When Things Go Wrong: Organizational Failures and Breakdowns

'The editor has worked well to achieve a coherent product which will serve as the authoritative and leading text in its area. The future research agenda is to combine economic and non-economic performance measures, as well a to differentiate failure as process and failure as an outcome.' - Gerald Vinten, Southampton Business Institute, British Academy of Management News

This book deals with the the multi-faceted nature of organizational failure through examination of the organizational, political, cognitive and structural aspects of the phenomenon.

Booknews

Twenty-four essays written by authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds focus on four aspects of organizational failure--organizational, political, cognitive, and structural. They present failure as a relative concept in terms of the expectations and strategies of stakeholders putting a claim on the performance of the organization and the notion of success, and they challenge future research to combine economic and noneconomic measures of assessment. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Helmut Anheier (Ph.D., Yale University, 1986) is Director of the Center for Civil Society at UCLA's School of Public Affairs, where he is also a Professor of Social Welfare. From 1998 to 2002 he was the founding director of the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics, and a member of LSE's Department of Social Policy, where he now holds the honorary title of Centennial Professor. Prior to this he was a Senior Research Associate and Project Co-director at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Before embarking on an academic career, Dr. Anheier served as Social Affairs Officer with the United Nations. He has also held research appointments at Yale University, the University of Cologne, and the Science Center in Berlin. Dr. Anheier's research interests include civil society, nonprofit organization, philanthropic foundations, NGOs, globalization and civil society, comparative social and cultural policy, research methodology, social movements and networks.