Book Description
Challenges Facing the Employment Relationship in Future Organizations addresses the issues of change within employee relationships resulting from the impact of factors such as:
* international competitive pressures
* technological change
* changing individual expectations and behaviours
The new employment contract is analysed from inside and outside organizations and the issues are addressed from both a human resource management and work psychology perspective.
This book:
* Reviews the phenomenon of globalization, outlining the current impacts on the employment relationship and summarizing the assumed impacts on future work
* Looks at the employment relationship from a labour market perspective and reviews the evidence on an increasing individualization of the employment relationship
* Reviews work by psychologists on the changing psychological contract
* Provides an overview of new forms of work organization, drawing attention to research on virtual organization and implications of e-enablement
* Outlines the challenges to the employment relation on a global scale
* Illustrates the connection between HRM policies/practices and work psychology
* Provides an up to date summary of existing research, knowledge and debate
* Considers a wide range of factors that impact on change within employee relationships
Book Description
"In business, either you're an agent of change, or you're destined to become a victim of change." -- Norm Brodsky in Inc Magazine
Customer Reviews:
Not Very Practical.......2007-07-03
If you are a practitioner you will not find this book very helpful. It has a number of interesting ideas, but they randomly presented. If you are looking for a more systematic or strategic approach, I'd recommend Beitler's Strategic Organizational Change or Kotter's Leading Change.
Learning to Make the Best of Change.......2007-05-12
Good Book. It presents the reader with seveal different theories and I learned alot about how change takes takes place in the work place. Overall a good book to read for any leader.
Making Sense?.......2007-04-07
I'm not sure it made that much sense. I was looking for a more practical book on how to do it - how to design an organization based on the needs.
Basic.......2007-01-15
This book would be useful if you do not practice as a manager. It provides an elementary overview. If you are a practitioner, I'd recommend Kotter, Beitler, or Bridges.
A must-have.......2007-01-10
This is one of the most useful, accessible and instantly applicable books on change management out there!
It collates quite a few well-published theorems and methodologies in one place, demonstrates the pros and cons of each without going into too much detail, but leaves it to the reader to decide which is appropriate in a given situation and, as a whole, the authors provides you with an unsurpassed collection of tools and models to apply in any given change scenario.
You will find yourself referring back to this again and again.
Book Description
This book helps managers move beyond the idea that the future of business will resemble the past and allows them to use scenarios to imagine multiple perspectives. The concepts of organizational realities, experience, and beliefs are explored to encourage and embrace change in business organizations for a successful future.
Download Description
"This book is about organizational survival: the reasons why organizations do not always survive, and what can be done about it. Survival means creating value for stakeholders, and the survival problem starts with uncertainty, change and the need for organizations to adapt to shifting needs and market conditions. The key question is 'Why are organizations slow to change and adapt?' Unsuccessful organizations are distinguished by their failure to overcome thinking and behavioural flaws at personal, organizational and community levels. In this book, we explain what these flaws are and how the scenario approach helps senior managers and organizations to overcome them. Our approach is based on reasoning, research, real world observations - and a long track record developing scenario-based thinking, combining the most effective elements of the many scenario approaches that have been tried over time.
Customer Reviews:
Insightful!.......2004-03-02
This book disserves itself by purporting to be merely about scenario planning, although it covers that subject thoroughly. In fact, it's one of the most lucid, interesting examinations of fortune and folly you will ever read. The recapitulation of disastrous episodes at a handful of once-great companies shows just how little inclined the gods are to spare the proud. Closed minds and entrenched habits of thought managed to afflict even such a venturesome New Economy firm as Yahoo! Originality and experimentation bless even companies in humdrum industries, such as packaging. Captivating anecdotes and illustrations are, in fact, the meat of the book. The scenario planning analysis, while solid, is less convincing than the cases themselves. At times, the book shows the weaknesses that are probably inevitable when so many authors share creation. It tends to meander and, now and then, loses its way in jargon-choked thickets. But, we assure you, the clarity of the cases redeems it and makes it valuable.
Scenario conversations as agents of change.......2003-08-06
The key theme of this book is that the appropriate use of scenario thinking is a highly effective way of catalyzing organizational change and, in particular, minimizing the risk that the organization will suffer due to learning disabilities such as 'group think' or a variety of other flaws in organizational thinking.
