Metaplan: 9 books

Every change takes its toll. Stefan Kühl critically examines the blind enthusiasm that continues to celebrate the leveling of hierarchies and the decentralization of organizations.  Relying on studies performed in European and U.S. companies, Kühl describes why these management concepts can carry...

Hardly any other management concept is as overused as strategy, yet at the same time hardly any other concept is as vaguely defined. As a means of escaping the conceptual jumble, this monograph suggests a systems-theoretical definition which makes it possible to sort out the various threads of the...

In organizations, there are always situations that can’t be fixed with top-down directives. Often the only thing left to do is to craft cooperative relationships through understanding, power, or trust. The concept of lateral leadership – leading to the side – brings together ideas about how...

Companies are no longer the only organizations that develop mission statements; administrations, hospitals, universities, schools and associations are following. After a phase of euphoria in which true miracles were expected, mission statements have come under increasing critique for their moralizing...

The belief that rainmakers bring rain is a superstition, but they are able to create cohesion among the people who believe in their powers. Stefan Kühl describes how the rainmaker effect works in the model of the learning organization. Many of the modern management principles that are billed as formulas...

Organizations construct their environments themselves. From the bewildering, chaotic array of impressions, they take those bits of information that enable them to produce such a view of the environment – one that makes it possible for them to operate in the environment with relative confidence....

In the management discourse few words are thrown about more carelessly than ‘organizational culture’. While the term is usually defined too broadly—including such phenomena as assumptions, values, traditions, articles of faith, myths and artifacts—this book applies a far more narrow concept....

The linear, goal-oriented approach to projects that is so popular in management literature is only appropriate if you are dealing with well-defined problems. For projects that address poorly defined problems, however, the principles of classic project management don’t work; project managers attempt...

When (re-)designing organizations, one must first be clear about what is meant by the structures of an organization and what can be done in order to change them. In this book, we present communication channels, programs and personnel as central structures. We also unfold the aspects that come to the...