Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives

Citation

Hatch, M. J. (2018). Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The fourth edition is a single-author textbook of roughly 400 pages in three parts and nine chapters. Its organising idea is to present organization theory through three perspectives, modern, symbolic and postmodern, rather than as one settled body of knowledge. The publisher describes the aim as helping students to explain, explore and evaluate organizational theory, drawing on their own experience as well as on the book's examples.

Part One: What Is Organization Theory?

Chapter 1, Organization Theory and Its Multiple Perspectives, introduces the field and the three perspectives that structure the rest of the book. The publisher notes that this chapter was fully revised for the fourth edition, with a new emphasis on why organization theory is worth studying for anyone heading into a business career.

Chapter 2, A Brief History of Organization Theory, places the field's ideas in historical order, so that later chapters can refer back to the theories and traditions it sets out.

Part Two: Core Concepts and Theories

The five chapters of Part Two take the standard topics of the field one at a time and approach each through the book's perspectives.

Chapter 3, Organization-Environment Relations, deals with how organizations relate to what surrounds them.

Chapter 4, Organizational Social Structure, deals with how work and people are arranged within an organization.

Chapter 5, Organizational Technology, treats the technologies organizations use as a topic of theory in its own right.

Chapter 6, Organizational Culture, is the chapter in which the symbolic perspective is most naturally at home, since culture is the topic it is most associated with.

Chapter 7, The Physical Structure of Built Space in Organizations, looks at buildings and space as part of organizing.

Part Three: Themes and Applications

Chapter 8, Power in and around Organizations: Organizational Politics, Conflict, and Control, takes up power, politics, conflict and control as the theme of Part Three.

Chapter 9, Organizational Identity at Carlsberg Group, is new to this edition. It draws on the author's own research at the Carlsberg Group to show how core concepts are applied by an organization theorist and how the findings can be used by a company.

Key Concepts

Part One

• Multiple perspectives: the modern, symbolic and postmodern perspectives are used throughout as three lenses on the same organizational phenomena.
• Theorizing: the book treats students as people who build and test explanations, supported by its "Think like a Theorist" and "Exercise Those Perspectives" boxes.

Part Two

• Organization-environment relations: how an organization is shaped by, and shapes, its surroundings.
• Social structure and technology: the arrangement of roles and the technologies that organize work.
• Culture and built space: the shared meanings of an organization and the physical settings in which it operates.

Part Three

• Power, politics, conflict and control: the Part Three theme that the topical chapters feed into.
• Organizational identity: the question of who an organization takes itself to be, developed through the Carlsberg case.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Perspective-based structure. The three-perspective design is the publisher's main selling point, and it is visible in the structure: every topic in Part Two is handled through the same lenses, so readers practise comparing what each perspective reveals.
• Teaching features aimed at active use. The edition adds "Theory to Practice" boxes and case studies, as well as the "Think like a Theorist" and "Exercise Those Perspectives" boxes, all intended to make students apply theory to organizations they know.
• A worked example of theorizing. The Carlsberg chapter shows a researcher applying the concepts to one organization, which few textbooks offer.
• Supporting material. The publisher lists multiple-choice questions for students and a lecturers' guide, slides, figures and extra case studies for instructors.
• Reception. Reviewers quoted by the publisher, among them Ian Storer of Sheffield Hallam University and Gemma Donnelly-Cox of Trinity College Dublin, describe it as a useful introductory text and praise the comprehensiveness of its approach.

Limitations

• Little on change. The table of contents has no chapter on organizational change or learning, and none on strategy or leadership as separate topics; readers who need these will have to look elsewhere.
• One company case. The closing chapter rests on a single organization and on the author's own research there, so it illustrates the method rather than offering a range of cases.
• A brief history. Because the book is organised by topic and perspective, the chronological story of the field is confined to one short chapter; readers wanting a fuller history need a separate source.
• Not a manager's handbook. The book is framed around theorizing about organizations, and it does not replace a principles-of-management text for the functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the course books, Daft's Management, Robbins and Coulter's Management and the open-access Principles of Management are broad introductions organised around planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Hatch does not replace them: it assumes the functions of management are known and asks what theory stands behind them. It is best read after one of these texts, or alongside it as a second, more theoretical voice.

Wren and Bedeian's The Evolution of Management Thought is the closest companion. That book is a historical account of management ideas in their economic and social context, whereas Hatch's Chapter 2 is a brief history and the rest of her book is organised by topic and perspective. A reader could use Wren and Bedeian for the long historical view and Hatch for the analytic comparison of perspectives.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-year undergraduates, master's students in management and doctoral students starting in organization studies who have completed an introductory course in management or organizational behaviour.

• Core: Chapters 1 and 2 first, since the rest of the book uses the three perspectives. Then the Part Two chapter that matches the course, followed by Chapter 8.
• Order of Part Two: the chapters are largely independent, so a course or a research project can take environment, structure, technology, culture and space in whatever order it needs.
• Optional: Chapter 9 is best read once the perspectives are familiar; it works well as a model for a student's own short case study.
• Practice: work through the "Think like a Theorist" and "Exercise Those Perspectives" boxes rather than reading around them, and apply each perspective to an organization you know, such as a workplace or a student society. The online multiple-choice questions are useful for revision.