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The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life

by Thomas W. Malone (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
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For more than a decade, business thinkers have theorized about how technology will change the shape of organizations. In this landmark book, renowned organizational theorist Thomas Malone, codirector of MIT's "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century" initiative, provides the first credible model for actually designing the company of the future. Based on 20 years of groundbreaking research, The Future of Work foresees a workplace revolution that will dramatically change organizational structures and the roles employees play in them. Technological and economic forces make "command and control" management increasingly less useful. In its place will be a more flexible "coordinate and cultivate" approach that will spawn new types of decentralized organizations—from internal markets to democracies to loose hierarchies. These future structures will reap the scale and knowledge efficiencies of large organizations while enabling the freedom, flexibility, and human values that drive smaller firms. This book explores the skills managers will need in a workplace in which the power to decide belongs to everyone.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1591391253
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1591391258
  3. Publisher
    Harvard Business Review Press
  4. Publication date
    April 2, 2004
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  7. Print length
    240 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"...[W]e need visionaries like Malone to help push us past the limitations of our conventional thinking." -- Fortune, April 14th 2004

"[T]he argument offered here is uniquely grand." -- Financial Times, April 15th, 2004

"briskly written...insightful" -- USA Today, April 12, 2004

About the Author

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press (April 2, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1591391253
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1591391258
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.13 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 28 ratings

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Thomas W. Malone

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
28 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book interesting, well-researched, and useful for thinking about careers. They describe it as a great, enjoyable read that provides the average reader with information.

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Information contentReadability
4 customers mention "Information content"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book contains interesting information about the history of humans and their evolution. They say it's well-researched, provides a good overview, and is useful for thinking about your career and how business is changing.

"Smart and well-written, providing the average reader, as well as those in the field, with insights and fascinating information from a wealth of..." Read more

"...I actually liked the first part most. It contained a lot of interesting information about the history of humans and their evolution from..." Read more

"...It is thoughtful and useful for thinking about your career and how business is changing and will continue to change." Read more

"Good Overview - but no "Ah Ha" moments..." Read more

3 customers mention "Readability"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book great, smart, and well-written. They say it's absorbent, enjoyable, and interesting.

"Smart and well-written, providing the average reader, as well as those in the field, with insights and fascinating information from a wealth of..." Read more

"...If you are interest in speculation about the future of work, this is a good book." Read more

"This book is quite interesting and talks about how the way we work will change...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing and thoroughly enjoyable!
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2016
Verified Purchase
Smart and well-written, providing the average reader, as well as those in the field, with insights and fascinating information from a wealth of research. A great read!
One person found this helpful
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MOWM
5.0 out of 5 stars Thomas Malone is our Thomas Paine
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2010
Verified Purchase
This is the Return to Common Sense for our generation. Professor Malone clearly lays out the inevitability of the democratization of capital. However, it is unclear if he recognizes that he has laid out the foundation for a mass movement for collective action towards a fair and just economy -- this was written before the arrogance of Wall Street brought our society to its knees. But, one suspects that he might, because he so clearly states that the democratization of business will be as significant in our time as the democratization of government was to past generations.

