Catherwood LibraryILR School

Douglas S. Fletcher and Ian M. Taplin

"As a firm expands or contracts in the course of its evolution--from nimble start-up to arrogant arrive to bloated conglomerate to downsized veteran of competitive struggle--it experiences predictable stages of change. During these stages, a company discovers that what worked in the past no longer works. At such times, managers have to juggle the three variables of organizational evolution--the firm's purpose, its processes and procedures, and its human resource issues--and keep them in balance as they reinvent new ways of structuring the firm. Inevitably, tension develops as one variable is stressed at the expense of the others. Managers need to know how to cede decision making without abrogating overall control of the organization. The model developed here derives from the authors' understanding of how successful firms have managed these tensions. Fletcher and Taplin deal with teamwork, leadership, and the nature of dynamic change while successfully avoiding the cliches to which many experts in those areas are prone. [from the dust jacket]