The Temporary Society: What is Happening to Business and Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change (Jossey-Bass Business & Management) [Hardcover]

Warren Bennis (Author), Philip E. Slater (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 1998 | Series: Jossey-Bass Business & Management

30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION!

"Truly a classic reborn. What a pleasure to read this great combination of old and newpredictions and valuable insights by Bennis and Slater."
--Edward E. Lawler III, author of From the Ground Up

"The world has always been more wild than those who don't really read history admit. If[Warren Bennis and Philip Slater] choose to regard the present era as unusually torn bychange, they've got a good point. What's more, they advance cogent ideas on how tolive in a time of tumult..."
--The New York Times

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 accuracyand 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 to look forward to the changes ahead. Featuring a new preface by the authors and contemporary introductions to each chapter, The Temporary Society is as relevant as ever, with fresh predictions for the networked organizations and flattened hierarchies of the future.

A welcome antidote to the hype surrounding new movements and business fads, the classic book that prophetically heralded the current state of our world--newly revised and updated---contains much-needed wisdom for the century to come.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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 (Jossey-Basss, 1996)

"A pioneering study still offering deep insights into American Life. If it was Max Weber who first defined bureaucracy and predicted its triumph, Bennis and Slater may go down in sociological textbooks as the men who first convincingly predicted its demise and sketched the outlines of the organizations that are springing up to replace it." —Alvin Toffler,, author of Future Shock

"Were Slater and Bennis prescient, or merely lucky guessers, when they wrote this book in 1968? No. They deeply understood-before the rest of us-the fundamentals of human Andeavor, the axioms of social and economic enterprise. The Temporary Society is timeless in its message and essential reading for the citizen-leader of the 21st century." —Donald C. Hambrick, Samuel Bronfman Professor of Democratic Business Enterprise, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

"The world has always been more wild than those who don't really read history admit. If [Warren Bennis and Philip 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 tumult?." —The New York Times

"An And to authoritarianism? Leaders as facilitators? Democratic workplaces and families? Warren Bennis and Philip Slater predicted as much in the early 1960s. They were also the first, as far as I know, to foresee the collapse of global communism as inevitable. In this update of their earlier work, they reopen that conversation and draw all of us readers in to become futurists ourselves." —Art Kleiner, author, The Age of Heretics

From the Inside Flap

Examine most any business bookshelf and you'll find work after work devoted to fads that have passed, to fads in the making. Occasionally, however, you'll discover the exception: that rare book that manages to identify and illuminate the awesome if sometimes silent trAnds that have and will continue to impact business life for years to come. The Temporary Society is one such book.The Temporary Society could be regarded as the business version of Naisbitt's MegatrAnds. 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. Featuring a new preface by the authors and contemporary introductions to each chapter, The Temporary Society is as relevant as ever, with fresh predictions for the networked organizations and flattened hierarchies of the future.A welcome antidote to the hype surrounding new movements and business fads, the classic book that prophetically heralded the current state of our world-newly revised and updated--contains much-needed wisdom for the century to come.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 170 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 30th Anniversary Edition edition (August 4, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787943312
• ISBN-13: 978-0787943318
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,134,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Warren Bennis (Los Angeles, CA), born in 1925, is an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, who is widely regarded as the pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership. He is University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California. In the past decade, he served as chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, working with David Gergen.
Bennis has consulted for many Fortune 500 companies and served as adviser to four U.S. presidents. He has served on the faculty of MIT's Sloan School of Management and was Chairman of the Organizational Studies Department. He is a former faculty member of Boston University, former Provost and Executive Vice President of State University of New York at Buffalo and President of the University of Cincinnati. His global experience includes teaching at the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, INSEAD, the London Business School, and IMEDE (now IMD). In 2007, Business Week called him one of ten business school professors who have had the greatest influence on business thinking. He has received 20 honorary degrees and has served on numerous boards of advisors.
Bennis has written or edited 30 books, which have been translated into 21 languages, and many articles on three of his passions-leadership, organizational change, and creative collaboration. The Financial Times recently named Leaders as one of the top 50 business books of all time.
Bennis is proud of the four years he served in the U.S. Army, 1943-1947. At the age of 19 he was one of the youngest infantry commanders in Germany and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. His dream remains: to write a terrific one-act play.