The sociological study of organizations encompasses both planned and formal organizations as well as spontaneous and informal ones. Sociologists examine organizations with attention to structure and objectives, interactions among members and among organizations, the relationship between the organization and its environment and the social significance or social meaning of the organization. The ways of defining and examining organizations vary depending on the theoretical emphasis.
This book focuses on three things:
• providing a wide and historically accurate portrait of the diversity of sociological theories and their application to organizational studies
• updating selections that reflect a variety of ways that new technology affects methods of organizing and types of organizations
• including readings that examine a range of both formal and informal structures, and both deliberate and impromptu interactions.
Lively and provocative, this textbook is theoretically rigorous, disciplinarily informed and representative of heterogeneity within organizational studies.