The transition from viewing organizations as bureaucracies towards seeing them in metaphoric terms is a contemporary break with past organizational theory. But to investigate the similarities between real organizations and the metaphors describing their functions and context, a shift in both methods of inquiry and organizational theory must take place. This volume explores the paradigm shift at three levels: an overview of historical roots; an explication of terminology, metaphors and constructs; and the practical application of these new organizational inquiry methods, especially for actual research practices and policy analysis applications.
The Theory and Philosophy of Organizations makes a major contribution to the debate on the status of organizational theory as a discipline. The volume is divided into three sections exploring issues under the headings `theory', `anasis' and `philosophy'. In each, the limitations of `traditional' or `scientific' organizational paradigms are illuminated and new forms of interpretation offered.
Organization Theory offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to the study of organizations and organizing processes. It encourages an even-handed appreciation of the different perspectives contributing to our knowledge of organizations and challenges readers to broaden their intellectual reach.
Engaged research and qualitative theory building in the social sciences are among the greatest adventures and significant vocations life can present. The impact of good theory, no matter how tiny or vast, can instantly move across our intimate planet and affect every human and living system in this interconnected, relationally alive, and reverberating universe. Ideas change the world. Ideas can be about life and they can be life-giving in the sense that they can inspire, enliven, and open us to new horizons and new depths. A new idea, especially the idea whose time has come in a prospective and betterment sense, does more than inform: it transforms. We've all experienced it. A single new understanding can change us deeply.This book-emerging from the needs and urging of David's doctoral students and those who care about engaged scholarship-is about the craft of grounded and future-forming theory construction. It's a way of doing research in the human sciences that exists, in William James' contrast, "not as a dull habit but as an acute fever." This book, today used in doctoral research courses and masters programs in organization development, unites the original purpose of Appreciative Inquiry with the domains of grounded theory, generative theory, enlivenment world-views, and the art and science of portraiture. Taken together this volume provides a manifesto and clear framework for prospective theory-building. Prospective theory is:1. Theory inspired by life, and it is designed to apprehend the best in all of life's fullest, most meaningful, and best future possibilities while being grounded in the midst of the extraordinary, the ordinary, as well as the tragic;2. Has the enlivenment and generative capacity to challenge the status quo and open the world to new better possibilities for life and living;3. Articulates a future story of prospective possibility. It involves a proleptic merging of the ideal conditioned in the texture of the actual-e.g., vivid utopias that are right there in front of us-informing our future story for establishing the new and eclipsing the old.
A positive revolution in change: appreciative inquiry / David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney -- Positive image, positive action: the affirmative basis of organizing / David Cooperrider -- Appreciative inquiry in organizational life / David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva -- Five theories of change embedded in appreciative inquiry / Gervase Bushe -- Advances in appreciative inquiry as an organization development intervention / Gervase Bushe -- The "child" as agent of inquiry / David L. Cooperrider -- Resources for getting appreciative inquiry started: an example OD proposal / David L. Cooperrider -- An appreciative inquiry into the factors of culture continuity during leadership transactions: a case study of LeadShare, Canada / Mary Ann Rainey -- Survey guided appreciative inquiry: a case study / Rita F. Williams -- Initiating culture change in higher education through appreciative inquiry / Robert L. Head and Michele M. Young -- Saving tomorrow's workforce / Chrisopher Anne Easley, Therese Yaeger, and Peter Sorensen -- Appreciative inquiry with teams / Gervase R. Bushe -- A field experiment in appreciative inquiry / David A. Jones -- Appreciative inquiry meets the logical positivist / Peter F. Sorensen [and others] -- Is appreciative inquiry OD's philosopher's stone / Thomas C. Head [and others] -- Postmodern principles and practices for large scale organization change and global cooperation / Diana Whitney -- Organizational inquiry model for global social change organizations / Jane Magruder Watkins and David Cooperrider -- From deficit discourse to vocabularies of hope; the power of appreciation / James D. Ludema
Coping with the practical problems of bureaucracy is hampered by the limited self-conception and the constricted mindsets of mainstream public administration thinking. Modernist public administration theory, although valuable and capable of producing ever more remarkable results, is limiting as an explanatory and catalytic force in resolving fundamental problems about the nature, size, scope, and functioning of public bureaucracy and in transforming public bureaucracy into a more positive force. This original study specifies a reflexive language paradigm for public administration thinking and shows how a postmodern perspective permits a revolution in the character of thinking about public bureaucracy. The author considers imagination, deconstruction, deterritorialization, and alterity. Farmer's work emphasizes the need for an expansion in the character and scope of public administration's disciplinary concerns and shows clearly how the study and practice of public administration can be reinvigorated.
