Good Company goes behind the scenes at fifteen of the world's best companies to reveal how they have met today's most pressing management challenges, and offers solutions that can be implemented in any company—large or small. Like thousands of companies in the mid-1990s, Rosenbluth International and the other companies showcased here wrestled with the combined pressures of globalization, unprecedented growth, competition from technology, and an emphasis on speed and efficiency, by embracing uncertainty and learning to reinvent themselves to the benefit of customers and employees alike. In Good Company, Hal Rosenbluth and Diane Peters show how businesses can managed change gracefully—and profitably—by remaining steadfast to the fundamental principles of trust and respect and by maintaining a deep commitment to a corporate culture that brings out the best in everyone. Good Company demonstrates that companies can not only have a positive influence on the lives of the people who work for them, but that they have an obligation to do so. By creating an environment of collaboration, innovation, and joy at work, companies of any size can attract and retain the best employees, foster long-lasting relationships with customers and suppliers, increase profits, and compete successfully in a fierce and impatient marketplace.In Good Company, the authors take readers on a journey of discovery, describing Rosenbluth's experiments with strategic planning, organizational design, and human resource programs during a period of rapid and radical transformation. Already known for its offbeat and non-hierarchical culture. Rosenbluth made a deliberate effort to discard outdated practices and created a work environment that promotes and rewards continuous learning, teamwork, flexibility, and leadership—at every level of the organization.Rosenbluth International has not been alone in forging a path to competitive success by investing first and foremost in its people. Hallmark Cards, Lands' End, Mary Kay, and a dozen other pioneers showcased in the book are leading the charge to make the workplace a place where employees and managers alike come to build friendships, expand their minds, and contribute to their community—while performing to the highest standards expected from their customers and shareholders.A celebration of corporate spirit, Good Company offers a lively, thought-provoking, and inspirational alternative to ”lean-and-mean” thinking, by showing businesses how to gain a competitive edge when they take greater responsibility for the welfare of the people and the societies they serve.
In this sequel to their first book, The Customer Comes Second (Morrow, 1992), the authors present the ongoing metamorphosis of their company, Rosenbluth Travel, while surveying other innovative companies identified in Robert Levening and Milton Moskowitz's The 100 Best Companies To Work for in America (Plume, 1993). The result is an internal examination of corporate culture that challenges the notion that corporations must be heartlessly competitive to succeed. The authors explain how Rosenbluth Travel reinvented itself based on an agrarian model, and though their discussion recalls work already done by Stephen Covey (e.g., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Fireside, 1990), this book is valuable in admitting to the warts, wrinkles, and scars that can arise with the effort to institute change. If a flaw is to be found here, it is in the treatment of diversity-while organizations today are willing to go out of their way to promote cultural, racial, and gender diversity, they are still uncomfortable with diversity in thought, and the authors do not explore this problem sufficiently. An acceptable addition to a general library's business collection.ASteven Silkunas, SEPTA, Philadelphia
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
