Organization Theory: From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond / Edition 2

by Oliver E. Williamson

Overview

This collection of papers is edited by renowned business thinker Oliver Williamson, who is currently Transamerica Professor of Corporate Strategy at the School of Business Administration at Berkeley. The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chester I. Barnard's remarkable and still influential book, The Functions of the Executive, was celebrated with a seminar series at the University of California, Berkeley in the Spring of 1988. Eight of those lectures are published here. The contributors include organization specialists and sociologists (Barbara Levitt and James March; W. Richard Scott; Glenn Carroll; Jeffrey Pfeffer), an anthropologist, a political scientist, and two economists (Mary Douglas; Terry Moe; Oliver Hart; Oliver Williamson). An important contribution to organization theory, this volume reports on recent progress in this field, and projects a productive research future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195098303
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	01/28/1995
Edition description:	ENL
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.16(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Contributors
Introduction, Oliver E. Williamson
1. Chester I. Barnard and the Intelligence of Learning, Barbara Levitt and James G. March
2. Symbols and Organizations: From Barnard to the Institutionalists, W. Richard Scott
3. On the Organizational Ecology of Chester I. Barnard, Glenn R. Carroll
4. Incentives in Organizations: The Importance of Social Relations, Jeffrey Pfeffer
5. Converging on Autonomy: Anthropology and Institutional Economics, Mary Douglas
6. The Politics of Structural Choice: Toward a Theory of Public Bureaucracy, Terry M. Moe
7. An Economist's Perspective on the Theory of the Firm, Oliver Hart
8. Chester Barnard and the Incipient Science of Organization, Oliver E. Williamson
9. Transaction Cost Economics and Organization Theory, Oliver E. Williamson
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Each essay is of high quality, offering both introspective summary and creative projection."—Choice

"First-rate people gave the lectures, and what they have to say is important to all of us concerned with the field."—Contemporary Sociology

"An intriguing array of chapters written by well-known scholars...each of which relates its message back to Barnard and forward, extending some aspect of organization theory....Perhaps the volume's most important contribution is its insistence that students of organizations become interdisciplinary scholars."—Academy of Management Review

"Organization Theory gives evidence that the study of organizations has been proceeding productively."—Journal of Economic Literature

From the Publisher