This volume posits that there is something wrong with large corporations. Large firms are losing out to smaller ones. The panaceas of the early 1990s, such as empowerment and re-engineering, are incapable of stopping the rot. The book asks, what has gone wrong with big business, and how can it be put right? The authors state that the problem is management itself, and the answer is to manage without management as a separate activity or set of jobs. Other suggestions include: large firms have become far too complicated - they are being strangled by their own managment processes; big business is not too big in terms of revenues, but it is too complex; and there are far too many products, divisions and functions, and much too many managers. The authors see the emergence of a totally different 21st-century supercorporation, with no headquarters, standardized operations throughout the world, and very simple structures. The supercorporation will be controlled by customers and information technology and a new breed of superleaders, not by managers.
Richard Koch is the author of "Wake Up Your Company", "The FT Guide to Management and Finance", "The FT Guide to Strategy", "Selecting Shares that Perform" and "The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less".
- ISBN13 9781857881660
- Publish Date 1 August 1997 (first published 1 September 1996)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 23 March 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Nicholas Brealey Publishing
- Format Paperback
- Pages 254
- Language English