The Change Masters

In executive suites throughout America, The Change Masters has become one of the most talked-about books in years. The author Rosabeth Moss Kanter, is a professor at Harvard University's Business School and a leading advisor to many Fortune 500 companies. The key to an American corporate renaissance, says Kanter, lies in innovation, entrepreneurship and the development of "participative management" skills that encourage the use of new ideas arising from within the corporations itself. Kanter demonstrates how corporations that are "integrationist" (successful at stimulating the innovative capacity of their people) rather than "segmentalist" (so rigidly structured as to stifle innovation) are able to stay ahead of changing technologies and markets. The Change Masters looks behind the scenes at some of the most important companies in America, including Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Polaroid, General Motors, Wang Laboratories, and Honeywell, to describe their organizational structures, their corporate cultures, and their specific strategies.

• Part One: The Need for an American Corporate Renaissance
1. Introduction
2. Transformations in the American Corporate Environment, 1960s-1980s
• Part Two: Why We're in Trouble: The Quiet Suffocation of the Entrepreneurial Spirit in Segmentalist Companies
3. Innovating Against the Grain: Ten Rules for Stifling Innovation
4. The Withering of the Grass Roots: The Fate of Employee Innovations in an Indifferent Environment
• Part Three: Places Where Innovation Flourishes — And Why
5. Cultures of Pride, Climates of Success: Incentives for Enterprises in High-Innovation Companies
6. Empowerment
7. Energizing the Grass Roots: Employee Involvement in Innovation and Change
• Part Four: Managing in the Innovating Organization: Skills for Change Masters
8. Power Skills in Use: Corporate Entrepreneurs in Action
9. Dilemmas of Participation
10. The Architecture of Culture and Strategy Change
• Part Five: Can America Do It? Realizing a Corporate Renaissance
11. Trying to Turn Around an American Archetype: The General Motors Story
12. Reawakening the Spirit of Enterprise: Towards an American Corporate Renaissance
• Appendix: The Core Companies and Research Methods

A bit too American, but I can understand why it is considered a classical book.