Re-Creating the Corporation: A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century

Bruce Rayner, Electronic Business, August 1999
This latest offering from management guru Russell Ackoff provides a compelling argument for why large corporations need to rethink organizations....Even though it weighs in at a hefty 352 pages, Re-Creating the Corporation is still a quick read, because Ackoff uses plain English.


Stacy Hague, CIO, November 15, 1999
Russell Ackoff, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and widely recognized as one of the world's foremost management thinkers, has written a very straightforward book based on systems thinking, an approach that views the corporation as an organic whole swimming in its environment rather than as a conglomerate of disparate departments and functions....With clarity and style, Ackoff has drawn a very simple map for the implementation of systems thinking in the corporation.


Book Description
Over the last three decades the average life expectancy of a corporation in North America has dipped well below 20 years. In fact, by 1983 a full third of the 1970 Fortune 500 companies had been acquired, merged, or broken apart. In this landmark book, one of the business world's foremost pioneers, Russell L. Ackoff, delivers this indispensable guide for those hoping to beat these odds--and to better navigate the corporate challenges of the next millennium. While most business and management schools continue to teach the functions of a corporation separately--production, marketing, finance, personnel--the reality is that for a corporation to endure each division must work with the others to create an effective system. Re-Creating the Corporation is Ackoff's masterful blueprint for understanding and creating these model corporate systems. In four comprehensive sections--Background, Process, Designs, and Change--Ackoff lays out in clear concise prose the five organizational goals of successful corporate systems: plan effectively, learn and adapt rapidly, democratize, introduce internal market economies, and employ a flexible structure that will minimize the need for future restructuring. And through a deft mix of practical and theoretical examples drawn from a wide range of applications in a wide range of firms, this book ultimately guides executives to the system best suited to meet their organizational goals. Re-Creating the Corporation, which is the culmination of a lifetime of innovative and insightful business thought from one of the business world's premier thinkers, is essential reading for those attempting to navigate the rapidly changing economic environment of the next millennium.


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This latest offering from management guru Russell Ackoff provides a compelling argument for why large corporations need to rethink organizations....Even though it weighs in at a hefty 352 pages, Re-Creating the Corporation is still a quick read, because Ackoff uses plain English.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices