The Org
Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan, Twelve,
320 pages, $26.99
Why are there bureaucracies? Why is there a new management initiative of the month? Why do companies buy businesses and then spin them off? Isn't innovation squelched daily by so many procedures and rules? What, another meeting? Sigh.
Authors Ray Fisman, a Columbia University business professor, and Tim Sullivan, editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, pull together an impressive array of examples and research in "The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office" to explain how almost every seemingly illogical aspect of our daily work is actually the effort — sometimes more successful, sometimes less so — to balance opposing, yet equally valuable, forces in a business.
The organizations Fisman and Sullivan discuss include the Army, Procter & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, textile factories in India, the Methodist church and Al-Qaida.
We may have a mental image of corporate monoliths, with dictators, perhaps dynamic, perhaps evil, at the top, flanked by creativity-stifling bureaucratic minions. But the "org" that the authors describe is more of a quivering mass of yin and yang, always striving to maintain equilibrium between competing forces.
Except for the irritating habit of calling organizations "orgs," the book does a great job of explaining business forces. It's even possible, after reading "The Org," to muster sympathy for the top executives.
The book's only misstep is in the last chapter, when it fails to offer better advice on how to cope with these competing forces in our daily work lives.
Ordinarily, this would be a fatal flaw in a book, but not in this one. Understanding is everything, especially for those of us who love our work, and even love our "orgs," despite the illogic we see in our daily work lives.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
