Co-Author: Warren Bennis
THE TEMPORARY SOCIETY
What Is Happening to Business & Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change
240 Pages
Beacon Press
Published 1968, 1998
SYNOPSIS
Here, readers will examine the implications of a world in which capitalism has become the primary economic model, in which freelance and contingent work arrangements predominate, where families struggle to reconcile home life and career, and governments take a backseat to the forces of global commerce. And the amazing part is that The Temporary Society was first published thirty years ago. In these six essays - including "Democracy Is Inevitable, " originally published in the Harvard Business Review - renowned business pundit Warren Bennis and Brandeis sociologist Philip Slater presented a take on the future that struck most of their contemporaries as being too far-fetched. But in the years since, their predictions have materialized with uncanny accuracy, and Bennis has gone on to become one of today's most widely respected business thinkers. Now, in this thirtieth anniversary edition of their seminal work, Bennis and Slater team up again to reflect on the events of the last three decades and look forward to the changes ahead.
REVIEWS
“[P]erhaps the most underrated masterpiece of futuristic literature is Warren Bennis's and Philip Slater's 1968 book, The Temporary Society. The duo argued that organizational forms needed to harness innovation and creativity. With the Cold War then at its peak, they foresaw the collapse of Communism and sounded the death knell for bureaucracy.”
“Truly a classic reborn. What a pleasure to read this great combination of old and new predictions and valuable insights by Bennis and Slater.”
Edward E. Lawler III, author of From the Ground Up (for the 30th anniversary edition)
“The world has always been more wild than those who don’t really read history admit. If [Bennis and Slater] choose to regard the present era as unusually torn by change, they’ve got a good point. What’s more, they advance cogent ideas on how to live in a time of tumultuous…”
The New York Times
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EXCERPTS
“What was true for the first sttlers remaimed true on the Western frontier as long as it existed. As the terrain changed, the qualities necessary for successful adaptation changed, and the child continued to teach the parent the ways of the world.”
“Democracy is a superior technique for making the uncommitted more available. The price it exacts is the pain of uninvolved, alienation, and skepticism. The benefits it gives are flexibility and the joy of confronting new dilemmas.”
“Tomorrow’s organizations will be federations, networks, clusters, cross-functional teams, temporary systems, ad hoc task forces, lattices, modules, matrices—almost anything but pyramids. The successful ones will make problem finding, not problem solving, their first priority. They will be led by people who embrace error, even the occasional failure, because they know it will teach them more than success. Such organizations will be led by people who understand, as scientists do, the primal pleasure of the hunt that is problem solving.”