Major Contributions Philosopher - Margaret Wheatly - Book Report/Review Example

Margaret J. Wheatley, an American writer and consultant, is often considered as a preeminent scholar in current organizational behavior and theory. As such, the following analysis will serve as a book review and analytical observation of some of the key theories put forward by Margaret J. Wheatley in her book, Leadership and the New Science Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Before delving directly into the information that Wheatley puts forward in her book, it would be beneficial to understand the early background and influences that promoted her integration with the subject matter.

Wheatley grew up in a family that prized education and scholarship to a very high degree; as such, it is not surprising that Wheatley engaged in her studies with a vigor and interest that captured the notice of her teachers, instructors, and professors. Ultimately, growing up in and around the Boston area led Wheatley to an integration and interpretation of a great many world views that she might not have had elsewhere in the United States. The multicultural atmosphere spurred her interest in the way that organizations worked and the means by which different interests could be managed.

As a result of this interest, she began to pursue a course of study that was steeped in the liberal arts. As a direct result of her interest in organizations and impacting a positive influence on the world, Wheatley joined the Peace Corps and travelled to Korea to teach high school English. Upon the completion of her graduate studies and her tour in the Peace Corps, Wheatley was better endowed to write about organizational behavior and understand its key components than most of the subject matter experts that had spent many years in the field already.

Like many scholars, Wheatley cannot necessarily be named the creator of an entirely new school of thought. Rather, her greatest achievement is presenting stakeholders, both in the academic and professional communities, a greater and more complete understanding of how previous theories can and should relate to the practice of organizational behavior and management. Although some of the ideas that she has put forward are seemingly constrained to operate only within a specific field, Wheatley is able to appropriately apply them to organizational behavior and management in a way that broadens the means by which they might traditionally be understood.

To utilize her own words, Wheatley describes her work and the promotion of these theories as a type of opposition to controlled and mechanistic systems (Darso, 2008). In such a manner, the reader can come to the appreciation of the fact that she completely promotes a more fluid and dynamic theoretical interpretation of how organizations and interpersonal behavior impacts upon future decision-making. Accordingly, the following analysis will discuss and leverage four particular approaches to organizational behavior that Wheatley spends a great deal of time emphasizing.

These are as follows: the application of chaos theory to organizational behavior, the means by which learning in an organization is vitally important, the importance of systems theory to explain organizational be