Description
Book SynopsisIn Ghosts of Organizations Past, Dan Ryan asks, Why are urban communities such hard places to implement community improvement programs? Looking at New Haven, Connecticut, and a now-defunct program called Fighting Back, which was created to build community coalitions against the abuse of alcohol and other drugs, Ryan shows how the normal properties of organizations generate apparent pathologies. He shows how the ghosts, or artifacts, of past organizations, both inhibited and enhanced Fighting Back's chances of success. Ryan draws on concepts from the study of organizations, social capital, and social networks to re-think questions such as What kind of thing is a community? and Why is it so difficult to build community initiatives out of organizations? He provides a social organizational explanation for problems familiar to anyone who has been involved in community programs, issues that are usually understood as personal incompetence, turf wars, greed, or corruption. Ghosts of Organ
Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart I / From Opportunity to Disaster (and Back Again)1 The Ghosts of Organizations PastPart II / Disaster and Opportunity2 From Disaster to Opportunity 3 From Opportunity to DisasterPart III / Communities and Organizations4 What Kind of Thing Is Community?5 What Kind of Thing Is an Organization?6 Doing Things with Organizations in CommunitiesPart IV / Organizing Organizations7 Doing Things with Organizations: The Cost of Organizational Diversity8 Doing Things with Organizations: The Cost of System9 Networks of Garbage Cans: The Amplification of Irrationality10 Networks and Calendar NoisePart V / Social Organizational Junkyards11 Community as Organizational Junkyard12 Why Can’t Organizations Be Like Us?BibliographyIndex
