The Theory of Organisations

by David Silverman

Contents:
Introduction --
1. Organisations: problems of definition --
2. Organisations as systems --
3. Structural-functionalism --
4. Organisational psychology --
5. Technology and organisations --
6. The action frame of reference --
7. Action analysis of organisations --
8. Attachments and strategies --
9. Patterns of interaction --
10. Conclusions.

246 pages, Hardcover

First published July 6, 1970

About the author

David Silverman is Visiting Professor in the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney. He has lived in London for most of his life, where he attended Christ's College Finchley and did a BSc (Economics) at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Afterwards, he went to the USA for graduate work, obtaining an MA in the Sociology Department, University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to LSE to write a PhD on organization theory. This was published as The Theory of Organizations in 1970.

He pioneered and taught MA in Qualitative Research at Goldsmiths in 1985. Since becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999, he has continued publishing methodology books.

His main teaching career was at Goldsmiths College. His three major research projects were on decision making in the Personnel Department of the Greater London Council (Organizational Work, written with Jill Jones, 1975), paediatric outpatient clinics (Communication and Medical Practice, 1987) and HIV-test counselling (Discourses of Counselling, 1997).

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rated now on the basis of reading years ago. This text was an early introduction to the topic at a time of speedy development in sociological branches of societal behaviours thought worthy of study in their own right.
The same was happening in Psychometric studies of the workplace, alongside psychological evaluation of human resources, which was replacing the Personnel Department.
Whilst there are now many hundreds of such texts for the same topics of Organisation Theory or Industrial sociology, this small book would have its place as a marker of the time, '70's, and subsequent developments both in workplace, organisations and course curricula.

[José Van Rosmalen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silverman paste het symbolisch interactionisme toe op organisaties. Dat houdt in dat mensen als actoren worden gezien, die in een organisatie hun doelen trachten te verwezenlijken en op elkaar reageren.