Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 240 pages
- Published by: Harvard Business School Press April 2, 2004
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1591391253
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1591391258
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 1.3 pounds
Product Review
"[W]e need visionaries like Malone to help push us past the limitations of our conventional thinking." --
Fortune, April 14th 2004"[T]he argument offered here is uniquely grand." --
Financial Times, April 15th, 2004"briskly writteninsightful" --
USA Today, April 12, 2004
Product Description
A Pathbreaking Model for Building a New-and Far Better-World of Work
For more than a decade, business thinkers have theorized about how technology will change the shape of organizations. In this landmark book, renowned organizational theorist Thomas Malone, codirector of MIT's "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century" initiative, provides the first credible model for actually designing the company of the future.
Based on twenty years of groundbreaking research,
The Future of Work foresees a workplace revolution that will dramatically change organizational structures and the roles employees play in them. Malone argues that current notions about decentralization merely scratch the surface of what will be possible as technological and economic forces make "command and control" management increasingly less useful.
In its place will be a more flexible "coordinate and cultivate" approach that will spawn new types of decentralized organizations-from internal markets to democracies to loose hierarchies. These future structures will reap the scale and knowledge efficiencies of large organizations while enabling the freedom, flexibility, and human values that drive smaller firms.
Exploring the skills managers will need in a workplace in which the power to decide belongs to everyone, this optimistic book shows how we can help create a world that is not just richer, but better.
Reader ReviewsThe title of this book is misleading. A more apt title would have been: The Future of Organizational Structure. If you really want to read about the future of work, I suggest you look for a different book. As an expert on communications costs and benefits, Professor Malone explores how the pros and cons of centralized hierarchies, loose hierarchies, democracies and free markets compare in producing better organizational results. The book abounds with examples, most of which were not new to me. The book's overall theme is that with the costs of communications plummeting and the value of the information communication increasing it is inevitable that organizations will decentralize more than ever . . . by employing hybrid forms of loose hierarchies, democracies and free markets for the same organization. The book ends up with a call to live your dreams that draws on decidedly nonmanagement sources of inspiration. The key idea is that organizations can live values that uplift everyone in them. If you would like a solid introduction into the forces that are influencing shifts towards decentralization, The Future of Work is a good theoretical overview. Professor Malone also points you to online resources for finding out about best practices in some of these areas. As a book for a practitioner, The Future of Work leaves a lot to be desired. Most will find it too abstract and theoretical to help them decide what changes to make in an organization. The book would have been vastly more valuable if it had focused on a few key areas of management performance (such as developing new business models, creating breakthrough new products, or bypassing competitor's established cost advantages) and described how best to apply the concepts in those contexts. I hope that Professor Malone will choose to do this in future books and articles. The writing leaves something to be desired. Although the book is brief, it has a startling number of repetitions of examples and references. I sometimes felt like I was being talked down to (as though I could not make the links for myself or remember the example that had been mentioned two chapters before). Much of the book also suffers from an over focus on the "economic human" rather than the "total human." For instance, there is little reference to psychology until quite late in the book. Any success with organizational structure has to take into account both the rational and emotional sides of those involved in the organization. But I am unaware of any better book on the theory behind this subject, so for the time being we should view this book as the gold standard . . . and thus worthy of five stars. I suspect that many people will find that rereading books about chaos theory as applied to organizations will have new meaning when viewed through Professor Malone's perspective. I encourage you to do some of that rereading after you tackle this book.
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