When Things Go Wrong

Organizational Failures and Breakdowns

'The editor has worked well to achieve a coherent product which will serve as the authoritative and leading text in its area. The future research agenda is to combine economic and non-economic performance measures, as well a to differentiate failure as process and failure as an outcome.' - Gerald Vinten, Southampton Business Institute, British Academy of Management News

This book deals with the the multi-faceted nature of organizational failure through examination of the organizational, political, cognitive and structural aspects of the phenomenon. `Failure' is presented as a relative concept where the expectations and strategies of stakeholders make claims on the performance of the organization and the notion of success. The book also issues a challenges to future research in this field: It advocates using a combination of economic and non-economic performance measures in the assessment of organizational tendencies toward success and failure, and stresses the need for differentiation between failure as a process and failure as an outcome.