3 Worthy Books Speak Volumes on Trends Reshaping the Workplace

What began as a trickle in 1982 with “In Search of Excellence” has turned into a torrent of faddish business books written mostly by management consultants who presume to tell executives how to run their companies.

A good half of them, it seems, feature “Re” prominently in the title: “Reengineering the Corporation,” “Reengineering Management,” “The Reengineering Revolution,” “Reengineering Reengineering” (just a joke, but perhaps not a bad idea).

With all this advice about how to fix corporate America, it’s a wonder the workplace is such a frayed and confused mess. Or maybe it’s just that managers are spending all their time reading instead of leading.

Now come three books--two by tried-and-true management philosophers and one by a psychologist-educator well known in business circles--that offer some respite from all that “Re-ing.” And in these nanosecond ‘90s--to borrow from Tom Peters, the peripatetic co-author of “In Search of Excellence”--it is reassuring to note that each of these worthy volumes can be delved into a bit at a time and in no particular order. None is exactly a bedtime diversion, but they report in readable and often sage fashion on the pervasive trends shaping business and work.

Two of them have even adopted the more compact size made popular by the enormously successful novel “The Bridges of Madison County” (although there, happily, the resemblance ends). In publishing, at least, downsizing has taken on a new meaning.

MANAGING IN A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE By Peter F. Drucker, (Truman Talley Books/Dutton, $24.95, hardcover, 371 pages)

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“Managing in a Time of Great Change” is the latest from Peter F. Drucker, the esteemed professor, consultant and author of 26 other books. A seminal thinker who pioneered the notion of management as a distinct discipline, Drucker will turn 87 this year. Age has not dulled his keen observations, which are here arrayed in the form of 25 previously published essays (1991-95) and two interviews.

In the preface, Drucker--for whom the Drucker Graduate Management Center at Claremont Graduate School is named--reveals his common themes: changes that have already irreversibly happened and things executives must do to create the future for their companies.

Tackling subjects ranging from teams to family businesses to organizational loyalty (or lack thereof) to global trade, Drucker emphasizes that managers must learn to motivate and reward highly knowledgeable workers to keep them from transporting their skills elsewhere and must figure out how to use data, not just gather it.

For those who have kept pace with the current business press, little of this will sound completely new. But the Austrian-born Drucker’s strength is in laying out theories and advice in plain English.

Companies, he points out, must realize that employees are their most valuable asset. “Not so long ago,” he writes, “we talked about ‘labor.’ Increasingly, we are talking about ‘human resources.’ This change reminds us that it is the individual, and especially the skilled and knowledgeable employee, who decides in large measure what he or she will contribute to the organization and how great the yield from his or her knowledge will be.”

As insightful as his essays are, perhaps more compelling are the question-and-answer segments that bookend the chapters. Drucker comes alive on his favorite subject and even goes after a few buzzwords: “Worse yet is the empowerment concept. It is not a great step forward to take power out at the top and put it in at the bottom. It’s still power. To build achieving organizations, you must replace power with responsibility.” Amen!

BEYOND CERTAINTY, The Changing Worlds of Organizations By Charles Handy, (Harvard Business School Press, $19.95, hardcover, 221 pages)

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Not so prolific but just as prophetic is Charles Handy, whose collection of essays is called “Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations.”

Back in 1989, Handy’s bestseller “The Age of Unreason” predicted the collapse of the paternalistic company and the “45-year job.” In 1994, “The Age of Paradox” spotlighted the evils of such developments, with companies sacrificing workers, communities and perhaps their futures in pursuit of efficiency.

Here, in 35 previously published pieces from the last five years, the Irish-born Handy, 63, dwells on uncertainty--the hottest of topics these days:

We are all now “in the grip of that inexorable formula-- 1/2 x 2 x 3 = P, half as many people, paid twice as well, producing three times as much. That formula works fine, maybe, for the half that stays, but not for the other half.” And: “Organizations are never again going to stockpile people. The employee society is on the wane.”

Although he occasionally lapses into jargon, he is mostly witty and even downright entertaining. In his opening piece, he recalls his own brush with the unraveling of certainty in 1987, when stock markets collapsed and, with that, the million-pound sale of his London home--after he had already confidently agreed to buy a Tuscan villa in anticipation of getting the proceeds. Poor Charles.

MANAGEMENT OF THE ABSURD, Paradoxes in Leadership By Richard Farson, (Simon & Schuster, $21, hardcover, 172 pages)

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Paradox also looms large in psychologist Richard Farson’s “Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership.”

In 1969, when it was quite a new idea, Farson suggested that the country would have to create female leaders or face a revolt by women in the workplace. Today women are still wrestling with issues of workplace fairness and family balance.

Here he explores the unintended outcomes of employee-employer relationships and hip management practices. Some of his counterintuitive commentary is spot-on. Some can irritate a bit. One of his paradoxical chapter headings is “Once You Find a Management Technique That Works, Give It Up.” For now, let’s just concentrate on that first part, shall we?

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Editor’s note: With this review, The Times begins a book review feature that will appear periodically in the Sunday Business section. Send business book recommendations to Tom Furlong, Sunday Business Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail suggestions to [email protected]