Series:

Elgar Introductions to Management and Organization Theory

4 total works

Cover of Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience
With organizational environments becoming increasingly unstable, uncertain and equivocal, the concept of resilience has become increasingly significant for management studies and practice. Resilience connotes organizational, team and individual capacities to absorb external shocks and to learn from them, while simultaneously preparing for and responding to external jolts. This book pinpoints the essential aspects of managerial and organizational resilience and offers insights that stimulate critical thinking. As the concept of resilience is essentially made up of contrasting forces, the volume presents some innovative synthetic interpretation that allows a deeper comprehension of the phenomenon and provides managers and policy makers with a solid basis for taking their decisions.

This book provides an accessible yet rigorous systematization of individual resilience, team resilience and organizational resilience. Rich with real-life concept illustrations and containing practice-oriented tools, reflection questions and exercises, it shows how resilience can be cultivated across levels of organizational aggregation: individuals, teams, organizations and communities. The authors distinguish individual and collective resilience from related constructs and shed light on the boundaries of resilience and its potential implications for management practice.

Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience will serve as a key resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students as well as academics and practitioners who are interested in deepening their understanding of resilience.

Cover of Elgar Introduction to Organizational Paradox Theory
This insightful Elgar Introduction comprises the first effort to provide a succinct overview of the field of organizational paradox theory, exploring contradictions and tensions in organizational settings. By conceptually mapping the field, it offers guidance through the literature on paradox, making space for new interpretations and applications of the concept.


Opening with a critical analysis of research to date, the authors explore ideas related to dialectics and ambidexterity in organizations, as well as pragmatic approaches to organizational paradox. Chapters propose new ways to analyse responses to paradox, bringing together influential contributions that consider the nestedness of paradox, the relation between power and paradox, and paradoxes of positive organizational scholarships.


Providing novel approaches to the discipline, this cutting-edge book is crucial for graduate students and management scholars interested in employing organizational paradox theory as a conceptual framework for their research.

Cover of Elgar Introduction to Organizational Improvisation Theory
Many organizations operate in an environment that is increasingly dynamic, turbulent, and unpredictable. This volume makes the case that they need to embrace improvisation as a core organizational capability, not to replace but to complement planning and forecasting. Research on organizational improvisation has evolved from a jazz and theater metaphor to a distinct body of empirical and conceptual work that tackles how improvisation unfolds in the full range of organizational contexts. These contexts often have very different goals, constraints and possibilities than improvisation in the arts. This makes it crucial to develop understanding of improvisation at all levels and in all types of organizations including but not limited to day-to-day operations of large firms and government agencies, strategic change, emergency management, product development, and start-ups.



This book pulls together in one place major advances in understanding organizational improvisation. It describes major theoretical- and evidence-based advances in models of organizational improvisation, which the authors define as the deliberate and substantive convergence of the design and execution of a novel activity, that can be created at the individual, team, or organizational level. The authors provide, integrate and consolidate the existing literature on organizational improvisation and offer a comprehensive analysis of key processes. They go beyond a mechanical literature review to include illustrative mini-cases, novel concepts in contemporary work and short personal comments from researchers in the field.



Grounded in rigorous academic work to date, this book speaks both to scholars interested in developing research on organizational improvisation and to managers. It discusses both promising paths for academic research and practical recommendations, especially those who deal with unpredictable environments that force them to either improvise or to face harmful or even fatal outcomes for organizational members and/or the entire organization.

Cover of Elgar Introduction to Designing Organizations
Presenting the emergence of new organizational designs in a novel way, this insightful book blends theory and practice to examine major trends and directions, the key ideas that underpin organizational design and how these ideas might be applied.



The authors explore how, in a world characterized by relentless change and volatility, traditional bureaucracies of the past are increasingly regarded as being too slow and centralized. Instead, emerging ideas, such as platforms, ecosystems, holacracies, agility and improvisation are gaining purchase. Focusing on key trends and forms of design, the book offers an approach to organizing that accommodates paradoxes and offers a fresh view on managing organizational design.



Rich in anecdotes and examples, the Elgar Introduction to Designing Organizations will be a useful guide for business and management scholars and advanced students with a focus on organizational studies and innovation. It will be beneficial for business managers thinking about how to design their organization so that it is fit for contemporary purposes.