Category: Books

  • Book Review: A Process Theory of Organization

    A Process Theory of Organization by Tor Hernes makes an attempt to connect the fluidity of day-to-day organizational life with its structures. What Hernes mean with organizational life is “the ongoing process of making, remaking, unmaking and relating of organizational actors of all sorts … into meaningful wholes.” A meaningful whole can be “a Twitter…

  • Book recommendations

    This is a post in my series on organizing “between and beyond.” Other posts are here. These are book recommendations which I have received as feedback on my posts: Science, Order, and Creativity by David Bohm and F. David Peat. The series of posts on organizing “between and beyond” is inspired by David Bohm’s and…

  • Analysis of Integral Management

    This is a post in my organizing “between and beyond” series. Other posts are here. The purpose of this post is to explore the history and key assumptions of Integral Management, which is an alternative management model developed by Lasse Ramquist and Mats Eriksson. The analysis is summarized here. Background My first encounter with Integral…

  • Overview of organizing orders

    This is a post in my series on organizing  “between and beyond.” Other posts are here. The series is inspired by David Bohm’s and F. David Peat’s notion of “the order between and beyond”.1 I wrote in the 1st post that organizing “beyond” is a “deeper order” of organizing which transcends the compromises in “existing…

  • Bioteams obliterate permission structures

    Here is a post by Doug Kirkpatrick where he reviews Ken Thompson’s book Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Natures Most Successful Designs. Thompson notes that bioteams obliterate permission structures, which are so common in traditional organizations. Accountability is instead a natural consequence of the transparency and reliance on reputation in bioteaming.

  • Book Review: Science, Order, and Creativity

    Science, Order, and Creativity by David Bohm and F. David Peat is an amazing book! One of the main purposes of the book is to “draw attention to the key importance of liberating creativity” (p. 271). The book has really deepened my understanding and appreciation of creativity and its relation to order. It has also…

  • Book Review: The Age of Thrivability

    The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World by Michelle Holliday is a new book which will be released this fall. Michelle Holliday is a facilitator, consultant, researcher, presenter, and writer. Her work centers around “thrivability,” which is based on a view of organizations and communities as living systems. It’s this view…

  • Book Review: Infinite Potential

    Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm is a well-written book by F. David Peat. David Bohm was a unique and very creative person who had an exceptional mind. He was able to pursue abstract thought to a far greater degree than most other people. But it’s difficult to live in high abstraction…

  • Book Review: Humble Inquiry

    Edgar H. Schein assumes in Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling that his readers are from the U.S. He refers, for example, to “our” task-oriented pragmatic culture throughout the book. And when discussing the main inhibitor of Humble Inquiry (Chapter 4) he only discusses the U.S. culture. This means that Schein…

  • Book Review: Life on the Edge

    Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden is a popular science book about a very fascinating research area – quantum biology – which is moving very fast, on many fronts. I fully understand that a huge amount of details need to be omitted in a…