Rating: 
Summary: Strengths and limitations of metaphors.
Review: "While managing and organizing are challenging in the best times, the difficulties are compounding in today's environment of rapid change. If you want to be the type of leader or professional who helps your organization adapt to the multiple demands of an increasingly turbulent world, you need to become aware of the images and assumptions that are shaping your current thinking and develop the capacity to use new ones. You need to develop competencies that allow you to see, understand, and shape situations in new ways. That is the focus of Images of Organization.It is not a 'quick fix' book. It is not a book that offers a simple recipe for tackling organizational problems...The basic thesis underlying the book is a very simple one: that all organization and management theory and practice is based on images, or metaphors, that lead us to understand situations in powerful yet partial ways. When we realize this, we learn to recognize that our favored ways of managing and organizing often lead us to miss out on other ways of managing and organizing. In addition, we recognize that since every metaphor has limitations as well as strengths, we must always be aware of the inherent blind spots that inevitably undermine our effectiveness" (pp.3-4).In this context, Garet Morgan divides his book into three parts. I- In this part, he focuses on the nature of metaphor and its role in understanding organization and management. Here, he argues that using multiple metaphors to understand organization and management gives us a capacity to tap different dimentions of a situation, showing how different qualities of organization can co-exist, supporting, reinforcing, or contradicting one another: * In approaching the same situation in different ways, metaphors extend insight and suggest actions that may not have been possible before. * The insights generated by different metaphors are not just theoretical. They are incredibly practical. * Metaphors lead to new metaphors, creating a mosaic of competing and complementary insights. II- In this part, he demonstrates how metaphor can be used to develop theories of organization and management. In this sense, he shows strengths and limitations of the following metaphors:machine metaphor, organismic metaphor, brain metaphor, culture metaphor, political metaphor, psychic prison metaphor, flux and transformation metaphor, and dominant metaphor. III- In this part, by using theoretical ideas/metaphors, he presents a practical case study that illustrates how we can use the metaphors presented in this book as practical frameworks for reading and shaping organizations. Finally, he argues that Images of Organization is very different from most management books. It has a clear point of view: that metaphor is central to the way we read, understand, and shape organizational life. But at no point will you find that view being brought down to advocacy of a single perspective. There are no right or wrong theories in management in an absolute sense, for every theory illuminates and hides. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Strengths and limitations of metaphors.
Review: "While managing and organizing are challenging in the best times, the difficulties are compounding in today's environment of rapid change. If you want to be the type of leader or professional who helps your organization adapt to the multiple demands of an increasingly turbulent world, you need to become aware of the images and assumptions that are shaping your current thinking and develop the capacity to use new ones. You need to develop competencies that allow you to see, understand, and shape situations in new ways. That is the focus of Images of Organization.It is not a 'quick fix' book. It is not a book that offers a simple recipe for tackling organizational problems...The basic thesis underlying the book is a very simple one: that all organization and management theory and practice is based on images, or metaphors, that lead us to understand situations in powerful yet partial ways. When we realize this, we learn to recognize that our favored ways of managing and organizing often lead us to miss out on other ways of managing and organizing. In addition, we recognize that since every metaphor has limitations as well as strengths, we must always be aware of the inherent blind spots that inevitably undermine our effectiveness" (pp.3-4). In this context, Garet Morgan divides his book into three parts. I- In this part, he focuses on the nature of metaphor and its role in understanding organization and management. Here, he argues that using multiple metaphors to understand organization and management gives us a capacity to tap different dimentions of a situation, showing how different qualities of organization can co-exist, supporting, reinforcing, or contradicting one another: * In approaching the same situation in different ways, metaphors extend insight and suggest actions that may not have been possible before. * The insights generated by different metaphors are not just theoretical. They are incredibly practical. * Metaphors lead to new metaphors, creating a mosaic of competing and complementary insights. II- In this part, he demonstrates how metaphor can be used to develop theories of organization and management. In this sense, he shows strengths and limitations of the following metaphors:machine metaphor, organismic metaphor, brain metaphor, culture metaphor, political metaphor, psychic prison metaphor, flux and transformation metaphor, and dominant metaphor. III- In this part, by using theoretical ideas/metaphors, he presents a practical case study that illustrates how we can use the metaphors presented in this book as practical frameworks for reading and shaping organizations. Finally, he argues that Images of Organization is very different from most management books. It has a clear point of view: that metaphor is central to the way we read, understand, and shape organizational life. But at no point will you find that view being brought down to advocacy of a single perspective. There are no right or wrong theories in management in an absolute sense, for every theory illuminates and hides. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Most valuable read of my MBA
Review: Gareth Morgan's book provides an antidote to the finance, marketing and HR texts that are required reading for an MBA student. The clever use of metaphor allows the reader to absorb the huge anount of information contained within the book (check out the bibliography!) - you don't even realise how much you are learning until you start relating concepts to others around you. My fellow students, colleagues and even my parents had to listen ... I found it a very easy to read book, if you are willing to put aside your existing ideas (psychic prison) about the way the organisation works(?) If you prefer big words, read Morgan and Burrell's Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis - essential reading, but even more brilliant as a companion to Images. Learn the stuff you are expected to know from your finance, marketing, statistics, strategy and HR texts, but understand the stuff that will change your world from Images of Organisation.
