Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This pioneering work has been now abridged and revised to increase its accessibility and usefulness for today′s practicing managers.

It is centered around a simple premise with profound implications: All organization and management theories are based on images, or metaphors, with paradoxical effects - they can create profound insights but also great distortions. With this seminal work, Gareth Morgan shows how managers can broaden and deepen their understanding of organization and organizational problems, and use powerful new metaphors to shape new ways of working.

The first book to offer a concrete method for integrating the strengths and overcoming the weaknesses of competing management perspectives, Images of Organization has established itself as a classic and has influenced management thinking throughout the world. This new Executive Edition retains all the vitality of the original and has been updated to integrate significant research of the last decade. This essential volume provides the kind of organizational "radar" system managers need to negotiate the demands of the 21st century.

"A fine well-thumbed friend returns reborn and refreshed. No one who cares about organizations should miss this living classic"

--Curt Lindberg, President, VHA of New Jersey

`"We are moving from the world of traditional organizing forms into a new and uncharted world. If I were to choose one guidebook for exploring both worlds, I′d choose Images of Organization . It will help practitioners and leaders multiply their abilities to see, understand and redesign organizations to fit today′s extraordinary challenges"

--Bill Veltrop, Founder, International Center for Organizational Design

"An intellectual tour de force ... a major contribution to the literature"

--Journal of Occupational Psychology

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 An Overview
• The Promise of Images of Organization
• Part 2 Some Images of Organization
• Mechanization Takes Command
• Organizations as Machines
• Nature Intervenes
• Organizations as Organisms
• Learning and Self-Organization
• Organizations as Brains
• Creating Social Reality
• Organizations as Cultures
• Interests, Conflict and Power
• Organizations as Political Systems
• Exploring Plato's Cave
• Organizations as Psychic Prisons
• Unfolding Logics of Change
• Organization as Flux and Transformation
• The Ugly Face
• Organizations as Instruments of Domination
• Part 3 Implications for Practice
• Reading and Shaping Organizational Life
• Using Metaphor To Manage in a Turbulent World

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Gareth Morgan is well known for his creative contributions to management. He is the author of seven books, including Images of Organization, Creative Organization Theory, Imaginization and Riding the Waves of Change. He acts as consultant and seminar leader to numerous organizations throughout Europe and North America, and is Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto. He has sat on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management, and Organization Studies; and is a Life Fellow of the International Academy of Management. Born in Wales, he now lives in Toronto with his wife, Karen and their children Evan and Heather.