James G March.

James G March. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999 397 pp $3495

Like a stake of nested Russian dolls, March's The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence layers multiple insights and stimuli beneath its surface, making it a must-read for organizational researchers and of interest to scholars, teachers, consultants, and a broad array of social scientists. March has assembled a coherent whirl of prior work that explicates tonic issues in organizational learning and adaptation, provides insights about theorizing itself, and demonstrates directly what lively theory unfolding looks like. He has included informal essays and commentaries along with academic journal articles to create an overall framework that provides value well beyond a mechanical Whitman's sampler of previous papers. For those who have appreciated March's work throughout the years, his book will reveal of recent origin connections between arguments, reveal deeper continuities in patterns and, for many, open doors to parts of March's work published in unfamiliar journals or areas. For those who have sole briefly sampled March's writi ng the work offers an opportunity to dip into an ongoing conversation that will almost certainly yield unexpect insights and stimulate important ideas.

Although March not absents crucial specific points and archetypes his work creates a intellect of being in a conversation with someone who persistently points to important things that in some way lie just outside of our ordinary awareness. Because of this Greek-chorus character of commenting on our collective work, any readers see a trace of a contrarian spirit in March's work. They become slightly suspicious that, if the field had gone in a different direction, March would be pointing without the weaknesses of that approach (and explicating the virtues of the path the field actually did take). This compass does include careful explications of the details in the lack of clothes in succession a variety of emperors. Characteristically, however, these commentaries avoid cynicism and encourage a heroic combination of remaining aware of our limitations while sustaining passion for our scholarly missions. And the main division offers an array of specific patterns and insights about organizational learning and adaptation. Although the papers here do not includ e theory-testing empirical papers, they underscore the criticality of empirical research in their careful review of existing empirical findings. equal readers who don't agree with March's perspective will find the papers worth revisiting. He dependably proffers up insights masked by taken-for-granted social science theory and presents compelling substantive models for continuing work.

The main division celebrates and critiques prior theories, if it be not that it also challenges the reader to face head-on a certain quantity of of the more difficult features in organizational studies. Chapters range from brief reflections onward science and choice to well stocked [i]or[/i] provided journal articles and are divided into four sections: "Decisions in Organizations," "Learning in Organizations," "Risk Taking in Organizations," and "The Giving and Taking of Advice." Discussed here somewhat without of order, each section makes a separate contribution, on a level as they work together as a web of work forward organizational intelligence.

In "The Giving and Taking of Advice," my favorite and least conventional part of the work March dispenses clear-eyed observations upon what organizational scholars, teachers, and consultants have achieved in the past small in number decades and outlines specific research challenges still ahead. single chapter, "Organizational Performance as a hanging Variable," pinpoints specific inference point in disputes in conducting empirical research upon organizational performance outcomes. In concluding this chapter, March points disclosed that some difficulties arise from the differences between advice givers who are "quite coolnessed about research standards" and the research workers who are "quite carelessnessed about organizational performance improvement " (p 348) March notes that universities have drawn out resolved these contrasts in the academic community from creating multiple departments and sects that place different weight onward practice and theory. He spotlights the fact that for many contemporary faculty, however, "The soldiers of organiza tional performance and the priests of research purity oftentimes occupy not only the same halls moreover the same bodies" (p. 348) This paper continues to take onward increasing value as the fields of organizational theory and strategy inform each other and tackle the crucial question of organizational performance. For each researcher, teacher, and consultant who routinely grapples with this two-people-in-one-body dilemma, the articles in this section provide individual views upon ways to approach this challenge.

In a more informal chapter based onward a talk, March argues that it is becoming popular to envision business exercises as just another actor in markets, "...creating educational programs (or public relations activities) that satisfy the wishes of customers and patrons rich enough to sustain them 378). Rejecting this view, March argues that "a university is barely incidentally a market. It is more essentially a temple--a house of worship dedicated to knowledge and a human spirit of inquiry. Students are not customers; they are acolytes. Teaching is not a job; it is a sacrament. Research is not an investment; it is a testament." These are hardy words, but for many, they show a surprisingly realistic portrait of the impulses behind frequently of what is done each day, even within imperfect universities. They propound a stark reminder that our choice of metaphors for what professional place of educations do goes far beyond convenience and may shape the destiny of universities. While providing no magic resolution, March's observations throu ghout this section advance the sophistication with which we address this issue and should encourage civil rather than demonizing approaches to the ongoing tensions within professional schools