Organizations Evolving [Paperback]

Howard Aldrich (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0803989199 | ISBN-13: 978-0803989191 | Publication Date: October 1, 1999 | Edition: 1

Winner of the 2000 Max Weber prize, awarded by the Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work, of the American Sociological Association, for the best book on organizations published in the past 3 years!

`This book is an exceptional accomplishment and is compulsory reading for all organizational researchers'- Hayagreeva Rao, Emory University

`Organizations Evolving is precisely what this book is about. In a richly textured way, Howard Aldrich gives the reader a distinctive feel for the subject and a way to think about and understand emergence and change in organizations. [The book] is informative and engaging. It is playful and rigorous. It is scholarly and quite prac

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Organizations Evolving is masterful. Aldrich cogently consolidates state-of-the-art thinking and research on organizational evolution, a domain of enquiry that he helped pioneer 20 years ago with his classic Organizations and Environments' - Joel A C Baum, CN Chair in Strategy and Organization, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

`This book pulls together an extensive array of information that focuses on emerging, rather than established businesses. Howard Aldrich presents the unique dilemmas faced by entrepreneurs in the creation of human resource policies and systems in a coherent and useful fashion ' - Candia Brush, Boston University

`Organizations Evolving is precisely what this book is about. In a richly textured way, Howard Aldrich gives the reader a distinctive feel for the subject and a way to think about and understand emergence and change in organizations. [The book] is informative and engaging. It is playful and rigorous. It is scholarly and quite practical. Aldrich writes with confidence and wisdom. He invites many theorists into the tent even as he sometimes re-casts their work within his frame. His book makes a fine contribution to the evolving field of organization studies' -Professor Peter J. Frost University of British Columbia

`This is a terrific book! Just as Howard Aldrich was the first to present an ecological framing for the field, this is the first comprehensive work to extend and integrate what so many have beentalking about as important, but (maybe excepting Nelson and Winter's start) nobody has explained and worked out where the field should move with it. Which Aldrich has done here so clearly and articulately. For me, the book is especially timely. Putting emergence and dynamics out front is a great contribution' - Paul Hirsch, James Allen Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University.

`Organizations Evolving is a timely and important addition to the literature on organizational evolution. It is essential reading for all organizational researchers' - Hayagreeva Rao

`The Immense learning of Aldrich's book shows that there is a lot of promise in evolutionary theory applied to organizations' - Arthur L Stinchcombe

`This is a high-level, wholly integrated volume for post-graduates and academics in the field. It has enormous potential for management strategists and consultants exploring the macro-issues and organisational and cultural change' - Cary L. Cooper The Times Higher March 24th 2000

`I would recommend this text as an excellent source book to anyone who is already immersed in organizational studies and aware of its plurality of perspectives' - British Journal of Sociology

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd; 1 edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803989199
• ISBN-13: 978-0803989191
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,493,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Howard Aldrich is Kenan Professor of Sociology, Adjunct Professor of Business, and Chair of Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of 7 books, including one in Japanese & one in Farsi, and over 150 articles. More details about his work are available on his personal web page (http://www.unc.edu/~healdric/.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tour de force, January 3, 2000

By 

Frank Dobbin (Princeton) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organizations Evolving (Paperback)

Howard Aldrich's ORGANIZATIONS EVOLVING is truly a tour de force. Those who know his 1979 ORGANIZATIONS AND ENVIRONMENTS are familiar with his sharp insights into the field of organizations and his lucid writing. In ORGANIZATIONS EVOLVING, Aldrich develops a compelling, broadly evolutionary, perspective on organizations that integrates the best ideas from diverse organizational theories. He makes the best, most sophisticated, case yet for an evolutionary perspective on the organization.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Develops key insights about organizational performance., October 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Organizations Evolving (Hardcover)

Howard Aldrich's new book, Organizations Evolving, is a tour de force that reflects an impressive mastery of diverse literatures. Aldrich integrates theory and empirical findings from an array of fields to develop fundamental new knowledge about the conditions under which organizations emerge, evolve and transform themselves. The breadth of the book is striking. It is an elegant synthesis of findings from different disciplines, different levels of analysis and different types of organizations. The book reflects both the complexity and identifies the underlying regularites in the emergence and evolution of organizations. I would recommend the book to scholars and managers interested in organizations, strategy and entrepreneurship.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quallity contribution to the field of organization studies, November 3, 1999

By 

Sherrie Human (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organizations Evolving (Paperback)

First, I found the book to be highly "readable" in a number of ways, including its integration of literature and examples related to organizations of all sizes and ages. This approach created a dynamic "feel" to the book and a sense that the organizations we study are much more "moving targets" than stationary ones. Second, I confess that I am one of those readers who peruses the last section or chapter of a publication first to see where the author is going. I found that the final "invitation" section piqued my interest on a number of intriguing issues for future scholarly work (e.g., challenges of human resources in emergent organizations; the impact of collective organizational action versus individual organizational action) and I am confident others will find this section useful as well in contemplating future research programs. The "invitation" section also offers useful ideas that appeal to a variety of disciplines...for instance, I am already contemplating how I might collaborate with some of my academic colleagues in human resource mgt. and/or org. behavior. Third, since I am currently working on projects related to organizational legitimacy and legitimacy building, I focused my initial reading on sections related to these subjects, and found that Aldrich has, not surprisingly, extended the literature on legitimacy in some interesting and useful ways. For instance, at one point he discusses the potential for tensions to arise between, on the one hand, individualistic action that builds the legitimacy of a new firm, and, on the other hand, mutualistic or collective action that builds the legitimacy of a new population or community of rganizations. Finally, speaking of legitimacy, his purposeful attention throughout the book to organizations at all stages of development (e.g., emergent and existing) helps further legitimize scholarly interest in smaller and/or newer organizations. This is a quality contribution to the field of organization research.