To the barricades fellow citizens, the Kings have returned.
2 people found this helpful
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Ed Barton
3.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview - but no "Ah Ha" moments
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2008
Verified Purchase
The book's title is somewhat misleading, in that the discussion revolves predominantly around the impact and changes possbile by increased information flow and distributed decision making. Malone does a nice job of providing a general overview of the hsitory of centralized and decentralized management, the reasons for each, and the factors impacting the approaches. However, the book really lacks that "ah ha" revelation that would have made the rating a 4 or a 5. Maybe it is because the book, now 4 years old, is starting to show its age and Malone was somewhat prescient in his predictions - or maybe it is just good common sense on his part. Either way, an OK read for the manager - but certainly not a must read.
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Donald Mitchell
5.0 out of 5 stars A Communications Cost/Benefit Analysis of Organizations
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2004
The title of this book is misleading. A more apt title would have been: The Future of Organizational Structure. If you really want to read about the future of work, I suggest you look for a different book.
As an expert on communications costs and benefits, Professor Malone explores how the pros and cons of centralized hierarchies, loose hierarchies, democracies and free markets compare in producing better organizational results. The book abounds with examples, most of which were not new to me.
The book's overall theme is that with the costs of communications plummeting and the value of the information communication increasing it is inevitable that organizations will decentralize more than ever . . . by employing hybrid forms of loose hierarchies, democracies and free markets for the same organization.
The book ends up with a call to live your dreams that draws on decidedly nonmanagement sources of inspiration. The key idea is that organizations can live values that uplift everyone in them.
If you would like a solid introduction into the forces that are influencing shifts towards decentralization, The Future of Work is a good theoretical overview. Professor Malone also points you to online resources for finding out about best practices in some of these areas.
As a book for a practitioner, The Future of Work leaves a lot to be desired. Most will find it too abstract and theoretical to help them decide what changes to make in an organization. The book would have been vastly more valuable if it had focused on a few key areas of management performance (such as developing new business models, creating breakthrough new products, or bypassing competitor's established cost advantages) and described how best to apply the concepts in those contexts. I hope that Professor Malone will choose to do this in future books and articles.
The writing leaves something to be desired. Although the book is brief, it has a startling number of repetitions of examples and references. I sometimes felt like I was being talked down to (as though I could not make the links for myself or remember the example that had been mentioned two chapters before).
Much of the book also suffers from an over focus on the "economic human" rather than the "total human." For instance, there is little reference to psychology until quite late in the book. Any success with organizational structure has to take into account both the rational and emotional sides of those involved in the organization.
But I am unaware of any better book on the theory behind this subject, so for the time being we should view this book as the gold standard . . . and thus worthy of five stars.
I suspect that many people will find that rereading books about chaos theory as applied to organizations will have new meaning when viewed through Professor Malone's perspective. I encourage you to do some of that rereading after you tackle this book.
58 people found this helpful
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Professor
2.0 out of 5 stars Book was written for everyone and serves no one
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2005
This has all the makings of a good insightful text; yet falls flat. The underlying themes are that we are moving from disconnected to structured to unstructured connected economies of communications and that the authority for work completion is being returned from the corporate power at the top to the shared corporate responsibility (my words). Little is said beyond that. There needs to be more; much of the work that has been completed since the 1900s was not considered.

Although not historic in framework, yet using Jared Diamond as a source, the text ignores the entire trade routes that dominated pre and post civilization. The book assumes that informal universal networks are a new cultural and economic phenomenon; which is clearly not the case.

The ability to communicate in quasi-real-time; with the ability to deliver instantaneous

information based products and services and hard and soft goods to any part of the world within less then a week has changed the world view and meanings behind work and work-space. And in agreement with the author, corporations who continue to view their products as `safe' from market pressures or who continue to measure labor in terms of us vs. them are likely to find that others within the global environment have found alternative ways to provide that goods or service.

I was surprised to see that there was no addressing of how the changes in the length of tenure of white and blue color workers has resulted in them becoming less tied to any given organization; which would have more effectively supported both the argument and the implications that needed to be addressed in greater detail. Sadly, unlike many business texts, this book was lacking in recommendations for action. I wanted to scream at the book; please give me something...

The book might be a good read for those who have not read business books before or for a beginning level MBA student; others can do better by looking elsewhere. It is very accessible, and not a difficult read; once I was done reading it, however, I felt like I had just left a motivational session; I felt pretty good while I read it, but then after I put it down, it was pretty much fluff.
6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Peter Johnston
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for anyone changing their organisation - or feeling the need to
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2014
Verified Purchase
Malone starts with a simple premise - that autocratic organisations and markets are at opposite ends of a decision speed continuum. He then exposes why most businesses are being disrupted and how it is organisation, not product, which is at the core of the problem.

Very powerful in exposing the problem, and it shows why many of the latest ideas have emerged.
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