but his real passion is detective novels and he will one day write the definitive contribution to that genre. He was born in Croydon (Britain’s ‘New Manhattan’!) in 1964 and may very well be one of the leading organizational theorists that town has produced.
Review :
Indispensable and subversive.
I wanted to write to you to tell you how much I appreciate your book - as evidenced by the coffee stains and frayed edges, it is a book I cannot live without and I will use it as I continue my education and into my career.
A highly entertaining polemic.... This slim volume more than lives up to its title.
Grey...has important things to say and he says them with rigour, warmth and a great deal of intelligence...He informs the analysis with humour and humility. It is the most valuable management book I have ever read.
Every page has something interesting to say, a great example, a sharp polemic, a superlative popularization, a thought-provoking eccentricity or a new take on something banal and tired.
A highly readable, insightful and enjoyable up-to-the-minute text.
Loved the book. I read it quickly. I will re-read it with a pencil in hand this time.
I've been waiting for someone to come along and write a book such as this one.
This is a racy read and rightly challenges the stuffy, often unreadable prose found in academic outlets.
One of the most valuable and interesting books we have read during our MBA at Cardiff University...an inspiration to us.
Grey’s book serves to transcend fragmented management theory and advance a tenable and valuable reorientation of the field.
Chris Grey has produced a book many of us have wanted to write for a long time, but have not had the guts to do.
It helped open my eyes to the organizational world around me.
I would like to thank you for such an interesting book that I couldn't put down.
This book has carved itself a permanent spot on my bookshelf as I ordered a fresh copy off Amazon after the library finally took their copy back.
Essential reading for any manager who knows there is no "one right answer."
Concise, exciting, critical and overall excellent.
Very much enjoying reading "A Very Short...About Studying Organizations" - the chapter on Fast Capitalism and the End of Management seems particularly apposite at the moment. Very reflective of some of the themes I am teaching at the moment (and getting into arguments about!)
This is a book I keep coming back to - and remembering...it is superbly written - and thought-provoking. What more can you ask?
This book blew my little mind. In the way that going to grad school for education caused me to see the deep and complex inadequacies of the public school system, this book has caused me to question much of my received knowledge and beliefs about organizations and, more to the point, corporations. Chris Grey’s insightful analysis has unmoored me a bit and made me deeply worried about things that previously “seemed to me to be true".
Great overview of the subject - and a thought provoking critique.
Everything is in the title! It explains quickly and simply all the main points for management studies.
