The Management of Innovation is one of the most influential books on organization theory and industrial sociology ever written. The main question it addresses - the relationship between an organization and its market and the technological environment - continues to preoccupy researchers and managers as innovation has even greater impact on organizational structures and competitiveness.

Engagingly written and wearing its scholarship lightly, the book presents the authors' now famous binary classification of 'mechanistic' or 'organic' systems. For this it has become justly famous, but the book is also a penetrating study of social systems within organizations and of organizational dynamics, covering such issues as organizational politics, the role of the chief executive and the relationship between technical staff and general managers.

For this new edition, Tom Burns has written an overview of developments in organization theory and situated the book in that context.