ABSTRACT
This chapter explains why and how organizations exist and function the way they do to give leaders and managers a context for their professional headaches, heartaches, and hardships; victories and defeats, and opportunities and limitations. The assumption of this chapter is like that of the book, the logics governing contemporary organizational life are deeply rooted in history. This chapter equips readers to be organizational historians, orients them to the dominant, and at time competing, formal and informal rules of the game, and provides multiple frames of reference to better manage the present and navigate the future.
