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The politics of organizational decision-making
Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences.This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Classics from the Tavistock Press.Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1973 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
302 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
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October 20, 2018
This is a forgotten gem. Published in 1973, the author, a British academic, was embedded in a company in the early days of computer automation. The company was one of the first to computerize operations in the late 1950s. Pettigrew studied its decision to upgrade its computer in 1967-68.
Sound boring? Perhaps. But decisions are made by people. What makes the book worthwhile and something of a gem is that Pettigrew came to know the people making the decision. He lets the reader do the same and quotes them extensively. They have a history with each other and the company. They don't necessarily like each other. Nor do they fully trust each other and the reader finds out why. They did seem to trust Pettigrew.
In addition, because it was early days for computing, the book describes what it was like for a company to go from manual processes--filling out ledgers, making calculations by hand--to automatic ones. As you might expect. not everyone welcomed the change. Some felt threatened. As time passed and the computer changed, both the technology and the people running the technology changed. Pettigrew provides insight in those changes, too.
The book is not entirely free from academic prose, but the insights it provides into the people making decisions about a technology, then new, but now commonplace, and the people who had to decide how to approach it make this book well worth reading.
Sound boring? Perhaps. But decisions are made by people. What makes the book worthwhile and something of a gem is that Pettigrew came to know the people making the decision. He lets the reader do the same and quotes them extensively. They have a history with each other and the company. They don't necessarily like each other. Nor do they fully trust each other and the reader finds out why. They did seem to trust Pettigrew.
In addition, because it was early days for computing, the book describes what it was like for a company to go from manual processes--filling out ledgers, making calculations by hand--to automatic ones. As you might expect. not everyone welcomed the change. Some felt threatened. As time passed and the computer changed, both the technology and the people running the technology changed. Pettigrew provides insight in those changes, too.
The book is not entirely free from academic prose, but the insights it provides into the people making decisions about a technology, then new, but now commonplace, and the people who had to decide how to approach it make this book well worth reading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review