Work Without Managers
Subtitle: A View From the Trenches
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: The Delta Group Florida
Published: 1991
Place of publication: Tampa, Florida
Number of pages: 350
Subjects: Organizational Psychology, Cultural Anthropolgy, Business Management
Genres: Nonfiction
Work titles: First Part of a Trilogy on the Changing Nature of the Workforce
First sentence: The era of the free lunch has ended.  This century which began with such paternal control and obedience for America has run amuck.  Now, nothing and no one is in control.
Description: WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES is an invitation to the reader to be given a guided tour into the complex organization from an observer who has worked from being a laborer in a chemical plant summers while going to college to a corporate and international executive working on four continents.  Dr. Fisher is not interested in being political correct as he alerts leaders and workers that the omens are not encouraging.  He offers an in depth look at how American enterprise is losing the competitive advantage by increasingly retreating into what he calls, "corpocracy," or the "American Disease."  

Offered here is a clear picture of why and how the health of the American organization has suffered since WWII.  He argues this is because American business operates in "1945 nostalgia," as "six silent killers" ravage American enterprise.  

Only American leadership can save the day, but, alas, he sees evidence it has lost its moral compass and thus its way.

WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS is much more than a treatise on quality and productivity.  It cuts to the core of the "America's disease," which translates behaviorally into  collective passivity in the face of mounting challenges.  American enterprise continues to avoid or deny the power shift from management centered power to "managementless" professional and technical worker power.  

He asks and answers:

(1) Who really holds the key to America's future?
(2) How has cultural bias inadvertently given strength to "six silent killers"?
(3) What is the dominant organizational culture of your organization; where do you find it; and how do you identify and change it?
(4) How can American enterprise bridge the growing gap between the old ideas of "competition" and the new reality of "cooperation"?
(5) What must American enterprise do now to build a long term strategy for turning its current inertia into renewed momentum?
Notes: Dr. Fisher has worked for, observed and has been consultant to American and international business organizations for more than 30 years.  Throughout his career as a blue-collar laborer to a chemist to a scientist to an industrial psychologist to a corporate executive, he has implemented nurmerous quality, educational and productivity improvement initiatives.  That said he is a free thinking undoctrinaire and unconventional interventionist.  You will find his discussion stimulating, provocative, inspiring and insightful.  He doesn't pull his punches or worry about whom he might offend.  He claims the problem is too big and too pervasive.   In the end, however, his aim is for American enterprise to regain its stride by embracing its deficiencies.  The alternative is not pleasant to consider.
Table of contents: pagenum: 29
title: A Need for a New Organizational Paradigm
label: Chapter One; pagenum: 157
title: The Three Dominant Cultures of the Organization
label: Chapter Five