Replying to LO28051 --
Hi
Other references are:
Miller, Lawrence. M (1989) Barbarians to
Bureaucrats. Corporate Life Cycle Strategies Fawcett
Columbine, New York ISBN 0-449-90526-8
Flamholtz, Eric. G (1990) Growing Pains. How to
make the Transition from an Entrepeneurship to a
Professionally Managed Firm Jossey-Bass, San
Francisco ISBN 1-55542-272-1
The Flamholtz does not explicitly use the concept or
image of a ^Ólife cycle^Ô but comes very close to
arguing for one by any other name.
Other literatures that are relevant are:
(a) that on organisational transition and change ^Ö
here it can get very messy for you since it does not
necessarily follow that a transition or change is from
one stage of a life cycle to another ^Ö but the writers
tend to be very unclear themselves on that
(b) that on organisational growth
(c) that on organisational decay and decline
GROUP (A): ON CHANGE
Slatter, Stuart (1984) Corporate Recovery. A Guide
to Turnaround Management, Penguin
GROUP (B): ON GROWTH
Flamholtz, Eric. G & Randle, Yvonne (1998) Changing
the Game. Organisational Transformations of the First,
Second, and Third Kinds, Oxford University Press, New
York ISBN 0-19-511764-63
Fritz, Robert ((1996) Corporate Tides. The
Inescapable Laws of Organizational Structure,
Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco ISBN
1-881052-88-5(alk. Paper)
GROUP (C): ON DECLINE
Miller, Danny (1990) The Icarus Paradox. How
Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall
Harper Business
ISBN 0-88730-524-5(pbk.)
Using Adizes^Ò funny imagery, on the ^Óup: side of the
life cycle trajectory we would find that demand
exceeds supply and that a Limits to Growth analysis
would be applicable; on the ^Ódown^Ô side, supply
(organisational capacity) exceeds demand and a Limits
to Demand dynamic applies.
The Adizes concept of ^Óprime^Ô is his weakest element.
For this, I suggest you go to:
Ghoshal, Sumantra & Bartlett, Christopher. (1998)
The Individualised Corporation. A Fundamentally New
Approach to Management Heinemann, London ISBN 0 434
00339 5
Also on ^Óprime^Ô, there is the descriptive schema of
the Quality Councils in the OECD countries.
Rather than postulate a Life Cycle as applying to an
organization willy nilly, surely it is enough just to
start with a concept of prime and track how it gets
there; might stay there; and drifts away from it
(usually without realizing it ^Ö refer Miller above;
and also Slatter).
Hope this helps
Jim Marshall
Brisbane, Australia
--- Andrea Bernardi <bernyasb@inwind.it> wrote: > Hi,
> my name is Andrea Bernardi, I work in the Faculty of
> Economics
> of Università Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.
>
> I am interested in the life cycle approach in
> studing organizations.
>
> I collected this very short bibliography:
>
> Greiner, evolution and revolution, HBR, 1972
> Adizes, Corporate lifecycles, Prentice Hall, 1989
> Gersick, Daves, McCollom, Lansberg, generation to
> generation, HBR 1997
--=?iso-8859-1?q?Jim=20Marshall?= <marshall_jim@yahoo.com>
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