- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (1 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1578518202
- ISBN-13: 978-1578518203
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 940,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Most companies do not survive the upheavals of change and competition over the long haul. But there are a few remarkable firms that have withstood the test of several centuries. What hidden lessons do they hold for the rest of us? Arie de Geus, the man who introduced the revolutionary concept of the learning organization, reveals the key to managing for a long and prosperous organizational life.
The Living Company speaks not just to aspiring leaders, but to anyone trying to adapt to a turbulent business environment. Only those steeped in the habits of a living company will survive.
"This profound and uplifting book is for the leaders in all of us. Arie de Geus challenges most of the conventional wisdom in management thinking today."
-Dr. James F. Moore, author of The Death of Competition
"Arie de Geus gives leaders of the future an indispensable guidebook in which commitment to values, people, learning, and innovation defines the living company. It's in my book bag."
-Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, The Drucker Foundation
AUTHORBIO: Arie de Geus worked for Royal Dutch/Shell for thirty-eight years and is widely credited with originating the concept of the learning organization. Since his retirement, he has advised many government and private institutions and has lectured throughout the world.
About the Author
Arie de Geus worked for Royal Dutch/Shell for thirty-eight years and is widely credited with originating the concept of the learning organization. Since his retirement, he has advised many government and private institutions and has lectured throughout the world.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Arie de Geus' book, The Living Company is a gem of a management text. It describes how he conceptualised the idea of the learning organisation and the logical extention that companies must therefore be seen to be alive as only living things can learn.
Unlike so many business writers this book is rooted in practical experience as the author spent 38 years in Shell. He describes how his thoughts developed and the main influences. I have since purchased and read the key texts he used and have benefitted grately from it.
Among other things De Geus describes his thinking behind his decision for Shell to remain in troubled African nations when all other companies were pulling out (organisms can only ever be changed from the inside). I was not a fan of their decision to stay in nations but his rationale was compelling and persuaded me that they made an extremely tough decision and had the courage to stick with it. Because of his deeply moral commitment, both he and other colleagues from Shell played a key role in helping South Africa become a democratic society - I understand de Geus has recently returned to help SA through its current growing pains.
The ideas of this contemplative man keep coming back to me over and over again as I work with organisations to help them change (learn). Well worth the investment of 2-3 readings as this book is one of the best in its field and has the power to impact you in a way few business books can. It is in my mind far more readable and helpful than Senge's Fifth Discipline.
Unlike so many business writers this book is rooted in practical experience as the author spent 38 years in Shell. He describes how his thoughts developed and the main influences. I have since purchased and read the key texts he used and have benefitted grately from it.
Among other things De Geus describes his thinking behind his decision for Shell to remain in troubled African nations when all other companies were pulling out (organisms can only ever be changed from the inside). I was not a fan of their decision to stay in nations but his rationale was compelling and persuaded me that they made an extremely tough decision and had the courage to stick with it. Because of his deeply moral commitment, both he and other colleagues from Shell played a key role in helping South Africa become a democratic society - I understand de Geus has recently returned to help SA through its current growing pains.
The ideas of this contemplative man keep coming back to me over and over again as I work with organisations to help them change (learn). Well worth the investment of 2-3 readings as this book is one of the best in its field and has the power to impact you in a way few business books can. It is in my mind far more readable and helpful than Senge's Fifth Discipline.
Format:Paperback
Really makes you view the system that is the company at work in ways that question everything you previously took for granted.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
24 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
The Organization as the Organism !
8 Aug 2000
Format:Hardcover
Arie de Gues is known to some management students as the person whose research spurred Peter Senge to do work on the "learning Organisation". In this book Arie talks about the evolving notion of the organization as a living being, instead of just an "economic entity" whose main purpose of existence is to survive, fulfill its potential, and to become great. Plain talking and cutting free from jargon, Arie illustrates this idea with examples from his career in Royal Dutch Shell and the studies Shell had carried out on long lasting and big organizations (they found only around 40 odd !!). This book needs to read by entreprenuers, business people and academicians to look at their organizations as some thing else apart from a money making machine ! Revolutionary!!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
This book is must reading for any leader or aspiring leader!
24 Jan 1999
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Arie de Geus is probably the most unique business thinker around. He combines the pragmatism of someone who had a very successful career at Shell with the curiosity of a talented academic. Behind this unique perspective is a deep appreciation for people. Most of us automatically relate to organizations like Newton related to the natural world, as one big physical mechanism. We casually talk about "aligning parts of the organization", "operating in organizational smokestacks or silos", and "fixing communications channels". Mr. de Geus helps us learn to think about organizations from the natural perspective, as living organisms, subject to many of the same limitations and forces as individual people are. When you read this book, you will become a much better and more effective person in all parts of your life. You will also feel better about yourself, and make those around you feel better about themselves. Read THE LIVING COMPANY today. This book is a wonderful gift to us all!
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful
the living book
11 Feb 2001
Format:Hardcover
If I have to stay with only one business book in my shelf( I have more than 300 in the last count), the living company would be this book. My review will be more emotional I think. This is so, because the way this book touched me. I read it three times and some time think I have to read it again.
This is a very similar with the "Built to last", one of the bestsellers of Amazon. If you liked that book this will be an excellent complement of your reading and thoughts.
Perhaps this is the book that a Startup's CEOs should had read before launch their enterprise, because one of the characteristic of a living company is that they are conservative in their finances.
De Geus wrote a book that it is not limit to a period of time like recent books dot com books. By this I mean that you can go back to it and reapply its contents in your business reality again and again.
An import thing to say is that this is a book of principles, not rules or easy steps to success. Although the author is going to show you that there is a pattern in all the living company, he goes beyond that, showing the root that origin these patterns. The principles was constructed by observing companies, specially Royal Doutch/shell, were Arie de Geus worked for many years, but with the help of other disciplines like psychology and biology, which study the behavior and life of humans and animals. To discuss about innovation for instance, you will observe how a specie of bird is very smart to pass a learning to the whole specie. And to understand how we react or anticipate an external change in our business, it will be useful to look some psychology's theories about the human mind, and so on.
Don't think this is a book for academic public, it is not. You will find not only theories but many examples and cases of the thesis of De Geus. But it is different, I think, of the recent business book. Some times it seems so easy to look a successful company today and says "look, this is what you have to do in your company". A couple of years ago you could find many books explaining why Netscape was so great. Where are Netscape now?. It would not pass in the test of time.
So if you are only worried to make your money no matter what is going to happen to your company, this is not a book for you. Probably you are Jim Clark type. Read the new, new thing instead. But if you thing that management is more than stock options ( I said more. I am saying that is a consequence not the only objective), if you believe the every company must have a reason to exist, if you believe the people are important, than I guarantee, you gonna like this book, tell me about
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