Customer Reviews

Change Masters

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If you've ever wondered what's wrong in the organisation you work for, why results are poor, why departments can't work together, why the best people keep leaving and why the rest feel helpless and miserable; this is the book for you. It's an academic text and the author draws strongly from her own research in several different organisations, some of whom she cannot name so gives them her own names - have fun guessing who they are. Of particular value is the section on roadblocks to managerial innovation, or how to prevent organisational success. A definite gift for your boss, but first erase all your comments like "that's us!" or "we do that!" because there will be plenty.

_The Change Masters_ was written in 1983, and since that time organizations have become much more focused on issues of transformation, but I think employees of most companies will still recognize their organizations in these pages-- and not necessarily in the positive ways.

This book was written in aid of waking the entrepreneurial spirit of the employees of large corporations and looks closely at the ways that this can be either stifled or made possible.

Clearly written from a wealth of experience, Kanter draws on case studies of companies for whom she has worked. That experience is further supported by citations from academic research and a great deal of very strong analytical thought.

Nicely written but nothing original. Everything in this book is drawn from what then was academically the "thing to say" and from well-known writers in the field. It's like the Pope preaching "peace"- an over generally positive message that no one can disagree with but where his role is not realistically connected in any way to overall implementation or collective responsibility. Good basis for theoretical knowledge, however, if you own a business, it is obvious that the author has neither really owned nor operated a business, and I'm not speaking of "consulting"...this is what most university professors in management studies/organizational behavior do on the side- but of a business in which you have 10 or more employees on a payroll, in which you have to deal with inventories, uncertain customer demand, Federal-State-Local taxes that eat away your profits, 5 year leases, ridiculously high sales taxes (California), threats of bankruptcy, health care for your employees, unemployment/worker's compensation, county inspectors, etc. It is all too easy for academians to write books focusing on one variable alone in a very complex equation, then sell the book and make millions. Worth buying and reading but continue using your common American "horse-sense" to separate the wheat from the weeds. Management studies/Organizational Behavior need a new theory which includes holism of the "unspeakable" elements of business and management. In the same way that professional bodybuilders will not mention that they take "steriods" in their books on nutrition and weighttraining, we need a new theory of management and organization studies which openly discusses its own "steriods".

Rosabeth Moss Kanter sets the stage in this book (1983) for her perceptive study of companies in her most recent book -- Supercorp -- in which she deepens her understanding (and ours) of how "change masters" are activists for what she now calls "vanguard" companies. This is a solid basis for learning how leaders lead organizations, transforming to take advantage of opportunities and overcome challenges. As a communications counselor and teacher, I consider Kanter as one of the very best guides in leadership communication.

This book was meaningful to me because it documents the relationship between an open organizational environment, individual employee productivity, and innovation.