Postmodern Management: The Emerging Partnership Between Employees and Stockholders [Hardcover]

William McDonald Wallace (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1567201814 | ISBN-13: 978-1567201819 | Publication Date: April 30, 1998

Postmodern management, according to Wallace, moves beyond the shortcomings of the bureaucratic management style pervasive in American business today. Bureaucracy, the standard model of organizations, is too inflexible, cost-rigid and job defensive to survive in a postmodern world. Bureaucracies rely on paying workers rigid rates to do specific jobs. According to a postmodern management model, a partnership between employees and stockholders would lead to more productive work by relating pay to corporate performance and by encouraging more flexible and cooperative teamwork. Wallace provides a workable guideline to ease the transition from the bureaucratic form of structure to postmodern partnership. His argument, that dependence on hired labor for permanent staff is at the root of dysfunctional bureaucracy, will provoke discussion and interest among corporate executives, teachers and students of management and organizational behavior, and others interested in today's workplace. Wallace begins with a history of how bureaucracy first arose as a natural response to coercive work. He explains why the mechanistic model of business bureaucracy took root in Britain and America, and then looks at the major problems of bureaucracies, such as job defensiveness, over-staffing, over-regulation, and other excesses endemic to most bureaucracies. Exploring the consequences of the bureaucratic model on the economy, Wallace shows how the rigid labor costs played a role in causing the Great Depression. Wallace then turns to corporate partnership--its employment policies and why they dissolve the incentives to over-staff, over-layer, and over-regulate, and why partners will strive to downsize. Using examples from the past and present, he examines the difficult issues of transition from bureaucracy to partnership.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The study ranges across economic history and theory, assimilating such contemporary business practices as teamwork and total quality management. While fairly general, it offers a summary review of some current ideas about business management. Suitable for comprehensive business collections serving general readers and undergraduate students.”–Choice

About the Author

WILLIAM MCDONALD WALLACE retired from Boeing in 1992 where he was Chief Economist for commercial airplanes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Quorum Books (April 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567201814
• ISBN-13: 978-1567201819
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,140,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Classic Work Of Fiction, April 1, 2002

By 

"thc999" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Postmodern Management: The Emerging Partnership Between Employees and Stockholders (Hardcover)

This is a very strange book that combines a 19th century evolutionary behavioral view of societal evolution with a misreading of quantum theories of physics to build a blindly procapitalist vision of an e-future in which workers escape the irrationalities and troubles of our economy by being given stock options by their suddenly trustworthy employers. The author seems unaware of many developments in the behavioral, economic and social sciences during the last thirty years, and attempts overcome these shortcomings by declaring his "new" managerial strategies by declaring them to be "postmodern." It would be interesting to know what Wallace makes of the post-internet economic collapse that he believed would make us all happy, well paid laborers. The world he predicted does not exist and never will, and this book is a record of how so many Americans were tricked into believing their bosses as they were tricked to work for worthless stock notes.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly Reasoned, Poorly Researched & Poorly Written, February 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Postmodern Management: The Emerging Partnership Between Employees and Stockholders (Hardcover)

I'm a graduate student in economics at Chicago and I picked this book for a critical bi-wekly ongoing 12-page critical book review assignment. My review was very critical of this book's odd reasoning and even stranger interpretations. When my review was returned I had a heart attack when I saw that I had received a "C" grade on my report & remarks from my professor indicated that I obviously misunderstood what the author of this book had written because my summary of the books take on Weber, Quantum Mechancics, Drucker and others was so off-the-mark that I had misunderstood what the author William Wallace had written.

I was crushed. I asked if I could redo the assignment, and my professor agreed that I could reexamine the arguments in this book. I set to this course right away, and I became increasingly troubled when I found that my rereading of this led me to the same conclusions that my professor had crushed me for. I took this book to my professor and she had a fit once she read sat down and read portions of it. Finally, she concluded that the book was so poorly reasoned that my report on its conents had indeed been accurate. She gave me an A, and flunked the book.

Beware those of you who venture into these pages, this book contains very unusual interpretations of economic thought and managerial techniques. It would be a nightmare to work under the "postmodern" managerial techniques set forth in this book, a nightmare for both workers and management.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Study, A Guidepost for Our Future, July 26, 2002

By 

M. S. Young (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Postmodern Management: The Emerging Partnership Between Employees and Stockholders (Hardcover)

This is a luminous book. Not since the Turner Diaries have I read such an innovative, positive depiction of what our would could become. Wallace has successfully pieced together the details of the complex economic managerial system that the Furher would have implemented had he emerged victorious from his defensive war. Wallace's brilliant vision of postmodernism is a pure vision of capitalism that boldly declares the power of markets to remove harmful, or inferior elements from society. Wallace rightfully despises the parasitic elements that have been allowed to survive under prevailing managerial systems, if left in charge he would exerminate these positions that have florished under socialisms affirmative action programs. Like we used to sing back in the late 1930s in Germany, "Reines management ist der erste Schriff in Richtun zum Herstellen der rassischen Reinheit." Professor Wallace's opening summary of world history and prehsitory is well informed and inline with the teachings of the Church of the Creator, and one can find the basics of how capitalism can cleanse us of those who do not deserve to (as Wallace puts it) "advance to the next level."