Business Decisions, Human Choices

Restoring the Partnership Between People and Their Organizations

Lloyd C. Williams

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN: 9781567200157
• eBook ISBN: 9780313035128
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Dr. Williams contends that over the last 20 years a change has occurred in organizations that has created a syndrome of dysfunctions that are neither good for businesses nor for the people who work in them. Williams sees businesses as living entities, and argues that how they act and react will have an impact on their employees, and often a devastating impact. In much the same way as businesses make decisions, people make choices, and seldom are these decisions and choices congruent. Unless disparate self-interests and goals can be reconciled—unless a partnership can be restored between people and their organizations—not only will employees be damaged, but the success of their organization, upon which they depend for their livelihoods, will be jeopardized. How this dangerous situation came about, what it means, and how it can be remedied is the subjet of Dr. Williams' book. Research-based and always in touch with the realities of commerce, Dr. Williams will make business people aware that organizations and their people must become reunited, and then show them how it can be done. Dr. Williams makes clear he is not simply speculating or theorizing. His goal is to make management aware of the dysfunctions that are damaging their organizations, and how these are reflected in the behaviors of their employees. When he calls for a focus on humanity, spirit, and context, Dr. Williams is actually offering a workable, real-world strategy to breathe new life into organizations of all kinds—a strategy he calls The Trinity Process. Its purpose: to help management restore the essential partnership between organizational entities and the people who make them succeed or fail. In Part One he shows what it means to be part of any organization and, with anecdotes and cases from his own research, helps readers grasp the dynamics of their own organizations. In Part Two he proposes new or reframed paradigms that provide an underpinning for the reestablishment of equality between organizations and their employees. Then, in Part Three he presents The Trinity Process itself. The result is a remarkably lucid, readable, engrossing exploration of organizational life today, important reading for decision makers in all types of organizations, public as well as private, and for academics concerned with how organizations behave.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I: ORGANIZATIONAL DETACHMENTS: HOW WE CREATE OUR FRAGMENTS
• II: PERSONAL HOOKS THAT IMPACT ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
• III: CREATING THE PARTNERSHIP
• Classified Bibliography
• Index