Harvard Business Review author's copy, featuring a Charles Handy article on organizations. Handy begins the article discussing Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and how modern societies, as well as organizations, are going through a looking glass. He proceeds to talk about how nonevolutionary change signifies a discontinuity, and how much of the anxiety in modern society stems from this intensifying sense of discontinuity, which has particularly appeared in Great Britain and other parts of Europe. Handy then discusses how planning for the future necessitates planning for continuous change, how the catastrophe theory cannot accommodate discontinuous change, and that discontinuous change, although infrequent, upsets things because it destabilizes and disrupts assumptions of the past that no longer apply. He then lists some examples of disruptive changes that will be occurring over the next several decades, including changes in micro-technology, the switch from cheap to costly energy, and disillusionment with Keynesian economics. The article then discusses changes in the workforce and how work has traditionally been viewed as a commodity in organizations. Such commodification has led to alienation increases and management buying off workers, which releases a surplus of the commodity into society. Handy then discusses the difference between “role” and “level” within hierarchies, and notes that hierarchy only worked when obedience in organizations worked. With changes in society, which find individuals more willing to challenge authority, new assumptions must be made about organizations and their workers, with Handy suggesting that contractual organizations and organizations as communities will be part of the future, along with more flexible working lives. He notes that traditional organizations must ultimately find a way to adapt to such changes or risk being bypassed by the newer organizations that conform to trends in modern business culture. Handy closes the article arguing that discontinuous futures should be seen as experimental opportunities--as open-ended, not closed, problems.
Handy, Charles B Harvard business review book series Schumacher, E. F. (Ernst Friedrich), 1911-1977 Keynesian economics Keynes, John Maynard, 1883-1946 Marx, Karl, 1818-1883 Organizational behavior Organizational change Organization theory Employee retention Employee loyalty Employment (Economic theory) Industrial management Industrial organization Industrial relations Change Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898 Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge, 1832-1898 Great Britain Britain and Europe United States
Source
Harvard Business Review author's copy, featuring a Charles Handy article on organizations, 1980; Charles Handy Papers; Box 20, Folder 1; 20 pages
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