The Individualized Corporation

Whyte's Organization Man is dead. Chandler's Strategy and Structure no longer provides managerial solutions to today's business problems. Companies still clinging to Alfred Sloan's industrial model of management, instituted in the 1920s, remain in deep trouble. For the 90s and beyond, Ghoshal and Bartlett present a radical new management model based on embedding and leading rich corporate cultures, not on controlling and retooling corporate machines. Emerging in the wake of reengineering, this new paradigm argues that companies shouldn't be seen as engines but as social institutions: They are made up of people, not cogs.

Using diverse and compelling examples, The Individualized Corporation explains how business leaders must recast the role of managers. A manager's role, they assert, is to transform how their employees behave, not reengineer what they do. They must look beyond strategy, structure, and systems to embrace corporate purpose, process, and people. Discussing such critical areas as redefining competencies, value-added managing, entrepreneurial environments, and moral contracting, Bartlett and Ghoshal describe in practical detail the look, feel, and "smell of the place" that constitutes the new-sprung corporation and displaces traditional leadership.

A crucial book for all businesspeople who hope to guide their companies into the 21st century, The Individualized Corporation is one of the most important books since Sloan's defining work.