The Character of Organizations: Using Personality Type in Organization Development

Rating:
Summary: Myers-Briggs for companies - surprisingly effective.
Review: Criticisms that this book merely recycles standard Myers-Briggs ideas are misplaced. Most people familiar with ideas of psychological type might agree there was *some* case for an analogous approach to organisational character, perhaps at the level of the four categories of temperament. However, William Bridges succeeds in showing how applying the sixteen types of Myers-Briggs type theory can highlight essential and distinctive organisational characteristics. Most of his examples, although dated, seem compelling. There are a few issues: I suspect that most people would consider Hewlett-Packard to be SF, rather than ST, as Dr. Bridges has it (p. 25). And even for a book first published in 1990, the omission of Microsoft is a little surprising (INTJ?).

The other dimension of organisational analysis covered in this book is that of organisational development and lifecycle. Again, Dr. Bridges leverages type theory to develop some interesting ideas as to the different type-characteristics exhibited from organisation conception ("the Dream"), through maturity ("Becoming an Institution"), to organisational death. Given the extent of merger and acquisition activity in recent years, I was surprised to see how little attention Dr. Bridges gave to managing the cultural and developmental issues which surface when different company characteristics collide in M&A, (about half a page).

Finally, there is a deeper theoretical issue as to why Jungian/Myers-Briggs type theory - developed from Jung's theories of the human psyche, should be expected to apply to organisations at all. Do organisations assemble themselves around the type of their founders, does the type emerge as a side-effect of the types of employees who are best at tackling the company's problems, or is there a supra-human theory of "organisational psychology" trying to get out here? The book alludes to the existence of these kinds of problems, but does not really add much to our understanding.

All in all, this book will add value to anyone who already has a feel for the Myers-Briggs approach to personality types, and who is interested in effectively dealing with organisations.

Rating:
Summary: a little hokie
Review: I sent this book back - Its basically the myers-briggs at the organization level. It goes through characteristics of the ENTJ organization for example. My problem with it was that the people make the organization and the culture and unless all the same types of people are being hired or cloned and all the people in the org are primarily the particular type then the concepts fall apart. The other thing that bugged me was that the leadership generally sets the tone for the organization so if the leader is a certain personality type then that will probably prevade the organization so there's no need to look at the organization's type but instead to look at leadership and see what type of culture/values they portend andthen work at that level to make change. Anyway, I didn't find this book useful at all - just another spin on myers briggs

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Organizations have their own personalities, as William Bridges demonstrates by applying the most popular personality test ever devised for humans to groups of people working together. Bridges developed the “Organizational Character Index” (OCI) from the ubiquitous Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. While OCI thus far lacks the rigorous testing of hundreds of certified Myers-Briggs trainers, intuitively the model makes sense. Bridges provides a useful way of thinking about organizational styles and tries to understand the nature of departments within organizations. Abundant examples, lists and charts help illustrate the principles. We...recommend this book to managers and human resource professionals seeking insight into the nuances of organizational development, provided that they are willing to spoon through a certain amount of alphabet soup. (Note: Though this book has a 2000 copyright date, with the exception of a new forward by Sandra Krebs Hirsh, it is a republication of a work written in about 1990.)