Towards Organizational Fitness

A Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment

Gerry Randell, John Toplis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472422620
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317008941
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Work organizations can lose their fitness and become sick, just as people can. Just like people, they may become both physically and behaviourally sick; physically sick when plant and equipment breaks down or the money runs out; behaviourally sick when the resources are badly managed or the staff become alienated. Gerry Randell and John Toplis' Towards Organizational Fitness addresses two main issues: firstly, how to investigate and manage problems involving people at work - a task analogous to that of a medical doctor working with a sick patient; secondly, how to assess and develop the capability and fitness of an organization - like a medical doctor who wishes to improve a patient's health. The message of this book is clear, that organizations should not proceed to change any of their policies, procedures, processes or practices until a systematic thorough diagnosis of the root cause underpinning the need to change has taken place. The process of diagnosis that leads to a technically sound, administratively convenient, politically defensible and socially acceptable decision to change an organization in some way is fraught with difficulty. Towards Organizational Fitness provides managers with a conceptual and practical path through this complex and difficult arena.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Need for Organizational Diagnosis and Treatment
• 2 The Lure of ‘Fashionable Solutions’
• 3 Describing and Understanding How Organizations Work
• 4 Preparing to Diagnose and Manage Problems
• 5 Diagnosis
• 6 Identifying and Evaluating Possible Strategies and Treatments
• 7 Towards Organizational Fitness
• 8 Leadership - The First Key to Organizational Fitness
• 9 Internal Communications - The Second Key to Organizational Fitness
• 10 The Way Ahead
• Appendix A Signs and Signals of Organizational Illness and Health
• Appendix B When Individuals Threaten the Future of the Organization
• Notes on Chapters
• Index