Understanding Organizational Culture

'Understanding Organizational Culture is a most timely and comprehensive book. And Mats Alvesson is surely one of our most intrepid and intellectually astute authors writing on this topic. This is a lively, enthusiastic text that covers a good deal of territory, looking at a variety of contemporary organizational cultures. It manages to convey just why organizational culture studies continue to grow in number and quality. The book is fascinating, usefully provocative and of considerable relevance to understanding the source of so much of our work-a-day pleasures and frustrations' - John Van Maanen, Professor of Organization Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The concept of culture is a key issue within management and organization studies. Understanding Organizational Culture provides a useful and comprehensive guide to understanding organizational culture, from a range of angles, contexts and sectors. The book answers questions of definition, explores alternative perspectives, and expands on substantive issues (such as leadership and change), before discussing key issues of research and providing a new framework for this topic.

Mats Alvesson synthesizes for students the advances in the field of organizational culture, drawing upon the range of relevant literature within Organization Studies. The author also uses examples to develop and illustrate ideas on how cultural thinking can be used in managerial and non-managerial organizational theory and (theory-supported) practice.

Understanding Organizational Culture provides great breadth within a textbook approach - covering a wide spectrum of management and organization while at the same time developing a new theoretical approach to organizational culture. It will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Management and Organization Studies, particularly key for modules in Organizational Behaviour, Organizational Theory and on MBA programmes. It is also relevant to students and academics in sociology and psychology.