Book Review

written by BookWire
December 2004
 

Jan Yuill’s Organizations Alive! is a path-breaking work that marks a pragmatic shift in sensibilities. Breaking free of the stereotypical mould of conservative thinking that reduces companies into sterile entities, it comes as a whiff of fresh thinking into the field of industrial/corporate psychology. It presents a unique model that is bound to take the corporate boardroom by the storm. The book makes a radical departure from the classical thought, while at the same time maintaining firm roots in the Jungian school of psychoanalysis.

Arising from Yuill’s experiences as an international consultant, the book boasts of the benefits gained from numerous interactions with clients from around the world. Organizational behavior is commonly perceived as belonging to the sphere of academia. Under the guidance of Yuill, it has been brought out of the hallowed environs into the open where it functions as a framework that can contribute to better understanding of organizations.

Unlike the Reductionist framework of Descartes, Yuill’s approach gives new insights into understanding how organizations function as individuals. Drawing from Jungian analytical psychology, Yuill gives a new medium through which organizational behavior may be studied and improved upon. Written in an easy-to-read style, it explains how each organization can tap its rich cache of resources to achieve objectives.

By addressing areas like Customer Service and Resource Management, the book offers valuable forays into corporate governance and functioning. Uniformly structured, it explains methods and techniques that would enable effective and timely warnings about ‘Imbalances’ that could disrupt company proceedings. As in the case of individuals, who rely on a balanced system, the book stresses on the need to maintain a similar balance in companies.

Strategic pointers bring the attention of the reader to the challenges like adapting to accommodate the new changes in the market and outsourcing of special work. What sets Yuill’s work apart from similar books, is her ability to suggest a symbiotic model in which the organization and the individuals who constitute it, can pool their resources to achieve goals as a team. In contrast to the run-of-the-mill management books that fail due to their single-faceted approach, Organizations Alive! gives a multi-pronged method to handle ups as well as downs of corporate storms.

A must-have for anyone who works in an organization or is interested in its working. The book is bound to become a Bible for all management gurus and students. The mastery of the author lies in the ability to raise the work from a management tract to providing a philosophy for a peaceful co-existence in today’s modern world.


BookWire Review
December 9, 2004