Here you can read online Arie de Geus - The Living Company full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1997, publisher: Harvard Business School Press, genre: Business. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
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In The Living Company, the man who first introduced the revolutionary concept of the learning organization turns his attention to identifying the critical characteristics of organizational longevity. The book speaks to everyone trying to adapt to a turbulent business environment.
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Copyright 1997 by Longview Publishing Limited All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 01 00 99 0 9 8 7
Nan Stone and Art Kleiner, Editors
The ideas and views expressed in this book are the author's only.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Geus, Arie. The living company / by Arie de Geus. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-87584-782-X (alk. paper) 1. Industrial management. 2. CorporationsCase studies. I. Title. HD31.G438 1997 658dc21 96-48384 CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.49-1984.
Page v
CONTENTS
Foreword
Peter M. Senge
vii
Acknowledgments
xiii
Prologue: The Lifespan of a Company
1
Learning
1 The Shift from Capitalism to a Knowledge Society
15
2 The Memory of the Future
22
3 Tools for Foresight
38
4 Decision Making as a Learning Activity
55
Persona (Identity)
5 Only Living Beings Learn
77
6 Managing for Profit or for Longevity: Is There a Choice?
100
Ecology
7 Flocking
131
8 The Tolerant Company
142
9 The Corporate Immune System
159
Page vi
Evolution
10 Conservatism in Financing
171
11 Power: Nobody Should Have Too Much
187
Epilogue: The Company of the Future
199
Notes
203
Index
209
About the Author
215
Page vii
FOREWORD
Peter M. Senge
It was through Arie de Geus, whom I met over 15 years ago, that I first became seriously acquainted with the concepts of organizational learning. That meeting began the journey of a lifetime.
He introduced me to the famous study done at Royal Dutch/Shell, where he was the coordinator of planning worldwide, which found that the average life expectancy of Fortune 500 firms, from birth to death, was only 40 to 50 years. The study also found many companies over 200 years old. Arie convinced me that most corporations die prematurelythe vast majority before their fiftieth birthday. The majority of large corporations, he said, suffer from learning disabilities. They are somehow unable to adapt and evolve as the world around them changes.
More importantly, he got me thinking for the first time about the connections between low life expectancy and low vitality of firms while they are still operating. Both are symptoms of the overall health of the enterprise. Like individuals who are unhealthy and can expect an early demise, most large, apparently successful corporations are profoundly unhealthy. The members of these organizations do not experience that their company is suffering from low life expectancy. They experience
Page viii
poor corporate health as work stress, endless struggles for power and control, and the cynicism and resignation that result from a work environment that stifles rather than releases human imagination, energy, and commitment. The day-to-day climate of most organizations is probably more toxic than we care to admit, whether or not these companies are in the midst of obvious decline.
This is a book of practical philosophy. It has been my experience that extraordinary practitioners like Arie can make unique contributions to management thinking, but that their contributions are rarely acknowledged. Unlike academics who write about what they have thought, practitioners think about what they have lived through. Because the source of their thinking is experience rather than concepts, they show how sometimes the most profound ideas are the simplest.
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