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Organization studies (also called organization science or organizational studies) is the academic field interested in a collective activity, and how it relates to organization, organizing, and management. It is "the examination of how individuals construct organizational structures, processes, and practices and how these, in turn, shape social relations and create institutions that ultimately influence people".

Organizational studies comprise different areas that deal with the different aspects of the organizations, many of the approaches are functionalist but critical research also provide an alternative frame for understanding in the field. Fundamental to the study of management is organizational change.

Historically, facilitating organizational change has proven to be a difficult subject, which is why different theoretical frameworks have evolved in an attempt to strategically streamline this process, such as utilizing external actors, or interim organizations, where it is important to define the expectations of the outcome of change before initiating it, so as to provide measurability.

History

It has followed numerous 'turns' since its emergence in the 1960s: linguistic turn, spatial turn, practice turn, process turn, materiality turn, communication turn... A turn is a collective direction of research, focused on some coherent sets of concepts, theories, and ideas, which represent a point of bifurcation for the field itself. Most turns in organization studies relate to broader ones in social sciences and humanities. Researchers studying organizations and/or organizing processes have a recurring concern that those who work in organizations do not find organizational research particularly relevant. There is therefore a growing interest in the impact of organization studies. Public administrations also, around the world, are adopting massively new organizational models to increase their efficiency and improve public services. The Organization Studies field is becoming more popular also because the borders between a well-defined organization and customers, citizens, businesses, and professionals are more and more undefined. For example, social organization has been the subject of study in Spatio-temporal cohesiveness in human network theory.

With the recent historical turn, there is growing interest in historical organization studies, promising a closer union between organizational and historical research whose validity derives from historical veracity and conceptual rigor, enhancing understanding of historical, contemporary and future-directed social realities. Organizational studies as a discipline is also closely related to metathinking.

Journals

Major academic journals of the field are, among others: Organization Science, Organization Studies, Organization Theory and Organization.

Conferences

Researchers interested in organizations and organizing meet in the context of numerous conferences and workshops: the Academy of Management Annual Conference (in particular the OMT division), the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), the Asia Pacific conference on Research in Organization Studies (APROS), the American and European Conference on Organization Studies (LAEMOS), the Organization Studies Summer Workshop, the International Symposium on Process Organization Studies (PROS), the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS), the International Research Network (puntOorg), the Organizations, Artifacts & Practices (OAP) workshop, Organization Science Winter Conference, etc.

Subfields

• Organizational behavior – Study of human behavior in organizational settings
• Organizational culture – Customary behaviours in an organization
• Organizational ecology – Academic discipline; examines how goal-driven social entities grow, survive and die
• Organizational learning – Academic discipline; examines how goal-driven social entities add and create knowledge
• Organizational psychology – Branch of psychologyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Organizational theory – Sociological study of social organizations
• Orgology
• Management science – Study of problem-solving in human organizations
• Management cybernetics – Application of cybernetics to management and organizations

See also

• Outline of organizational theory

References

1. Tsoukas, H., & Knudsen, C. (2005). The Oxford handbook of organization theory. Oxford Handbooks Online.
2. Clegg, S. R., Hardy, C., Lawrence, T., & Nord, W. R. (Eds.). (2006). The Sage handbook of organization studies. Sage.
3. Stewart Clegg, James Russell Bailey, International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies.. , Sage Publications, 2008
4. Suddaby, Roy; Foster, William M. (2017-01-01). "History and Organizational Change". Journal of Management. 43 (1): 19–38. doi:10.1177/0149206316675031. ISSN 0149-2063.
5. Vriens, Dirk; Achterberg, Jan (2019). "Episodic interventions in organizational structures". Organizational Development. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315695228-4 (inactive 14 December 2024). ISBN 9781315695228. S2CID 197707922.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)
6. MacIntosh, Robert; Beech, Nic; Bartunek, Jean; Mason, Katy; Cooke, Bill; Denyer, David (2017-01-01). "Impact and Management Research: Exploring Relationships between Temporality, Dialogue, Reflexivity, and Praxis" (PDF). British Journal of Management. 28 (1): 3–13. doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12207. ISSN 1467-8551. S2CID 152252273.
7. Yoo, Jin Soung; Hwang, Joengmin (2008). "A Framework for Discovering Spatio-temporal Cohesive Networks". Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5012. springer.com. pp. 1056–1061. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-68125-0_113. ISBN 978-3-540-68124-3.
8. Casalino, N. (2014). "Learning to Connect: a Training Model for Public Sector on Advanced E-Government Services and Inter-Organizational Cooperation". International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning. 7 (1): 24–31. doi:10.3991/ijac.v7i1.3577. ISSN 1867-5565.
9. Maclean, Mairi; Harvey, Charles; Clegg, Stewart R. (2016-10-01). "Conceptualizing Historical Organization Studies". Academy of Management Review. 41 (4): 609–632. doi:10.5465/amr.2014.0133. hdl:10453/41332. ISSN 0363-7425.
10. Shannon, Nick; Frischherz, Bruno (2020). Metathinking - The Art and Practice of Transformational Thinking. Springer Cham. pp. 175–176. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41064-3. ISBN 978-3-030-41064-3. S2CID 242428640.

v t e Management
Outline of management Index of management articles
By type of organization	Academic Association Business Restaurant Court Healthcare Intelligence Military Public Reputation
By focus, within an organization	On scope Strategic (top-level) Capability Capital Change Communication Financial Innovation Legal Performance Risk Systems On component Facility Product Product lifecycle Brand Project Construction Program On activity or department managed Line Marketing Operations/production Process Quality Sales Staff Accounting Office Records On aspect or relationship Customer relationship Engineering Logistics Perception Supply chain Talent On problem Conflict Crisis Stress On resource Environmental resource Field inventory Human resources Information Information technology Knowledge Land Materials Skills Technology Time
Positions	Interim Middle Senior
Methods, approaches	Adhocracy Collaborative method Distributed Earned value management Evidence-based management Full range leadership model Management by objectives Management style Macromanagement Micromanagement Scientific management Social entrepreneurship Sustainable management Team building Virtual management
Skills, activities	Decision-making Forecasting Leadership
Pioneers, scholars	Peter Drucker Eliyahu M. Goldratt Oliver E. Williamson
Education	Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering Business school Certified Business Manager Chartered Management Institute Critical management studies
Degrees	Bachelor of Business Administration Master of Business Administration PhD in management Doctor of Business Administration
Other	Administration Collaboration Corporate governance Executive compensation Management consulting Management control Management cybernetics Management development Management fad Management system Managerial economics Managerial psychology Managerialism Organization development Organizational behavior management Pointy-haired Boss
Systems science portal

Further reading

• Burton, Richard M. (2006). Organization Design: The Evolving State-of-the-Art. Springer Boston. ISBN 978-0387341729.

• Organizational behavior
• Organizational studies
• Interdisciplinary subfields of sociology
• Management cybernetics
• Social systems