Handbook of Organization Studies

`This handbook is organized to help teachers and students to cover the mainstream work in the field of organization studies. The aim has been to incorporate the diverse changes in the practice and knowledge of organizations that have occurred in recent years. This it review the old as well as the new. The Handbook is developed in three sections: frameworks for analysis; current issues in organization studies; and reflections on research, theory and practice. Part 1 identifies some of the major contemporary forms of theoretical practices in organization studies. Part 2 offers specific insight into subjects and considers the following: strategy, leadership, decision-making, cognition, groups, communications, technology, innovation, organization learning, diversity, the

ecological environment and globalization. Some of the issues are well-established, and others have developed in response to changes and challenges found in the contemporary world of organizations. in Part 3, the connection between theory and practice is examined closely. In the conclusion attention is given to the status of representation, as processes of representation o both the individual and the organizational subject provides an opportunity to carry out research that meshes theory and practice. This is an excellent reference tool with which to study organizational theory and practice' - International Review of Administrative Sciences

`In many ways, the editors have put together an impressive reference work, serious in intent and rigorous in implementation. As a publishing achievement, and a scholarly `event' in the field, SAGE is to be congratulated. It is designed as a work of synthesis, to link past and present, general and specific.... The Handbook is clearly intellectually challenging' - Journal of General Management

`It [the book] is well crafted: the editors have done a thoroughtly excellent job, and they have managed their contributing authors so they in turn express their theses clearly. I recommend this handbook to all who have to grapple with the study of an organization' - Journal of the Operational Research Society

`A valuable guide to major issues in the field' - Gareth Morgan, University of York

`The Handbook of Organization Studies completes the trilogy begun by two previous pathbreaking handbooks - March's Handbook of Organizations (1965) and Nystrom and Starbuck's Handbook of Organizational Design (1981). Like the earlier two handbooks, the editors have recruited an international group of up-and-coming junior scholars, as well as seasoned veterans, and the result is stunning... a gold mine of ideas. I wholeheartedly recommend this book' - Howard E Aldrich, Kenan Professor of Sociology, University of Northern Carolina at Chapel Hill

`A marvellous collection of up-to-date scholarship on organization studies from a whole array of perspectives. A must for any organization researcher's bookshelf' - Koya Azumi, Professor of Sociology, International Christian University, Tokyo

`The Handbook of Organization Studies provides a much-needed synthesis of the literature and knowledge about organizations and organizing.... I recommend it as an essential reference book for business schools as well as social science departments' - Professor Jean-Claude Thoenig, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France

`This book is the most significant contribution to the study of organizations to have appeared in one volume since the classic Handbook of Organizations which James March edited thirty years ago.... This Handbook of Organization Studies should remain relevant for at least as long as its predecessor' - John Child, Guinness Professor of Management Studies, The Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge

`The Handbook of Organization Studies is a stunning accomplishment. The volume forces relics of an earlier era, like me, to rethink the fields of organizations and organization studies. It captures the exciting differences that are part of our literature in one place. The volume undoubtedly will stimulate new enquiries which will require another such handbook in another three decades' - Richard H Hall, Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology and Management, State University of New York, Albany

`This book will stimulate many exciting conversations among readers that would not have occurred without it. It is creative in design and conception and the quality... is superb. Definintely, it will appeal to those who wish to celebrate the diversity of perspectives and issues in the field and outflank those who wish to imagine that there is nothing of value outside the mainstream' - Professor John M Jermier, University of South Florida, Tampa