When Things Go Wrong: Organizational Failures and Breakdowns by Helmut K Anheier (Editor) (2-Mar-1999) Paperback

by Helmut K. Anheier

To understand success, you must first understand failure. This understanding is especially critical since failure is a phenomenon that is much more common to everyday life, businesses, and government practice than standard theory would lead us to assume. Failure manifests itself in many ways, including breakdowns, bankruptcies, and other forms of organizational catastrophes and fiascoes. Thus, learning from failure will enable success. When Things Go Wrong brings together contributions from 24 leading scholars who examine the causes, patterns, process, and outcomes of such failures from economic, managerial, cognitive and political perspectives. This book presents failure as a relative concept in terms of the expectations and strategies of stakeholders putting a claim on the performance of the organization and the notion of success. It challenges future research in this field to combine both economic and non-economic performance measures to assess organizational tendencies toward success and failure and to differentiate between failure as process and failure as an outcome.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Helmut K. Anheier is President of the Hertie School of Governance and Professor of Sociology. His research centres on indicator systems, social innovation, culture, philanthropy, and organisational studies. Anheier is the principal academic lead of the Hertie School's annual Governance Report (Oxford University Press). He also holds a Chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of the Centre for Social Investment. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1986, was a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Policy Studies, Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Anheier is author of over 450 publications, many in leading journals, and has received various international awards. Before embarking on an academic career, he served as Social Affairs Officer at the United Nations.