Towards Organizational Fitness: A Guide to Diagnosis and TreatmentWork organizations can lose their fitness and become sick, just as people can. Just like people, they may become both physically and behaviourally sick; physically sick when plant and equipment breaks down or the money runs out; behaviourally sick when the resources are badly managed or the staff become alienated. Gerry Randell and John Toplis' Towards Organizational Fitness addresses two main issues: firstly, how to investigate and manage problems involving people at work - a task analogous to that of a medical doctor working with a sick patient; secondly, how to assess and develop the capability and fitness of an organization - like a medical doctor who wishes to improve a patient's health. The message of this book is clear, that organizations should not proceed to change any of their policies, procedures, processes or practices until a systematic thorough diagnosis of the root cause underpinning the need to change has taken place. The process of diagnosis that leads to a technically sound, administratively convenient, politically defensible and socially acceptable decision to change an organization in some way is fraught with difficulty. Towards Organizational Fitness provides managers with a conceptual and practical path through this complex and difficult arena. |
Contents
The Need for Organizational Diagnosis and Treatment | 1 |
The Lure of Fashionable Solutions | 13 |
Describing and Understanding How Organizations Work | 23 |
Preparing to Diagnose and Manage Problems | 35 |
Diagnosis | 51 |
individuals managers and society | 60 |
Identifying and Evaluating Possible Strategies and Treatments | 67 |
Towards Organizational Fitness | 77 |
Leadership The First Key to Organizational Fitness | 97 |
Internal Communications The Second Key to Organizational | 111 |
The Way Ahead | 123 |
MASOD | 129 |
Appendix A Signs and Signals of Organizational Illness and Health | 133 |
Appendix B When Individuals Threaten the Future of the Organization | 141 |
155 | |