The focus is therefore on the process by which the management group can improve their ability to shape their future, through the way in which they engage with the creation of scenarios, and in strategic conversations about their implications in the context of the 'business idea' (competitive stance and advantages) of the organization.
This book represents a consolidation and further exploration of ideas first put forward in van der Heijden's Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. As a successor, it does not have the impact of the first book, and it goes into issues of learning disabilities to a level of detail that can be tedious to those who are familiar with these issues. None the less, it is very useful in reinforcing a sound appreciation of the value of scenarios and the importance of the process by which they are generated and used.
There are very useful summaries at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book. My main criticism is that the authors do not seem to have quite worked out whether they were writing a practical guide for business people or a text for students.
Average customer rating:
- A Must Read for Managers, Students and Researchers
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Making Sense of Organizational Change
Jean Mills
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
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ASIN: 0415369398 |
Book Description
This book offers a unique way of understanding the processes of organizational change. Rather than being structured as a 'how to' book, Making Sense of Organizational Change provides the reader with practical insights and skills for managing (or resisting) organizational change.
Its strength lies in three key areas:
The discussion and explanation of a strategic sensemaking approach
A longitudinal study of a major company which underwent several organizational changes
A detailed examination of the drive for organizational change apparent among western companies over the last 25 years.
Applying an invaluable sensemaking framework to organizational change in both a practical and accessible way, and combining the theory and practice of implementing change, this book represents an instructive and informative view on the implications of change in the business world
Customer Reviews:
A Must Read for Managers, Students and Researchers.......2003-08-29
Dr. Helms Mills provides the reader with a fantastic look at organizational change in a very easy to read style. Her research methodology of sensemaking and her findings are cutting edge and a must read for those trying to understand corporate and organizational change.
Book Description
In today's business environment, changes come in staggering succession: mergers, acquisitions, rightsizing, downsizing, restructuring. As accountants, lawyers and executives scrutinize these changes for bottom-line impact, they pay little attention to how change will affect an organization's culture or how its culture will affect change. This dooms many corporate change initiatives before they even start. A whopping 75 percent of change initiatives fail within the first three years. Getting Your Shift Together: Making Sense of Organizational Culture and Change explains - in plain English - why companies need to conduct a cultural assessment like Cultural Due Diligence before embarking on any change initiative.
Bouchard and Pellet say that nothing can be more deadly to an organization's long-term ability to sustain change and grow than a dysfunctional "incongruent" culture that depends on the old "do as I say, not as I do" method of leadership. An "incongruent" culture destroys morale, decimates productivity and encourages workers to resist and even sabotage change. Therefore, the authors offer techniques and tools, such as their own Cultural Due Diligence process, to measure the congruence of an organization's culture and to reshape it into a healthy - and successful - congruent culture.
Customer Reviews:
The Accurate Picture.......2001-10-01
Having endured three acquisitions with one company, two down-sizings with another, being subjected to two subsequent layoffs with two companies, and forming my own consulting business, I found "Getting Your Shift Together" a very accurate outline of what is missed during critical times of change. It is refreshing in that it clearly identifies not only what is overlooked but also why we so often ignore what is squarely in front of us. While the book is actually a quick read, I read it slowly (some text repeatedly), often finding myself pondering its insightful truths. Getting an accurate picture of an organization's culture is critical to its longevity. Reading this book should be anyone's first step in gaining such a focus. The book gives the reader pause as it clearly shows how and why we hide from the truths that surround us. I reflected back to the line in "A Few Good Men" when Jack Nicholson says to Tom Cruise, "You can't handle the truth!" While truth may be hard to handle, in business we can't survive the lies and denial! Honesty rings through this book, moving the reader to examine his/her own world. What are the reigning values? Where is the trust? What's next? Take the Culture Health IndexTM and find out what your organization's culture really looks like. Be advised - this is not for the faint of heart, but it's also for anyone who still harbors any hope for surviving an upcoming change (and emerging as a leader) in his or her organization. "Getting Your Shift Together" is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.
