The Temporary Society - Hardcover

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 trends 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 Megatrends. 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.

WARREN G. BENNIS is the best-selling author of Why Leaders Can't Lead (Jossey-Bass, 1989), Leaders (with W. Schmidt), and Organizing Genius. His work has been frequently featured in major business and professional magazines such as Industry Week and Fortune. He is a distinguished professor of business administration and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. PHILIP E. SLATER is the author of nine books of nonfiction, including The Pursuit of Loneliness, The Glory of Hera, and A Dream Deferred, as well as a novel, How I Saved the World. A former professor of sociology at Brandeis University, he now lives in Northern California and writes plays.