This book provides solid theoretical models for understanding what is occuring in organizations. I read this book over 10 years ago and STILL find it the second best and most enlightening thing I have ever read on organizations. This has dramatically aided me in being a very successful business consultant.

The foundation of this book is the notion that you cannot understand complex organizations in any meaningful way through a single perspective. People in the organizations operate on many different perspectives. Each view of the world creates its own understanding of the organizational problems, solutions and daily pattern of interaction. This book provides you the tools for understanding organizations through a number of key perspectives or metaphors, and gives you indications on how to perform a multi-perspective systems analysis.

If you spend the time with this book, you will find yourself able to understand your surroundings FAR better than your peers.


Strengths and limitations of metaphors.   November 8, 2000
 15 out of 16 found this review helpful

"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.


Started out good, but got hard to follow.   June 9, 2000
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

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.


Absolutely fantastic.   June 14, 1999
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

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.


An outstanding and unique commentary on organizations   April 19, 1999
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

What makes this book special is the approach. Morgan considers organizations using different metaphors such as organisations as brains. Each metaphors expands the reader's insight and understanding, and leads to ways of surviving organizational life. This book is a must read text for those studying management or organizational behaviour. All the chapters contain quality references to other work and are backed up by extensive research.