Organization Theory From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond [Paperback]

This collection of papers is edited by renowned business thinker Oliver Williamson, who is currently Transamerica Professor of Corporate Strategy at the School of Business Administration at Berkeley. The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chester I. Barnard's remarkable and still influential book,The Functions of the Executive, was celebrated with a seminar series at the University of California, Berkeley in the Spring of 1988. Eight of those lectures are published here. The contributors include organization specialists and sociologists (Barbara Levitt and James March; W. Richard Scott; Glenn Carroll; Jeffrey Pfeffer), an anthropologist, a political scientist, and two economists (Mary Douglas; Terry Moe; Oliver Hart; Oliver Williamson). An important contribution to organization theory, this volume reports on recent progress in this field, and projects a productive research future.

Contributors
Introduction,Oliver E. Williamson
1. Chester I. Barnard and the Intelligence of Learning,Barbara Levitt and James G. March
2. Symbols and Organizations: From Barnard to the Institutionalists,W. Richard Scott
3. On the Organizational Ecology of Chester I. Barnard,Glenn R. Carroll
4. Incentives in Organizations: The Importance of Social Relations,Jeffrey Pfeffer
5. Converging on Autonomy: Anthropology and Institutional Economics,Mary Douglas
6. The Politics of Structural Choice: Toward a Theory of Public Bureaucracy,Terry M. Moe
7. An Economist's Perspective on the Theory of the Firm,Oliver Hart
8. Chester Barnard and the Incipient Science of Organization,Oliver E. Williamson
9. Transaction Cost Economics and Organization Theory,Oliver E. Williamson
Index

Each essay is of high quality, offering both introspective summary and creative projection. --Choice

First-rate people gave the lectures, and what they halst