The Management of Innovation [Paperback]

First published in 1961,The Management of Innovationis 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.

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.

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 inlӬ