The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office - Tapa dura

The world is full of organizational cynics. Look around. Heck, look in the mirror. We sit in our cubes, adjust our chairs, sharpen our pencils and stare at our computer screens with the sense that we're immersed in dysfunction. We could, we're sure, do a far better job of running things if we were given the chance. But we know we won't get the chance and so sink into doubt, distrust, and pessimism. But it doesn't have to be that way.
In THE ORG, authors Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan take readers through the logic of organizations using basic economic principles as their guide. Examining why organizations exist in the first place, THE ORG explores the tradeoffs that every corporation faces-from how to select members to how to inspire and discipline them-and then looks at the components of the whole structure from cubicle dwellers to CEOs. Using the tools of organizational economics, THE ORG provides readers with a concrete, logical, and practical way of thinking about how organizations ought to work. The insights unearthed in THE ORG may surprise you and may also explain how, with a few tweaks, the dysfunctional nature of today's office may nonetheless provide the ideal structure for getting the job done.

Ray Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and co-director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. Ray received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University and worked as a consultant in the Africa Division of the World Bank for a year before moving to Columbia in 1999. His work has been covered widely in the popular press, from Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times to al Jazeera to the Shanghai Daily. He also writes a monthly column for Slate magazine. His first book, Economic Gangsters (with Ted Miguel), was published to great critical acclaim by Princeton University Press in 2008.

Tim Sullivan is an executive editor at Harvard Business Review Press. He's also worked at Basic Books, Portfolio, and Princeton University Press, where he helped build one of the most successful academic economics lists in the world. Tim has worked with some of the world's leading economists (including the economists behind the textbook Organizational Economics and The Handbook of Organizational Economics) and social scientists, helping them translate their work for the wider world.