Beyond Rational Management: Mastering the Paradoxes and Competing Demands of High Performance

by Robert E. Quinn

Book Overview

Draws together extensive research on leadership, change, and organizational performance to help leaders make sense of the complexities and contradictions of organizational life. Explains how managers can come to see new possibilities for structuring organizations, designing jobs, and solving daily problems by learning to embrace and transcend paradoxes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555420753
• ISBN13: 9781555420758
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A brilliant idea!

Many management books prescribe one management method as the cure-all which would resolve all problems. Others suggest that one management philosophy is the only one appropriate for a given organization. This book suggests that there are several basic management philosophies, and that organizations go through different cycles with a different managerial approach being correct for each stage in the cycle. The best managers are those who are able to determine the best approach at a given time, use it until it is no longer needed, then switch to the appropriate new strategy. I could have wished for more depth, but still found the book worthwhile. I'd also like to have seen more on becoming a "master manager", but that seems to have been reserved for another book!