Book Description

For the first time ever, large firms are losing out to smaller ones. The early 1990s panaceas like empowerment and reengineering are clearly incapable of stopping the rot. What has gone wrong with big business? And how do we put it right?The answer is not that small is beautiful - the problem is that large firms have become far too complicated. They are being strangled by their own management processes. Big business is not too big in terms of revenues, but it is too complex.It has for too many products, divisions and functions, and way too many managers, In this, the year's most provocative business book, two highly experienced international business consultants argue that the root problem is management itself, and that the solution is to manage without management as a separate activity or set of jobs.The authors hail the emergence of a totally different type of 21st century supercorporation that will be truly global and expand into all parts of the economy. This supercorporation willbe quite unlike today's companies, with no headquarters, standardized operations throughout the globe, and very simple structures. The supercorporation will be controlled by customers and information technology and not by managers."Managing Without Management might well be to business orthodoxy what Luther's 95 theses were to the established religious hierarchy of Christendom. To the defenders of the old management faith, this is a truly radical, unsettling, and heretical document. Indeed all readers are advised to fasten their seatbelts before dipping into this complacency-shattering manifesto". -- James O'Toole, Vice-President, Aspen Institute"Makes many telling points...managing willchange from being a self-perpetuating job to being a value-added activity". -- Carol Kennedy