Book review of Chris Grey's book A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Essay

Book review of Chris Grey's book A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Organizations (200 - Essay Example Also, these contemporary theories ignore the opportunities of further evolution in management sciences and consider the application of management theories a simple task with predictable outcomes, whereas the truth is that organizations are more than just management with high degree of uncertainty and ability to digress from the standards suggested by scientific management. Christopher Grey has managed to provide a book which compiles both classic and contemporary theories related to organizational management. While writing this book, Grey has attempted to combine the management and organization theories by amalgamating their outcomes. The book stands on a rationale that organizational theories and management are no different since management is an integral part of practices taking place in an organization. The work of Grey is important on the basis that where other books and literary works have limited the application of organizational theory only to the corporations and institutions , Grey argues that organizations by means of a structure, is more comprehensive than that. He views the application of organization as a concept in overall social spectrum; even in a family structure as well (Callahan, 2009). The book itself is meant for readers who have prior knowledge of other management concepts and organizational studies. Since management of the organizations act as the gist of the book, therefore all the chapters which discuss parts of organizations also deal with the management theories (Donaldson, 2006). Through this book, Grey has asserted that where other books on organization possess a lot of knowledge covered in hundreds of pages, the contents discussed are either too generic or faulty to understand. Therefore, he presents arguments on different areas of organizational management based on the arguments presented by previous theories. Grey has mentioned time and again that organizational theory has been misunderstood or explained in a manner which illustra tes the importance of job to be done however questions like who is expected to define the methods and who will perform the job, remain unanswered. Therefore, in order to illustrate this communication gap between the actual and perceived forms of organizational theory, this book discusses leadership, people management, importance of bureaucracy, fast capitalism and change management (Callahan, 2009). In order to deliver his point of view, Grey has used an assertive approach towards combining the classic and contemporary theories. The approach does seem like a mannerism to draw lacking in other’s work which appears rather unethical. However, the basic purpose in the book is to illustrate how organizations behave, evolve and relate to resources associated to them. The crux of this discussion is human resources itself (Donaldson, 2006). Through his arguments, Grey illustrates how bureaucracy is related to scientific management of the organization (Aulich, 2012). He discussed seve ral management styles and also the implications of applying generalized theories in the problematic areas. By doing so, Grey argues that organizations have flexible nature like people and applying fixed solutions provided by management consultants only consumes time, resources and energy. He further argues that while solving a problem, managers need to show susceptibility to presence of different solutions and selection of the