The Management of Innovation / Edition 1

by Tom Burns, G. M. Stalker

Overview

First published in 1961, The Management of Innovation is a business classic: one of the most influential books about business organizations ever published. Challenging the received wisdom that there is "one best way" to manage, it sounded the death knell of classical management theory and provided something lasting in its place: a way of looking at organizations that allowed for different contexts, different markets, and different rates of technological change. The book's famous typology of organizations as mechanistic vs. organic has proved timeless, as relevant today as more than thirty years ago. This edition includes a new preface by Tom Burns that situates the work in its historical and current contexts and offers his reflections, years later, on the ideas that changed the way people thought about organizations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198288787
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/15/1994
Edition description:	Rev. ed
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Tom Burns is Professor of Sociology, Retired, Edinburgh University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Third Edition
1. Introduction; Part One: The External Circumstances; 2. The Organization of Innovation; 3. The Development of the Electronics Industry, and the Scottish Council's Scheme; 4. The Market Context; Part Two: Organization and Change
5. Management Structures and Systems; 6. Mechanisitic and Organic Systems of Management; 7. Working Organization, Political System, and Status Structure within the Concern; 8. The Laboratory and the Workshop; 9. Industrial Scientists and Managers: Problems of Power and Status
Part Three: Direction and the Shaping of Management Conduct: 10. The Men at the Top; 11. The Shaping of Work Relationships; 12. The Codes of Practice in Management Conduct; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Few managers around the world have heard of Tom Burns, a former professor of sociology at Edinburgh University. Yet he created a string of concepts which have had an increasingly powerful international influence since he retired 13 years ago. They have improved western management practice immeasurably—and made millionaires of several famous American pundits who embroidered them....Written in refreshingly plain English, it is a riveting read and brims with insight after insight."—Christopher Lorenz, The Financial Times

"Tom Burns' book was a minor classic when it was first published; one of the most sensible and profound critiques of bureaucracy in print. It was way ahead of its time, perhaps "prematurely right." I congratulate Oxford University Press for this reissue, the third edition, with a new and extraordinary Preface to a book that is now a major classic."—Warren Bennis, University of Southern California, author of An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change

"A new edition of Burns and Stalker's scholarly text on organisation theory and industrial sociology is indeed welcome and should provide stimulating reflection for those who work in dynamic industries and professions...For over thirty years, this book has taken a leading role in encouraging creative behaviour in industry and commerce; its message remains relevant in today's harsh economic environment...Those who offer professional services - including market and social research - will find that this pioneering text inspires them to reflect imaginatively on their present activities as practitioners and managers."—Journal of the Market Research Society

From the Publisher