Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe - Softcover

Wheatley, Margaret J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1881052443 ISBN 13: 9781881052449

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1994

Synopsis

Based on new science theories, this innovative management book sheds light on the issues that affect organizations most--order and change, autonomy and control, structure and flexibility, planning and innovation. The hardcover was considered the number-one management book of 1992.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

""Each of us lives and works in organizations designed from Newtonian images of the universe"", Margaret Wheatley writes in this groundbreaking book. ""Our assumptions come to us from seventeenth-century physics, from Newtonian mechanics. . . . But the science has changed. If we are to continue to draw from the sciences to create and manage organizations, then we need to at least ground our work in the science of our times. We need to stop seeking after the universe of the seventeenth century and begin to explore what has become known to us in the twentieth century"". Wheatley takes the reader on a mind-opening journey into the ""new science"" - the revolutionary discoveries in quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology that are changing our understanding of the universe. And she applies these scientific concepts to offer new light on the fundamental issues of organizing work, people, and life, including: how can we find order in a chaotic world?; how is order different than control?; how can we create more participative, open, and adaptive organizations?; how can we reconcile individual autonomy and organizational control?; and what leads to organizational growth and self-renewal instead of decline and death?

About the Author:

Margeret Wheatley, EdD, writes, teaches and speaks about how to restore hope and sanity to organizations. She has been a management professor and consultant since 1973. She travels the world willingly in support of life-affirming leaders everywhere.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1881052443
• ISBN 13: 9781881052449
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 166