New Management

Halal examines how democracy and free enterprise are reshaping organizations at the same time as technology and leadership change. He draws on a broad body of evidence to argue that companies are increasingly built from shifting groups of entrepreneurial units that trade with one another in what he calls "internal markets." These units are woven into a "corporate community" that brings together investors, employees, customers, partners, and the wider public. Even rivals, he notes, are beginning to work together.

The book lays out several core principles of what it calls New Management. Customers become collaborators in creating value, knowledge workers form small self-managed enterprises inside the firm, and external pressures are harnessed to keep organizations in constant renewal. It also discusses "inner leadership," the way empowered employees, demanding clients, and temporary partners can be guided together, and "intelligent growth," a strategy meant to be ecologically sound. Examples, survey findings, trends, anecdotes, and exercises show how these ideas can be applied in practice.

To illustrate them, the author presents short case studies of well-known companies, including MCI, Saturn, The Body Shop, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, IKEA, Wal-Mart, and others. These examples show how managers design and run organizations in a world of intense global competition, rapid change, and workers who have more say in their own work. He also takes up the long-standing tension between profit and social responsibility.

Halal's central claim is that this shift is largely unavoidable, driven less by goodwill or leadership style than by the continuing spread of the information revolution. Complexity can only be handled by small teams working from the bottom up, and cooperation with stakeholders has become a competitive advantage in a knowledge-based economy. The book is aimed at managers who want lasting answers to these changes rather than quick fixes.