Studying the economic literature, I have found three authors engaged in explaining the organizational problems described here: John Kenneth Galbraith, Henry Mintzberg, and Gareth Morgan. By coincidence they are all connected to Canada.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Henry Mintzberg
Gareth Morgan
John Kenneth Galbraith is an American economist born in Canada 1908. He started teaching agricultural economics at Harvard University. During World War II, he was in charge of the US wartime price control, and later he worked as an economic journalist, as US ambassador in India, and as professor of Economics at Harvard University. In 1959, he published the bestseller The Affluent Society, and in 1967, he followed this up with The New Industrial State.
The New Industrial State is a more theoretical analysis of Galbraith's findings as he described them in The Affluent Society. Who is ruling the huge American corporation? Not the owners and maybe not even the managers. Instead, the technostructure has taken leadership of the modern industrial enterprise, and this complex of specialists and technicians is now exercising the decisive power.
Galbraith developed the concept of the technostructure to explain how hi-tech weapon development contracts were negotiated between the Pentagon and huge US corporations without use of the open market.
Henry Mintzberg was born in Canada in 1939. He has published a series of learned analyses of general theories of organization and power. In this study, I have referenced:
Gareth Morgan was born in England in 1943. He is Research Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is a best-selling author, speaker and consultant on managing change. His books include Images of Organization, Riding the Waves of Change, and Imaginization.
Images of Organization has established itself as a classic that has influenced management thinking throughout the world. Morgan shows us how to view organizations with his renowned creative images and metaphors. [Note 8]
