Corporate Plasticity: How to Change, Adapt, and Excel

A Postmortem on Classic Management Science

Classic management science has been central to the modern corporation. Functional excellence and corporate strategies have enabled massive increases in productivity. Such advancements have lowered costs, prices, and barriers to entry, and they have created organizations with efficient functions and clear direction.

But not everything that has emerged is marvelous. The modern organization has inherent problems. These include silo thinking as well as a fixation on detail rather than on the big picture. Worse, beautiful and supposedly flawless corporate strategies fail. This has led to a deluge of theories for rectifying the issues by developing even better processes and more immaculate strategies.

Of ...