Managing Through Organization

"Managing Through Organizations" offers an analysis of different approaches to work organization. Colin Hales uses an original and coherent theoretical framework, to trace ways in which the management process has become separated, extended, dispersed and institutionalized within large scale organizations. He examines the implications of the idea of managing "through" organizations for managerial work and managerial power, influence and authority. Based on the author's experience of teaching both students of management at undergraduate level and managers on executive programmes, this text combines theory and practice. It brings an innovative perspective to bear on traditional approaches to work organization and offers a useful synthesis of the current literature. The analysis covers the "classical" approaches of bureaucracy and rationalization, scientific management, and the more recent alternatives of decentralization through divisional, professional and "adhocratic" organization. International depth is given to the volume by a discussion of cultural controls on management exercised through Japanese and "clan" forms of organization.