Customer Reviews

Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1970 Mintzberg compiled the state of the art academic knowledge into "The Structuring of Organizations". Much of the 512 pages, by his own admission, were devoted to references and supporting evidence. Structures in Fives in 1983, is a less academic and more practical version of the former, which has become one of the seminal works in Organisation.

Mintzberg work condenses knowledge from academic papers into clear and useful concepts and makes it accessible to the practitioners involved in creating organisations.
The result is a highly structured approach to the subject, probably one of the reasons why it is used as a text book in several business schools.

Anyone interested in designing organisations or understanding what makes an organisation effective should read this book.

If you are looking to understand the various possible structures of companies, the pros and cons therein, trade offs and advantages, read the book. It's not very entertaining, but rather dry. However, I expected that so I wasn't let down.

Really the concepts taught here could have been explained easily in half the pages, but Mintzberg loves his data. That data is overwhelming for this book, and half of it could have been left out. Maybe I am not the target audience. However, I prefer a little too much data than a shortage of it.

Mintzberg has laid out, with clarity, the structures of companies. He shows that he can think ahead of his time. So many books today espouse one heavily weighted enterprise structure (say, a market focused one) without helping its readers understand the cons.

Educational, dry, enlightening. Worth the time, though I would prefer a shorter version.

Good choice for those who want to learn about management and the design of successful organizations.

I own this book since the late 80-ties. I feel the primary thing is not about organizations and their structures, but about co-ordination.

If you are interested to put 'The New Way of Working' [Bill Gates and others] and the 'Rhineland' approach into fundamental, theoretical perspective, then read this book.

If you want practical inspiration for leadership and a natural human way of working, then read the books of Ricardo Semler.

When you have read this very practice book, you can see how organisations work, were the weaknesses en strengths are in the company en how you can give advise to solve the problems.