Böcker utgivna av Organizational Dialogue Press

In this book, Stefan Kühl shows that there is a trend towards hyperformalization, especially in agile organizations. This happens because, in order to achieve the dismantling of hierarchy and the softening of departmental boundaries, agile organizations are producing formal role descriptions to an unprecedented degree. This over-bureaucratization results in a whole series of unintended side effects that can clog up organizations. As Stefan Kühl shows with numerous examples from corporate practice, organizations form shadow hierarchies and shadow departments in order to retain their ability to act.

Organizations face a dilemma. On the one hand, they have to ensure the effectiveness of their official policy, but on the other hand, they count on their members to frequently deviate from the rules and ignore instructions for the sake of the organization. This is because formal rules are often too rigid to fit every situation, so organizations must be willing to tolerate deviance-as long as it does not fundamentally call the existence of the formal order into question. In organizational research, rule deviance that is functional for an organization is known as useful illegality. The concept pertains not only to behavior that breaches state laws, but also to behavior that violates an organization's formal expectations, meaning the laws of the organization. Disregarding occupational safety laws, exceeding state-mandated rest periods for truck drivers or bribing customers to win a contract can all be considered cases of useful illegality, as can ignoring official channels or flouting internal procedural guidelines-incidents that violate the formal expectations in an organization but do not break state laws. For all of the outrage usually generated by rule-breaking and legal violations, it is widely acknowledged that rule deviance is functional in organizations. It is not for nothing that "working to rule" is considered the most effective form of industrial action for paralyzing an organization. When all rules and instructions are followed to the letter, even a well-planned organization will come to a standstill. The organization is broken by the rigidity of its formal structures and done in by its mania for order and ordinances, its regulation frenzy and its rule fetishism. But this insight is quickly forgotten when a media scandal erupts around an organization that has broken a rule or law.

From companies, public administrations, universities, and schools to hospitals, prisons, political parties, and the military, organizations influence us from the moment we are born to the moment we die. However, we receive no training in how to deal with them, whether as their members, customers, patients, or voters.Organizations-what are these entities that have such a strong influence on modern society? What makes them tick? What are our options for changing them? This book explains how organizations function by examining three of their central characteristics: membership, goals, and hierarchies.Describing organizations metaphorically as "façades," "machines," and "games," the author sheds lights on three important sides-their image, formal side, and informal side-and provides a broad set of tools for better understanding them.

In the wake of spectacular economic scandals, there has been a surge in interest about rule-breaking in organizations and the question of how to prevent such violations. More and more organizations are setting up 'compliance management' positions that are responsible for monitoring compliance with rules, sanctioning deviations from the rules, and establishing and interpreting new rules. The motto here is: from now on, we'll do everything by the book! In this book, we show why the hopes associated with compliance management are often overstated, while the risks are typically underestimated. Compliance management needs to be managed and discursively designed; it cannot ensure complete control.

The belief that rainmakers bring rain is a superstition, but they are able to create cohesion among the people who believe in their powers. Stefan Kühl describes how the rainmaker effect works in the model of the learning organization. Many of the modern management principles that are billed as formulas for success - e.g., clear objectives, employee identification, participation, and continuous learning - fail to deliver on their promises. However, they do have other beneficial effects. They ensure that organizations keep evolving.

In the management discourse few words are thrown about more carelessly than 'organizational culture'. While the term is usually defined too broadly-including such phenomena as assumptions, values, traditions, articles of faith, myths and artifacts-this book applies a far more narrow concept. Organizational culture, or the informal structure of an organization, is a term used to describe the behavioral expectations in an organization that have not been decided on in a formal way but that evolved by means of repetition and imitation. This book shows how this narrow definition makes it possible to more precisely observe and understand an organization's culture and its changes. Management's only way for influencing organizational culture-and this may sound paradoxical at first-is to change the organization's formal structure as for example its incentive schemes, goal-setting processes, strategic directions or hierarchy.

The linear, goal-oriented approach to projects that is so popular in management literature is only appropriate if you are dealing with well-defined problems. For projects that address poorly defined problems, however, the principles of classic project management don't work; project managers attempt in vain to maintain a linear approach, even if targets, people affected and framework conditions cannot be determined precisely. We propose a fundamentally different approach based on current organizational theory: to start out with experiments, without predetermined conclusions. Projects are not evaluated by comparing the current status to the target, but rather by assessing whether stagnation has been overcome, conflicts put aside, and shared understanding about new opportunities has been created. Project groups and steering committees are not set up at all. Power "games" are harnessed and put to use, rather than prohibited.