Avoiding Managerial Obsolescence

by Billy Goetz


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Abstract

This article presents a picture of the explosive technological change. The story of mankind is a history of accelerating change culminating in our present age, which is best described as explosive. After centuries of slow but accelerating accumulation of scientific capital, we seem to have reached a "taking-off stage" about the time of World War I. Prior to World War I, the practice of science seemed largely a matter of individual groping with genius feeding on accidents. The rate of obsolescence of engineers is so rapid that accumulation of experience and maturity barely keeps pace salary-wise with the newer knowledge recent graduates bring to their jobs. The scientific explosion has spawned a medical explosion. The scientific and technological explosion triggered a chain reaction. It produced a medical explosion. and this produced a world-wide population explosion. Triggered by and interacting with the scientific, technological. medical, and population explosions is an information explosion. Managers respond with decentralization of decision making, multiple management, participative management, consultative management. bottom-tip management, anti, most recently, collaborative management.

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