The New Organisation is an article in the Economist about the struggle of corporate cultures to adapt to the new realities of doing business in the 21st Century. This paragraph about a former CEO of Shell summed it up well.
“You can't have a bunch of hippies running a plant full of explosive hydrocarbons,” he says. “But would you rather have the plant operated by trained professionals, for whom pride in safe working is part of their personal identity, or by people who only work safely because they are afraid of the boss? The identification of discipline with hierarchy is a dangerous mistake.” Mr Fairtlough's preferred alternative is something he calls “responsible autonomy”, a form of organisation in which groups of workers decide for themselves what to do, but are accountable for the outcome.
This "responsible autonomy" model seems to be the need for the future, but we are having difficulty figuring out how to create it.
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