Cultural Due Diligence (tm).......2000-06-14
The writers (Lizz & PJ of EMERGE) have taken an unknown, amorphous concept and developed it into the leading organizational management tool and process, Cultural Due Diligence (tm). This book explains the Cultural Due Diligence (tm) process, its importance to all business organizations and its implementation and review. Lizz & PJ of EMERGE are well-known for their seminars on Cultural Due Diligence(tm) and the book is a wonderful desk reference. It has also been picked up by several universities as required reading in business curriculum.
Makes you think -- worth a read.......2000-05-18
My favorite part is the point that when change initiatives fail, things never go back to the way they were before. This book makes you think about your blind spots, and how to not let them get in the way of making change work. The authors come off credible, with a "in the trenches" perspective. A good reality check.
Getting Your Shift Together.......2000-04-16
This book contains a great analysis of American business today. In an everchanging and fastpaced work environment focused on the bottom line, Pellett and Bouchard suggest that it is an organization's culture which will have the biggest impact to profitability and success. In a well written and easy style their narrative captured my attention with real-life anecdotes and solutions to business problems and challenges. Their cultural due diligence model is one that should be embraced by all companies wanting to improve productivity, quality, customer satisfaction and profits. Read it and give it to every CEO, Board Member and VP you know!
Average customer rating:
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Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses: From Phytohormones to Genome Reorganization: From Phytohormones to Genome Reorganization (Books in Soils, Plants, and the Environment)
Lerner
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Flowers
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ASIN: 0824700449 |
Book Description
Emphasizing the unpredictable nature of plant behaviour under stress and in relation to complex interactions of biological pathways, this work covers the versatility of plants in adapting to environmental change. It analyzes environmentally triggered adaptions in developmental programmes of plants that lead to permanent, heritable DNA modifications.
Book Description
When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence. In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature. Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion.
Customer Reviews:
"Emergence" explained and applied.......2007-06-20
This is a splendid book which will be accessible to readers with relatively moderate technical and scientific background. Morowitz was a professor at Yale, now at George Mason U. in Virginia. An emergence occurs when something unexpected and unpredictable occurs out of a stable substrate condition or state. It is a "wow" moment. Morowitz's research has focussed on "emergence of metabolism" which is one of the topics in the book. The author proposes 28 "steps" or "emergences" beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the anticipated emergence of "spirituality" in the human consciousness. The middle fifteen or so "emergences" relate to "life." It becomes clear that the process of going from "no life" to "life" involved a series of emergences, each so remarkable in itself that their concatenation seems incredible. Indeed, proponents of "intelligent" design by a superior being may find support here for their views. However, the author's reasoning and speculations are based on a broad understanding of both physical and life processes and the resulting story is quite persuasive that the complexity of nature can have arisen spontaneously given the passage of enough time.
Religion and social politics aside..........2006-04-17
this book is a great read. Adoption of any religious/spiritual/philosophical-social aspect, of course, is not completely irrelevant to a treatise, but neither is any type of world-view (existentialistic, deterministic, anarchic, etc.). Here, Morowitz explains the approach he takes to the unfolding of complexity, whether it involves abstracts like human consciousness or tangibles like sand dunes. He believes that there is an inherent order to the universe, that things unfold and become more complex due to very complicated and numerous logarithms . His area of interest here is in using computers to aid in this search for esoteric mathematical relationships between agents and how they interact to form "higher" forms of emergence. He believes that patterns do exist in increasing orders of emergence, so whether or not you put an emphasis on any religious aspect, understand that this point of view is held by even the most atheistic of thinkers. The universe may have laws we humans cannot recognize at this point, and Morowitz makes it clear that perhaps we do not have the proper framework to see those laws right now. This isn't a terribly difficult read, and I recommend it to those folks interested in another aspect to the origin of life studies.
This is one perspective. One man's perspective. I'm a bit alarmed by those who review a perspective with such disdain, as though the reviewer has special knowledge of some obvious truth. Add this perspective to your collection to broaden your mind, not to think you know better than the next PhD...
Complexity, Past, Present, & Future..........2005-05-28
Emergence, as a scientific counterpoint to reductionism could be a dull subject in the hands of a less deft observer of the world. In the hands of Professor Morowitz the subject comes alive with scientific detail and a thoughtful perspective.
