Towards Organizational Fitness : A Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment

Just like people, organizations may become both physically and behaviourally sick; physically sick when plant and equipment breaks down or the money runs out; behaviourally sick when the resources are badly managed or the staff become alienated. Towards Organizational Fitness is about the people who work in organizations and addresses two main issues: firstly, how to investigate and manage problems involving people at work; secondly, how to assess and develop the capability and fitness of an organization. The message is clear; organizations should not proceed to change any of their policies, procedures, processes or practices until a systematic thorough diagnosis of the root cause underpinning the need to change has taken place. The book provides managers with a conceptual and practical guide for achieving this.

Work organizations can lose their fitness and become sick, just as people can. Just like people, they may become both physically and behaviourally sick; physically sick when plant and equipment breaks down or the money runs out; behaviourally sick when the resources are badly managed or the staff become alienated. Gerry Randell and John Toplis'' Towards Organizational Fitness addresses two main issues: firstly, how to investigate and manage problems involving people at work - a task analogous to that of a medical doctor working with a sick patient; secondly, how to assess and develop the capability and fitness of an organization - like a medical doctor who wishes to improve a patient''s health. The message of this book is clear, that organizations should not proceed to change any of their policies, procedures, processes or practices until a systematic thorough diagnosis of the root cause underpinning the need to change has taken place. The process of diagnosis that leads to a technically sound, administratively convenient, politically defensible and socially acceptable decision to change an organization in some way is fraught with difficulty. Towards Organizational Fitness provides managers with a conceptual and practical path through this complex and difficult arena.