ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the radical humanist paradigm offers a nascent anti-organisation theory. It shows that the radical structuralist paradigm generates at least two strains of a radical organisation theory and attempts to identify some of the key issues relevant to future developments in this area. Viewing social theory and the literature on organisational analysis from the perspective of the functionalist paradigm, one has the impression that there is a dominant orthodoxy which is surrounded by critical perspectives, each of which seeks to adopt some form of ‘radical’ stance. The problem of developing methods appropriate to the nature of the phenomena to be studied remains one of the most pressing issues within the whole realm of social science research. Multi-disciplinary research teams, panels of advisers, grant-awarding bodies and university departments are growing in both numbers and importance, a development which is helping to broaden what are seen as the limited perspectives which have characterised the past.