Professor Morowitz divides the history of the universe, from the Big Bang until now, into twenty-eight sections, each representing a major emergence. The number is arbitrary but useful. Admittedly, the number of emergences is vast, but the need to keep this on a readable scale is what the author does well. Some sections are more detailed than others. Professor Morowitz admits to having more knowledge in one area than another. The section on chemical reactions is his forte. It's not mine, however, the author begs the reader's indulgence and it is easily given.
This is a highly readable and insightful book on the theory of complexity. Taking emergence into step twenty-eight is a bold and welcome move. I recommend this work to all who take the long view and are in awe of it all.
Another Botched Science/Philosophy Crossover.......2004-12-25
In the last few decades, there have been more and more scientists stepping out into the realm of philosophical thought and tossing in their two cents regarding important metaphysical questions. On the whole, this is a good, encouraging trend.
Yet, it is becoming too predictable that a philosophy book, written in the vain of science, will undoubtedly be strong in the latter, and fall so short in the former: Morowitz's "Emergence of Everything" is yet another testament to this trend.
I do not want to be too harsh, as there are some things this book does well, so I will focus on those first.
"Emergence of Everything" discusses the new trend in scientific thinking to group things into wholes rather than seperate them into parts. This trend was realized in philosophy by the Idealists showing roots in Plato, but taking life with Kant and primarily Hegel.
He then launches into a so-called "brief history of everything;" how evolution has transpired since the beginning of the cosmos until present day. The scientific explanations are quick, sometimes dense, but well-described. He leaves nothing out--including social sciences into latter day evolutions. And in the end even tampers with some spiritual implications. My point: the overview itself is satisfactory... even well-done I suppose.
Unfortunately, that IS basically all of the book's merits. It ends there: just a string of cosmological and historical observations. Despite explicitly calling his own book a "philosophical treatise" he lends no thought, analysis, or anything beyond questioning of the form, patterns or causes of specific evolutions or emergences. Most references to philosophy are more theological than philosophical, and he regularly refers to metaphysical phenomena with vague labels such as "God's Mind."
The book is a great description of the ontological and scientific occurences of our universe's evolution, but all deeper meaning is lost. The bridge he tries to erect is admirable, but typically it has been much sturdier starting from the other side. The theoretical side of this book has been explored more thoroughly by systems theorists', scientists such as Heisenburg and Schroedinger, philosophers from Whitehead to Hegel, Schelling, and even contemporary writers like Habermas and Wilber.
Only worthwhile for its crash-course scientific chronology--even then, you'd be better off with more focused works.
Emerging complexity.......2004-09-28
The Emergence of Everything is a valuable contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. It investigates the concept of emergence and considers fresh angles of looking at the world, at increasing complexity and at consciousness. The idea of emergence provides clues as to how novelty occurs.
The author chose 28 topics to consider, 28 moments of emergence in the history of the universe. Amongst the questions and phenomena discussed are the following: Why is there something rather than nothing? The non-uniformity of the universe, the emergence of stars, the periodic table, the solar system, planetary structure, geospheres, metabolism, cells, the neuron, animalness, hominization, toolmaking, language, agriculture, the worldviews of Athens and of Jerusalem, science and religion.
The point is to use history in order to study emergence, which can generate beliefs. Emergence has a divine aspect, the Word (Immanence) that becomes flesh (Transcendence). By looking at the work of Spinoza, Einstein and others, the author concludes that our evolving minds are the transcendence of the immanent God.
The book provides stimulating thoughts and is an engaging read. Although firmly rooted in pantheism his views are very valuable and interesting. To this reviewer, however, pantheism is limiting for a variety of reasons. Further to this I would like to refer the reader to the idea of panentheism as it manifests in the works of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Krause, Dean Inge and especially Alfred North Whitehead, in particular the last mentioned's magnificent book Process And Reality.
Books:
- The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making
- The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Buying and Selling Predictions
- The Leadership Lifecycle
- The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies
- The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements (ILR Press Book)
- The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World
- The Product Manager's Handbook : The Complete Product Management Resource
- The Real World Economic Outlook 2003: The Legacy of Globalization: Debt and Deflation
- The Secret Sins of Economics
- The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalization
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