.... Organization Theory Challenges and Perspectives John McAuley, Joanne Duberley and Phil Johnson . This book is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive and reliable guide to organisational theory currently available. What is needed is a text that will give a good idea of the breadth and complexity of this important subject, and this is precisely what McAuley, Duberley and Johnson have provided. They have done some sterling service in bringing together the very diverse strands of work that today qualify as constituting the subject of organisational theory. Whilst their writing is accessible and engaging, their approach is scholarly and serious. It is so easy for students (and indeed others who should know better) to trivialize this very problematic and challenging subject. This is not the case with the present book. This is a book that deserves to achieve a wide readership. Professor Stephen Ackroyd, Lancaster University, UK This new textbook usefully situates organization theory within the scholarly debates on modernism and postmodernism, and provides an advanced introduction to the heterogeneous study of organizations, including chapters on phenomenology, critical theory and psychoanalysis. Like all good textbooks, the book is accessible, well researched and readers are encouraged to view chapters as a starting point for getting to grips with the field of organization theory. Dr Martin Brigham, Lancaster University, UK McAuley et al. provide a highly readable account...
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...Social Change and Modernity Edited By Hans Haferkamp and Neil J. Smelser UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles Oxford © 1992 The Regents of the University of California INTRODUCTION Hans Haferkamp and Neil J. Smelser Haferkamp is grateful to Angelika Schade for her fruitful comments and her helpful assistance in editing this volume and to Geoff Hunter for translating the first German version of parts of the Introduction; Smelser has profited from the research assistance and critical analyses given by Joppke. 1. Social Change and Modernity Those who organized the conference on which this volume is based—including the editors— decided to use the terms "social change" and "modernity" as the organizing concepts for this project. Because these terms enjoy wide usage in contemporary sociology and are general and inclusive, they seem preferable to more specific terms such as "evolution" "progress," "differentiation," or even "development," many of which evoke more specific mechanisms, processes, and directions of change. Likewise, we have excluded historically specific terms such as "late capitalism" and "industrial society" even though these concepts figure prominently in many of the contributions to this volume. The conference strategy called for a general statement of a metaframework for the study of social change within which a variety of more specific theories could be identified. 2. Theories of Social Change Change is such an evident feature of...
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