The Drucker Foundation: The Organization of the Future

The 49 contributors to this collection--an eclectic mix of executives, academics, management experts and consultants--offer highly accessible, often conversationally written essays intended as thought-provoking goads to action or change in today's business environment. The emphasis is on creating flexible organizational structures that can respond effectively to global competition, information technology, innovation and customers' changing habits. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter explores the difficulties of motivating people to work in the downsized, high-pressure corporation. Futurist Joel Barker examines the Mondragon Cooperative, a complex of more than 100 worker-owned enterprises in Spain's Basque Provinces, as a model of entrepreneurship, job creation and worker democracy. James Champy, guru of company reengineering, argues that the larger the scale of a program for change, the more likely it is to succeed. Avoiding platitudes, these wide-ranging essays provide a wealth of innovative thinking on leadership and management strategy. Hesselbein is president of the Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management; Goldsmith runs a San Diego corporate consulting firm; organizational consultant Beckhard is a former management professor at MIT. (Feb.)