The Individualized Corporation

Based on six years of research and hundreds of interviews with managers at every level of companies such as Intel, ABB, Canon, 3M, and McKinsey, The Individualized Corporation explores the collapse of an outmoded corporate form and reveals the emergence of a fundamentally different management philosophy--one that forces on the power of the individual as the driver of value creation in the company and the importance of individuality in management. The image of the "Organization Man" as a cog in a corporate machine has become both dated and dangerous. Rather than try to force employees into a homogeneous corporate mold based on a company's strategy, structure, and system, world-renowned scholars and consultants Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett argue that managers must embrace a philosophy based on purpose, process, and people that focuses on developing and leveraging the individual's unique talents and skills--a company's most important source of competitive advantage. Without proposing a universal solution or a quick-fix prescription, this important book provides an indispensable guide for those who must lead their companies into the next century.

The emphasis on organizational change in the corporate life of recent years-including job redesign, autonomous groups, high performance work systems, and the redesign of control systems-owes a great deal to the pioneering work of Chris Argyris. This book examines how individuals in organizations can become more effective, in turn making organizations more effective. It explores the conventional pyramidal structure of organizations, in which there is top-down control by managers over workers, and examines their negative consequences. These include organizational injustice and eventually irrational decision-making. Argyris also discusses the characteristic learning system of the modern organization, which he describes as "single-loop" in character. This system, he argues, is only adequeate enough to permit the organization to implement existing policies. It does not permit the more difficult and comprehensive task of questioning underlying goals and assumptions, which he terms "doubt loop" learning. In this kind of learning, the organization is able to confront the more difficult problems that affect organizations in a time of transition. In his new introduction, Argyris reviews the strengths and limitations of the argument advanced in "Integrating the Individual and the Organization. "He describes why the pyramidal structure endures, and why creating a self-learning organization is an even more challenging task than he has imagined. The book will be of interest to professionals with a long-standing interest in organizational development as well as those just entering the field, managers confronting the challenge of organization change, and researchers in organizational behavior and theory.

Regarded as one of the most important sociological and business commentaries of modern times, The Organization Man developed the first thorough description of the impact of mass organization on American society. During the height of the Eisenhower administration, corporations appeared to provide a blissful answer to postwar life with the marketing of new technologies—television, affordable cars, space travel, fast food—and lifestyles, such as carefully planned suburban communities centered around the nuclear family. William H. Whyte found this phenomenon alarming. As an editor for Fortune magazine, Whyte was well placed to observe corporate America; it became clear to him that the American belief in the perfectibility of society was shifting from one of individual initiative to one that could be achieved at the expense of the individual. With its clear analysis of contemporary working and living arrangements, The Organization Man rapidly achieved bestseller status. Since the time of the book's original publication, the American workplace has undergone massive changes. In the 1990s, the rule of large corporations seemed less relevant as small entrepreneurs made fortunes from new technologies, in the process bucking old corporate trends. In fact this "new economy" appeared to have doomed Whyte's original analysis as an artifact from a bygone day. But the recent collapse of so many startup businesses, gigantic mergers of international conglomerates, and the reality of economic globalization make The Organization Man all the more essential as background for understanding today's global market. This edition contains a new foreword by noted journalist and author Joseph Nocera. In an afterword Jenny Bell Whyte describes how The Organization Man was written.

National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

How both entrepreneurs and nations can develop, harness, and utilize intellect, science, and technology to maximize innovation and growth.

For nine months, Perlow studied the work practices of a product development team of software engineers at a Fortune 500 corporation. She reports her findings in detailed stories about individual employees and in more analytic chapters. Perlow first describes the individual heroics necessary to succeed in the existing work culture. She then explains how the system of rewards perpetuates crises and continuous interruptions, while discouraging cooperation. Finally, she shows how the resulting work practices damage both organizational productivity and the quality of individuals' lives outside of work.