Business Leadership: A Jossey-Bass Reader

Foreword

The demands of change have always challenged collective enterprise. People have faced new pressures and opportunities from the beginning of time, and many of our current ways of doing business are practices that have evolved in response to the adaptive challenges of their day. With change a constant in today's global business environment, adaptability remains critical for sustained success.

For nearly four million years our early ancestors lived in small bands that foraged for food. They developed ever increasing sophistication in the design of tools and strategies for hunting and movement; and their physical capacities grew through evolutionary change. About twelve thousand years ago people learned to domesticate plants and animals, and ...