Abstract

Traditional management styles and organizational structures must change radically if business is to face successfully the competitive challenges of the next century. Ways must be found to unlock the creative potential which is manifest at the middle and lower levels of our present bureaucratic organizations. Progressive companies, often in joint cooperation with unions, are already pointing the way to the future by encouraging broader involvement in decisions once thought to be vested only among those at the higher levels. Technology can be a driving force for change. The requirement that large numbers of employees be clustered in offices and factories will no longer be appropriate when one projects the implications of the microprocessor revolution. Much of what we know of as "work" can be performed in the home or in remote locations, thus resulting in decentralized organizational structures and a change in the nature of work in community life and in society as a whole.