Developed by Authenticity Consulting, LLC
Introduction to Organizations (Businesses and Nonprofits)
© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting,
LLC.
Adapted from the Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development.
Managing a successful organization (nonprofit or for-profit) -- or building up the health of an already established organization -- requires healthy, ongoing leadership and management, planning, product and service development, marketing and financial management. To carry out these practices in a healthy manner, it's important to first understand the basic "territory" in which these practices are carried out.
These practices are all "systems" that occur within the larger system of the organization. This is not academic talk -- this is a highly practical point to understand. To truly understand and to be effective at these practices, it helps greatly if leaders, managers and employees have some basic understanding of the overall system of the organization, including its common dimensions, cultures and life cycles. Too often, this basic nature is not understood. Instead, people tend to focus only on the day-to-day events and then when problems occur, they don't see the big picture in order to resolve these problems for the long term. Consequently, they mistakenly focus on what's urgent, rather than on what's important -- if you focus on what's important, you'll reduce what's urgent. (A useful topic to review concurrent to this one, is Systems Thinking.)
Sections of This Topic Include
Basics
Basic
Definition of Organization (including some optional reading about
systems thinking)
Begin at the
Beginning
Various
Ways to Look at Organizations (as systems, organisms, etc)
Two
Basic Types of U.S. Business Organizations -- For-Profit and Nonprofit
Legal
Forms and Traditional Structures of U.S. Businesses (for-profit
and nonprofit)
Common
Dimensions in Organizations (features to consider about organizations)
Unique
Features About Each Organization
Key
Concepts in the Design of an Organization
Organizational
Culture (the "personality" of the organization)
Life
Cycles of Organizations
Principles and Practices of Organizational Design
Organizational Design -- Guidelines (includes many links about organizational design)
Special Topics
Future of Organizations
-- A New Paradigm?
- - - Characteristics
of the Future Organizations
- - - New
Structures (networks, virtual org., self-managed teams, learning org, self-designing
org)
Basic Overview
of Nonprofit Organizations
Various (and Contrary) Perspectives
Also See the Library's Blogs Related to Organizational Theory
In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Theories. Scan down the blog's page to see various posts. Also see the section "Recent Blog Posts" in the sidebar of the blog or click on "next" near the bottom of a post in the blog.
Library's Consulting
and Organizational Development Blog
Library's Leadership Blog
Library's
Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog
Library's Supervision
Blog
Also see
Related Library Topics
Various (and Sometimes Contrary) Perspectives
Development of Management Thought
The Skeptical and Affirmative Postmodernist (Organization) Theory Debates
Major Organizational Theories
For the Category of Organizational Development:
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may
want to review some related topics, available from the link below.
Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been
selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.
Related Library Topics
Recommended Books
Managing Organizational Change
Managing Organizational Change
-
Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in for-profit or government organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.
-
Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development With Nonprofits
- by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides complete, step-by-step guidelines to identify complex issues in nonprofit organizations and successfully resolve each of them. This book is also helpful to organizations that are doing fine now, but want to evolve to the next level of performance. This is one of the truly comprehensive, yet practical, books about this complex subject! Includes online forms that can be downloaded. Many materials in this Library's topic about guiding change are adapted from this comprehensive book.
The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just click on the image of the book. Also, a "bubble" of information might be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.
Growing Your Organization
The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just click on the image of the book. Also, a "bubble" of information might be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.
