Review by Choice Review
Participation. Empowerment. Self-management. Collaboration. These are a few of the buzzwords that have been permeating US management during the past two decades. Many companies have embraced and adopted various kinds of programs designed to give employees more control over and responsibility for their work. Many, though not all, of these efforts have resulted in higher performance and increased employee satisfaction. The consultant authors write about this self-management phenomenon as strong advocates for more of it. They believe a system of self-management in the workplace based on collaboration and reason is much more humanistic and democratic than the traditional management system of top-down hierarchal authority based on coercion and threat. Their ideas are not new, and some of their suggestions for democratizing organizations seem far-fetched (e.g., having employees elect their CEOs). The authors also seem to ignore the need for hierarchies of authority to make decisions about the allocation of scarce organizational resources (money, talent, time, etc.). Nevertheless, readers from a wide range of disciplines interested in the authors' humanistic perspective on the organization of work will find this book interesting and informative. Lower-division undergraduate through professional collections. P. Feuille University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