Rating: 
Summary: Too esoteric...hard to follow.
Review: I am a graduate student in organizational development. Although this book has some good underlying concepts, I found most of the book hard to follow and not very engaging. It was often difficult to see how many of the concepts actually apply to organizations. There may be good ideas, but they often get lost in the rambling chapters.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific Find
Review: I found this book to be insightful and very useful in administrative organization analysis. It was a useful tool in developing a change management program for a public organization.
Rating:
Summary: The not so simple Organization
Review: Morgan decribes common assumptions about organizations - he helps to reveal the hidden assumptions behind the managers perceptions. What do we mean when we say that 'organizations are like animals'? It is pretty easy to start to think from a metaphor, and end up in literal believing in it (e.g. that 'organizations live and die', 'organizations have evolutions'). Such reifications are carefully described by Morgan - several most recurrent metaphors of organizations and popular organization theories basing on them are clearly described, and their pros and cons are pointed out. Having read 'Images of Organizations', it is much more difficult to adopt illusionate metaphors, and to get persuaded by a biased visioner.
Rating: 
Summary: A Solid Effort!
Review: Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers have used evocative images in trying to explain just what a corporation is. Have they succeeded? Gareth Morgan presents a thoughtful, well-documented look at images that arise from our theories and metaphors about reality. He discusses how they shape the way we view the corporation as an entity and how we act. His analysis involves a mix of philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, biology and organizational examples. He moves from industrial-age notions of the organization as a machine, to biological analogies about the organization as an organism. Other metaphors - the organization as a brain, as social reality, as the source of cultural difference and as an arena for power struggles - shape what occurs within corporations. While this book is not an easy read, it illuminates the dynamics of organizational life. We [...] recommend this book to executives, and to readers intrigued by serious societal expositions.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely fantastic.
Review: This book allows the reader to formulate his/her own opinion on each type of organization structure. Morgan brings in depth insights into the various forms of organizations through discussions of theories and examples. The book is concise and easy to understand, at the same it challenges readers by asking them to thoroughly exame each concept included in the book. Absolutely fantastic - a great leisure time book for the intelligent.
Rating:
Summary: Started out good, but got hard to follow.
Review: This book is quite accessible to the reader. It's not dry like most textbooks, but talks about organizations in a straightforward manner. Morgan presents various ways of looking at organizations through the use of metaphors. This is what made the book so good. Each chapter examines a different metaphor applied to organization. Metaphors such as "...as machines", and "...as brains" shed light on different aspects of organizations. What makes the book even better is that, in the summary of each chapter, Morgan also looks at the weaknesses of each metaphor, thus giving the reader a very thorough examination of the concept. The reason I didn't give this book 4 stars was the fact that, later in the book, it got kind of hard to follow. By the time he got to "Organizations as Psychic Prisons", I was way out of my league. The chapters got convoluted and hard to understand. The chapter summaries ended up being half as long as the chapter itself. I just kind of gave up on some of them...they weren't helping me at all. All in all, if you want to learn about how organizations work, this is a very good book, but be wary of the last third or so.
Rating:
Summary: Started out good, but got hard to follow.
Review: This book is quite accessible to the reader. It's not dry like most textbooks, but talks about organizations in a straightforward manner. Morgan presents various ways of looking at organizations through the use of metaphors. This is what made the book so good. Each chapter examines a different metaphor applied to organization. Metaphors such as "...as machines", and "...as brains" shed light on different aspects of organizations. What makes the book even better is that, in the summary of each chapter, Morgan also looks at the weaknesses of each metaphor, thus giving the reader a very thorough examination of the concept. The reason I didn't give this book 4 stars was the fact that, later in the book, it got kind of hard to follow. By the time he got to "Organizations as Psychic Prisons", I was way out of my league. The chapters got convoluted and hard to understand. The chapter summaries ended up being half as long as the chapter itself. I just kind of gave up on some of them...they weren't helping me at all. All in all, if you want to learn about how organizations work, this is a very good book, but be wary of the last third or so.
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