Stockholm School of Economics

Reframing Organizations

Artistry, Choice, and Leadership
Lee G. Bolman,
Terrence E. Deal

In this third edition of their best-selling classic, authors Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal explain the powerful tool of "reframing." The authors have distilled the organizational literature into a comprehensive approach for looking at situations from more than one angle. Their four frames view organizations as factories, families, jungles, and theaters or temples:

The Structural Frame: how to organize and structure groups and teams to get results.
The Human Resource Frame: how to tailor organizations to satisfy human needs, improve human resource management, and build positive interpersonal and group dynamics.
The Political Frame: how to cope with power and conflict, build coalitions, hone political skills, and deal with internal and external politics.
The Symbolic Frame: how to shape a culture that gives purpose and meaning to work, stage organizational drama for internal and external audiences, and build team spirit through ritual, ceremony, and story.

The core of the book is reframing, a tool for finding new opportunities and options in confusing and troubling organizational situations. The authors show how multiple frames give leaders an edge in decoding organizational complexity. The new edition highlights current developments in organizational and leadership research. It presents new case examples from organizations such as eBay, Enron, Harley-Davidson, the New York City Fire Department, and the U.S. Marine Corps. The book also introduces "Organizational Theory’s Greatest Hits," text boxes that ground the book in the most influential scholarly work. The new edition also offers a rich mix of geographic, cultural, and gender diversity throughout.

About authors

Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal are the best-selling authors of Leading with Soul. Bolman holds the Marion Bloch Chair in Leadership at the Bloch School of Business, University of Missouri—Kansas City. He consults worldwide to corporations, public agencies, universities, and schools. Deal is the Irving R. Melbo Professor of Education at the Rossier School, University of Southern California, and an international consultant to business, health care, military, educational, and religious organizations.