Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993):

"Most people when they hear the word "management" still hear 'business management.' Management did indeed first emerge in its present form in large-scale business organizations. . . . But we soon learned that management is needed in all modern organizations. In fact, we, soon learned that it is needed even more in organizations that are not businesses, whether not-for-profit but non-governmental organizations (what in this book I propose we call the 'social sector') or government agencies. These organizations need management the most precisely because they lack the discipline of the 'bottom line' under which business operates. That management is not confined to business was recognized first in the United States. But it is now becoming accepted in every developed country.

We now know that management is a generic function of all organizations, whatever their specific mission. It is the generic organ of the knowledge society."

(p. 43)

Armand Mattelart, Mapping World Communications (1991):

"These books [by the business consultants and gurus] which enjoyed a transnational readership far broader than just business executives, provided a medium for the followers of the new business doctrine. . . .
      'The field of management,' wrote the sociologist Michel Vilette in 1988, 'has contaminated all segments of society and is perceived as a universal cultural model.' Not only did the corporation become a full actor in public life, expressing itself more and more openly and acting politically on all of society's problems, but its rules of functioning, its scale of values, and its ways of communicating all progressively impregnated the whole body social. 'Managerial' logic was instituted as the norm for managing social relations."

(pp. 207-208)

The Impact of Business on Private Life

Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic, 1992)

• in the period from the late 60s to late 80s, the average American employee added the equivalent of an extra month of work per year and lost 40 percent of leisure time)

Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (New York: Henry Holt, 1997)

Witold Rybczynski, Waiting for the Weekend (New York: Penguin, 1991)

Business as Culture

Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (1982):

Perhaps culture was taboo as a topic following William H. Whyte, Jr.'s The Organization Man and the conformist, gray flannel suit image that he put forward. But what seems to have been overlooked by Whyte, and management theorists until recently, is what . . . we call the "loose-tight" properties of excellent companies. In the very same institutions in which culture is so dominant, the highest levels of true autonomy occur. The culture regulates rigorously the few variables that do count, and it provides meaning. But within those qualitative values (and in almost all other dimensions), people are encouraged to stick out, to innovate. (p. 105, from the section on "The Importance of Culture")

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

"Why are these changes occurring? Because they have to occur. The 1980s taught some bitter lessons to American business leaders. Faced with accelerated global competition, it became evident that . . . America wasn't good enough. . . . They were beating us because they tried harder and expected more—better quality, better service, and faster innovation."

(p. 8)

• Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993):

The basic economic resource—"the means of production," to use the economist's term—is no longer capital, nor natural resources (the economist's "land"), nor "labor." It is and will be knowledge. . . . The leading social groups of the knowledge society will be "knowledge workers—knowledge executives who know how to allocate knowledge to productive use. . . . Practically all these knowledge people will be employed in organizations.

Knowledge is now fast becoming the sole factor of production, sidelining both capital and labor. It may be premature (and certainly would be presumptuous) to call ours a "knowledge society"; so far, we have only a knowledge economy. But our society is surely "post-capitalist." (pp. 8, 20)

• Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990):

  . . . "learning organizations," organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. (p. 3)

  To grasp the meaning of "metanoia" is to grasp the deeper meaning of "learning," for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of mind. (p. 13)

• William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992):

  Throughout most American history, the unwritten definition of worker included lack of education. (p. 187)

   . . . the process of becoming a virtual corporation, before and after everything, is about learning. . . . the virtual corporation is a learning entity, struggling to understand its mercurial operating environment so as to successfully adapt to it. (p. 194)

  The virtual corporation is a learning organization. At any given moment it is a collection of skills, talents, and experiences that reside in the minds of its managers and workers, and a body of information relating to its products, its internal structure, and its business relationships. . . . (p. 203)

• Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

  The world itself is changing in respect to how and what type of human effort is valued. We are moving from a world in which human value was derived from physical prowess to one in which value is a function of mental acuity. We are moving from a world in which the strong not only survived, but prospered, into one in which the "philosopher," "thinker," "innovator," "creator," and "problem solver" is king. Perhaps George Gilder, author of Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology, said it best when he wrote: "The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter. . . . " (pp. 277-78)

• "Pay for knowledge"/"Life Long Learning""
  

  Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

  In addition to installing incentive pay as a substantial portion of total compensation, many companies will adopt a "pay-for-knowledge" system. In these companies, workers will have the opportunity to increase their base pay by learning and maintaining skills to perform multiple jobs within the organization. (p. 6)

Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000 (1992):

In part, the downsizing that occurred in the 1980s was made possible by a new generation of technology that is less expensive, more flexible, and enables employees at the lowest level of an organization to make critical decisions. (p. 2)

 . . . success in the organization will flow to those who can effectively use the data. . . . Americans who want to succeed will need the ability to analyze data, draw conclusions, and present recommendations. Computer literacy and at least a rudimentary knowledge of statistics for business will be critical for advancement or even to survive! (p. 5)

The ability of large American companies to reconfigure themselves to look and act like small businesses can, at least in part, be attributed to the development of new technology that makes whole layers of managers and their staffs unnecessary. Those layers (such as group executives, corporate directors, and assistant vice presidents) whose primary function is to either filter information and, in some cases, manipulate data being passed up from lower levels or make routine decisions will be particularly vulnerable to technology. . . . In Workplace 2000, upper management in practically every company will have the technological tools not only to review company-wide performance on a personal computer but to tap directly into performance at the lowest level. (p. 23)

Entire layers of management and supervision will be erased from the organization chart. Traditional ideas about a "span of control" where a manager or supervisor was needed for every four, five,or six employees are being discarded. Instead of a narrow span of control, companies are now beginning to look at a much broader span of communication or span of information as the basis for establishing the number and levels of management. (p. 28)

• The early "Productivity Paradox" of IT
  
  

  IT capital and productivity in the service sector. Data from Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives; chart from Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers, p. 31

  Thomas K. Landauer, The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995) Stephen S. Roach, Technology Imperatives (New York: Morgan Stanley, 1992) Paul A. Strassman, Information Payoff: The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age (New York: Free Press / Macmillan, 1985)

  
  
• IT as symbolism, myth, and "spirit"
  
  
  • J. Feldman and J. March, "Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol" (1981):
    
    "Using information, asking for information, and justifying decisions in terms of information have all come to be significant ways in which we symbolize that [a] process is legitimate, that we are good decision makers, and that our organizations are well managed" (p. 178)
    
    
  • Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990): (pp. 13, 11)
    
    
  • Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society, vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996-97):
    
    "The 'spirit of informationalism' is the culture of 'creative destruction' accelerated to the speed of the optoelectronic circuits that process its signals. Schumpeter meets Weber in the cyberspace of the network enterprise" (p. 199)

See also the Alan Liu's

• Web site: Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation—Teaching the Humanities in a Restructured World
• Essay: "Knowledge in the Age of Knowledge Work," Profession 1999: 113-24