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    Ghosts of Organizations Past
    Communities of Organizations As Settings for Change

    Dan Ryan (Author)

    9781439912553

    Paperback / softback, published 10 June 2015

    232 pages
    21 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.666 kg

    In 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 Organizations Past describes the challenges of using organizations to create change in places in dire need of it.

    Preface
    Acknowledgments
    Part I / From Opportunity to Disaster (and Back Again)
    1 The Ghosts of Organizations Past
    Part II / Disaster and Opportunity
    2 From Disaster to Opportunity 
    3 From Opportunity to Disaster
    Part III / Communities and Organizations
    4 What Kind of Thing Is Community?
    5 What Kind of Thing Is an Organization?
    6 Doing Things with Organizations in Communities
    Part IV / Organizing Organizations
    7 Doing Things with Organizations: The Cost of Organizational Diversity
    8 Doing Things with Organizations: The Cost of System
    9 Networks of Garbage Cans: The Amplification of Irrationality
    10 Networks and Calendar Noise
    Part V / Social Organizational Junkyards
    11 Community as Organizational Junkyard
    12 Why Can’
    t Organizations Be Like Us?
    Bibliography
    Index
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