Product Description

This eagerly awaited introductory textbook provides a fresh approach to the study of Organizational Behaviour and management. Seeking to make the subject matter more relevant and accessible, it treats Organizational Behaviour as a field of activity that has many parallels with what is experienced in everyday life. Students will find it easier to learn about organizations by appreciating how work relations and management activities are not so distant from their own everyday lives. Uniquely, this book presents two distinct and highly contrasting perspectives on Organizational Behaviour. Key elements of what is conventionally studied in the field are introduced and treated as a foil for introducing a critical, less orthodox perspective. Written with the introductory Organizational Behaviour student in mind, this exciting new text has a four-colour design and uses classic pedagogical features such as case studies, think points, discussion questions, learning objectives and linked chapter summaries in order to engage students and provide a stimulating learning and teaching environment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17447 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 552 pages

Mary Jo Hatch, Professor Emerita, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia
"This textbook offers a refreshing change from traditional OB books that only offer students a managerial point of view. Taking on all the usual suspects - individual differences, motivation, leadership, organization structure and design, culture, power and politics, and so on - David Knights and Hugh Willmott and their colleagues present received wisdom alongside insightful resistance to and critique of the same. Full of detailed examples that invite students to engage in critical reflection on their own assumptions about how organizations operate as well as on the field of organizational behavior and its proponents, this book will change the way you teach organizational behavior for the better. Reasoned, insightful and even handed are just some of the accolades I give the authors of this fine contribution to the field of organization studies."

Patricia Findlay, University of Edinburgh
"There are many good things about this text. It is explicit in its engagement with mainstream and critical material. It avoids the temptation to include every topic under the sun at the expense of depth or excessive length. Having an edited collection works well in that it produces variety in style and approach."

Terry McNulty, University of Liverpool
"The strengths of the book are first and foremost that it makes the critical perspective available via some excellent contributors."

Customer Reviews

Good feedback from over 200 students at Reading Uni
I have been using this textbook since 2007 with around 200 students at UG and PG levels. They seemed to like it and commented positively.

My favourite feature about this book is that it addresses conventional OB topics through a wide variety of perspectives.

For instance, it addresses the limitations of bureaucracy but also those of post-bureaucracy where the quest for a 'streamlined' organisation ends up disempowering employees. Other examples include the topics of motivation, leadership, technology, power games, gender, etc.

organizational behaviour management
This is required reading for a masters course I am taking online. I do not recommend it. It is written in a pedantic and incomprehensible style, full of run-on sentences which make it difficult to absorb the content. I have to read every sentence at least three times.

For example, p. 146: "In the name of empowerment, this system cuts the possibility of breathing space and personal autonomy that 'buffers' of different kinds made possible."

What the heck? Can anybody tell me what this means?

I think the proof reader fell asleep, or this is a badly translated version of something that was originally written in a language other than English.

It does not really deserve one star.