Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations

Avoid management theory overkill. Bolman and Deal break them all down to four basic approaches any manager can understand. Writing in everyday language, the authors demonstrate when and how each approach should be employed, and what outcomes can be anticipated.

• Part One: Making Sense of Organizations
1. Introduction; Common Views of Organizations
2. New Ways of Seeing Organizations
• Part Two: Managing Organizations: Four Approaches
3. Getting Organized; The Structural Approach
4. Applying the Structural Approach
5. Fitting Organizations to People: The Human Resource Approach
6. Applying the Human Resource Approach
7. Managing Power, Conflict, and Coalitions: The Political Approach
8. Applying the Political Approach
9. Cultivating Organizational Cultures and Rituals: The Symbolic Approach
10. Applying the Symbolic Approach
• Part Three: Explaining Organizational Behavior: Theories and Research
11. Classic Tensions: Structure Versus People
12. Old Realities Rediscovered: Politics and Symbols
13. Integrating Organizational Theories
• Part Four: Improving Management Practice
14. Matching Management Approaches to the Organizational Situation
15. Learning to Use Different Leadership Styles
16. Practices of Successful Managers and Organizations
• Epilogue: Leadership Qualities for Meeting Complex New Challenges

Interesting and worthwhile, but a little dated (1984).