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Crisis and Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change
Explains how even successful organizations can become vulnerable to catastrophe and presents a different view of how all successful organizations evolve and renew themselves
- GenresBusiness
229 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 14, 2014
My friend and fellow Quaker (a business management professor) lent me this book recently and I was intrigued by his recommendation. I was curious how an outsider would view Quaker history and business methods. I personally think that the author missed to boat on these, but that is probably more the fault of the Society of Friends for disappearing from business leadership than the author's.
The book definitely has some excellent ideas, most powerfully so when an organisation is undergoing "crisis". His thesis is that businesses need these periods of crisis and he provides a structure for how to engineer those in a controlled way. I'm not entirely convinced by the entirety of his argument, but I think it does offer an interesting framework for organisations that are undergoing crisis or those that need dramatic change. The "hunter"/"herder" categorisation is particularly useful conceptually.
A few quibbles:
- the author has clearly spent the entirety of his career at the top of the org chart and so I'm not sure fully appreciates the impact that "crisis" has on those lower down.
- another strand to this is that I think he overestimates (despite his insistance on equality) the true impact of the "tone at the top" on the day to day running of a company
- the author uses male pronouns almost exclusively. . .until the last three pages when all of a sudden he shifts to exclusively female pronouns. It is sad that I found this jarring and simultaneously it also drew me more into the book. More evidence of my own subconcious biases? Perhaps, but it would be nice for the next revision to include more gender inclusive language throughout.
I highly recommend others in business to read the book, but I don't think it is as powerful a force for change as it could be.
The book definitely has some excellent ideas, most powerfully so when an organisation is undergoing "crisis". His thesis is that businesses need these periods of crisis and he provides a structure for how to engineer those in a controlled way. I'm not entirely convinced by the entirety of his argument, but I think it does offer an interesting framework for organisations that are undergoing crisis or those that need dramatic change. The "hunter"/"herder" categorisation is particularly useful conceptually.
A few quibbles:
- the author has clearly spent the entirety of his career at the top of the org chart and so I'm not sure fully appreciates the impact that "crisis" has on those lower down.
- another strand to this is that I think he overestimates (despite his insistance on equality) the true impact of the "tone at the top" on the day to day running of a company
- the author uses male pronouns almost exclusively. . .until the last three pages when all of a sudden he shifts to exclusively female pronouns. It is sad that I found this jarring and simultaneously it also drew me more into the book. More evidence of my own subconcious biases? Perhaps, but it would be nice for the next revision to include more gender inclusive language throughout.
I highly recommend others in business to read the book, but I don't think it is as powerful a force for change as it could be.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review