Customer Reviews

Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The other posted reviews make me think that Organization Theory itself is dense, and not just the book itself. That comes as somewhat of a relief and a disappointment at the same time.

This book was required reading as a part of my Public Administration program, and from an informal sampling of class opinion, nearly everyone soundly rejected the text as difficult to understand, jargonistic, and stuffy.

Hatch spends so much time covering all perspectives of Organization Theory that she fails to define many terms she puts forth that readers new to these concepts might not necessarily understand. Additionally, the lack of real-life examples of how Organization Theory applies to daily life (or even the real world at all) makes reading her work a difficult proposition at best.

Organization Theory professors, if you're reading this and thinking about making this required reading, I hope you place a huge amount of faith in your teaching ability because without it, this book will not be able to impart a large part of Organization Theory knowledge on its own.

If you like big ideas and you are studying business on the graduate level, you should be happy your instructor assigned this book. Mary Jo Hatch book makes terrific sense out of the difficult discipline of Org Theory. Org Theory is all about the lenses through which you view the world. By nature it's dense, abstract, confusing, contradictory, and hard to tie to real life in organizations. And yet, it is the basis of every business book on the bestseller list. The Next Big Thing in business is just a new way of looking at old problems - and that's the heart of Org Theory. Dive in and have fun.

This book is very readable. Some of the books and papers on organizational theory are so dense that they are practically unreadable. This one effectively conveys the information the author wants you to understand. This is not a pointless book. I can't say that about most of the others I've had to read on organizational theory.

I bought this book for school. A lawyer friend read part and started laughing because it did not make sense. Most of the book feels like double speak. The authors use excessive amounts of words to write not much and you get lost in the details. The theories themselves are largely Marxist.

Organizational Theoretical Perspectives is not lite reading by any stretch of the imagination. Your average practitioner does not deal with modernism, postmodernism, and symbolic interpretivism in their purest forms. In academia, however, it serves as important background. This particular book is written in such a way that gives a good explanation and overview of the three main theoretical perspectives and the theories and models that have been made famous under each. It's not exciting reading, it's academic. Fortunately, it is not written in an overly scholarly tone making it good for advanced courses in a bachelor's program or courses in a master's program. I read it as part of a doctoral program as it was paired with another one that was written in a more scholarly tone. The pair-up was good because the former helped clarify the latter.

Realistically, unless you are pursuing a degree in organization or are a faculty member, you probably won't have much interest in this. It's a textbook.

This book is suitable for your first encounter with Organizational Communication.I like the author's idea about filling abstract terms with personal experiences.

The content of this book is excellent, REALLY. I don't want to sell it back. It's the construction of the book that is the problem. It was brand new and fell apart two weeks after purchase. I got a second one after returning the first one that was an excellent condition used copy--looked like new--and it fell apart two days after use. :-(

I've received the book within the promised period in excellent condition. As for the content, it is appealing to anyone interested in organization studies.

This book is required reading for a graduate OD course I completed this summer. Using the organizational theory perspectives of modernist, symbolic and post modernist, the author carefully guides and builds on theories that support these perspectives. In the end, it give professional change experts a foundation for recommendations. I will continue to use this book as a reference for my internal and external OD/OT work.

This book is a foundational book for understanding organizational theory and the development of the theories over the years. It is strong in citations and references and the depth of information makes it an essential reference book for the Master's or Doctoral student.