First published in 1961, is a business classic: one of the most influential books about business organizations ever published. Challenging the received wisdom that there is "one best way" to manage, it sounded the death knell of classical management theory and provided something lasting in its place: a way of looking at organizations that allowed for different contexts, different markets, and different rates of technological change. The book's famous typology of organizations as mechanistic vs. organic has proved timeless, as relevant today as more than thirty years ago. This edition includes a new preface by Tom Burns that situates the work in its historical and current contexts and offers his reflections, years later, on the ideas that changed the way people thought about organizations.