The living company - Arie de Geus

What are companies and what are they for? The standard answer to those questions is that companies are organizations which carry out economic processes to produce goods and services. So most people, most of the time, think about the company itself also in economic and financial terms.;Could it be that this narrow thinking leads to management practices and priorities which are detrimental to everyone, from shareholders to employees to stake holders?;A purely financial and economic view of companies had its place when capital was a scarce resource and it was management's duty to optimize its use. This is no longer the case. Today's scarce resource is knowledge and knowledge is created by a company's human assets, not its capital assets. As a result, management's top priority shifts to the optimization of the human resource and its knowledge-creation ability.;This volume explores these themes and develops in depth what organizational learning means. It investigates the consequences of building a sustainable work community for human resource management, strategic planning and organizational structure. It makes a case for a public debate on corporate governance and on the reallocation of power, both inside and around the company.