Recommended reading for those studying self-organizing work groups in organizations

Here are some of my favorite books and articles—those that supported me as I struggled to understand my own experience as a self-organizing work group member within a large organization (and eventually as a researcher of these groups). Those I found most useful—because they significantly challenged and expanded what I knew as a group member or confirmed our experience as group members—are marked with an asterisk (*).

From the Business, Management, Leadership, and Org. Development Fields 

• Argyris, C. (1003). Knowledge for action: A guide to overcoming barriers to organizational change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.
• Bellman, G. & Ryan, K. (2009). Extraordinary groups: how ordinary teams achieve amazing results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2003). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Bresnen, M., Goussevskaia. A., & Swan, J. (2005). Organizational routines, situated learning, and process of change in project-based organizations. Project Management Journal, 36(3), 27-41.
• Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
• Contractor, N. S. (1999). Self-organizing systems research in the social sciences: Reconciling the metaphors and the models. Management Communication Quarterly, 13(1), 154-166.
• Druskat, V. U. & Wheeler, J. V. (2003). Managing from the boundary: The effective leadership of self-managing work teams. Academy of Management Journal, 46(4), 435-457.
• Hackman, J.R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.
• Hamel, G., & Prahalad, C. K. (1994). Competing for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
  Heifetz, R. (1998). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• *Holman, P. (2010). Engaging emergence: turning upheaval into opportunity. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• *Kane, L. (2008). Fostering the emergence of self-organizing work groups. Seattle, WA: Seattle University.
• Lichtenstein, B. M. B. (2000). Emergence as a process of self-organizing: New assumptions and insights from the study of non-linear dynamic systems. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 13(6), 526-544.
• *Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
  Publications. [particularly the chapters on organizations as brains and organizations as flux and transformation]
• *Nonaka, I. (2001). Creating organizational order out of chaos: Self-renewal in Japanese firms. California Management Review, 30, 57-73.
• *Saarel, D. A. (1995). Triads: Self-organizing structures that create value. Planning Review, 23(4), 20-25.
• Smith, C., & Comer, D. (1994). Self-organization in small groups: A study of group effectiveness within non-equilibrium conditions. Human Relations, 47(5), 553-581.
• Stacey, R. D. (1996). Complexity and creativity in organizations. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers.
• *Wheatley, M. J. (1999). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• *Wheatley, M. J. (2005). Finding our way: Leadership for an uncertain time. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
• Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Relationships: The basic building blocks of life. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/relationships.html
• Wheatley, M. J., & Kellner-Rogers, M. (1996). The irresistible future of organizing [Electronic Version]. Retrieved March 6, 2007, from http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/irresistiblefuture.html
• Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2007). Developing management skills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

From the Field of Education

• Ayers, D. F. (2002). Developing climates for renewal in the community college: A case study of dissipative self-organization. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 26, 165-185.
• Bower, D. F. (2006). Sustaining school improvement. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 3(1), 61-72.
• Burrello, L. C., Lashley, C., & Beatty, E. E. (2001). Educating all students together: How school leaders create unified systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.
• Goldman, P., Tindal, G., McCullum, N., & Marr, J. (1999). Organizational learning and the culture of reform: Operationalizing the “organizations as brains” metaphor. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• Goodman, J., Baron, D., & Myers, C. (2001). Bringing democracy to the occupational life of educators in the United States: Constructing a foundation for school-based reform. International Journal in Education, 4(1), 57-86.
• Kruse, S. D., & Louis, K. S. (1997). Teacher teaming in middle schools: Dilemmas for a school wide community. Educational Administration Quarterly, 33(3), 261-289.
• Louis, K. S., Marks, H. M., & Kruse, S. (1996). Teachers’ professional community in restructuring schools. American Educational Research Journal, 33(4), 757-798.
• *Zellermayer, M., & Margolin, I. (2005). Teacher educators’ professional learning described through the lens of complexity theory. Teachers College Record, 107(6), 1275-1304.

From Additional Fields and Disciplines (e.g., chemistry, community organizing and advocacy, biology, physics, psychology, social psychology, health and medicine, and communications)

• *Arrow, H., McGrath, J. E., & Berdahl, J. L. (2000). Small groups as complex systems: Formation, coordination, development, and adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
• *Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York: E. P.
  Dutton.
• *Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. New York:
  Routledge.
• *Bach, J. (2002). Evolutionary guidance system: A community design project. World Futures, 58, 417-423.
• Burls, A., & Caan, W. (2004). Networking—social inclusion and embracement: A helpful concept? Primary Health Care Research and Development, 5, 1991-1992.
• Crowell, D. M. (1998). Organizations are relationships: A new view of management. Nursing Management, 29(5), 28-29.
• Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Viking.
• *Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for laws of self-organization and complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.
• *Kauffman, S. A. (1993). Origins of order: Self organization and selection in evolution. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
• *Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (Vol. 42). Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
• McClure, B. A. (2005). Putting a new spin on groups: The science of chaos. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
• Nicolis, G., & Prigogine, I. (1989). Exploring complexity: An introduction. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
• *Prigogine, I. (1996). The end of certainty: Time, chaos, and the new laws of nature. New York: The Free Press.
  Sen, R. (2003). Stir it up: Lessons in community organizing and advocacy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• *Stempfle, J., Hubner, O., & Badke-Schaub, P. (2001). A functional theory of task role distribution in work groups. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 4(2), 138-159.
• *Taylor, J. R. (2001). The ‘rational’ organization reconsidered: an exploration of some of the organizational implications of self-organizing. Communication Theory, 11(2), 137-177.