Futurists' Bookshop
Some of these titles are still available to purchase. To make an
enquiry, please email bookshop@nevillefreeman.com.
2001 Installment II
The Chrysalis Economy - How citizen CEOs
and corporations can fuse values and value creation
By John Elkington
The Elephant and the Flea - Looking backwards
to the future
By Charles Handy
Terror in the Mind of God - The global rise
of religious violence
By Mark Juergensmeyer
The Future of Leadership - Today's
top leadership thinkers speak to tomorrow's leaders
By Warren Bennis, Gretchen Spreitzer & Thomas Cummings
D2D Dinosaur to Dynamo - How 20 established companies
are winning in the new economy
By David Stauffer
Antitrust Goes Global - What future for Transatlantic
co-operation?
By Simon Evenett, Alexander Lehmann and Benn Steil
Running from the Storm - The development of climate
change policy in Australia
By Clive Hamilton
 The
Chrysalis Economy
How citizen CEOs and corporations can fuse values and value creation
By John Elkington
ISBN: 1 84112 142 8
Publisher & date: Jossey-Bass, 2001
Format: Paperback
Price: A$61.95
As John Elkington perceives it '…
we are seeing a profound values shift in countries around the world'.
One key dimension of this trend is the way in which what would once
have been seen as 'soft values' (such as business ethics or concern
for future generations) are now coming in alongside, and sometimes
even overriding, traditional 'hard' values (such as the paramount
importance of the financial bottom line). And he knows a fair bit
about bottom lines, for this is the same John Elkington that, a
few years back, first introduced us to the paradigm-busting notion
of the triple bottom line - or TBL to those aficionados of the triple
letter acronym (or TCA!).
One of the most impressive aspects
of John Elkington's many books is that he weaves together reflections
on his own personal experiences with narratives and analyses of
ideas, concepts, and events that are emerging and characterising
the business world at large. This talent of synthesis is all too
rare among business writers. It is a particularly powerful device
in his case as, through his hard won consulting reputation and formal
corporate positions, he gains access to many of those who are major
players in the whole game. He is also privileged to have access
to key places around which the game is being played at its highest
level of intensity, and even (perhaps especially) to those nodes
in the global network where the rules of the game itself are under
review. Elkington himself is as much a player as a spectator in
the game that he reports.
He can also be the master of the metaphor
- although like all 'metaphorists', there are times when he succumbs
to the temptation to push the metaphor that little bit too far.
He is also guilty on occasion of creating metaphors that are inconsistent
in their composition, and thus less appealing and illustrative than
they might otherwise have been. Finally, there are times when one
becomes just super-saturated with metaphor. While all three of these
faults are certainly detectable in the present book, they do not
detract too much from the arguments being presented or distract
the reader to a great extent.
In the Chrysalis Economy the
author further expounds upon the TBL theme in his call for 'citizen
CEOs' (those who profoundly appreciate the absolute necessity for
corporations to attend to their social and ecological responsibilities
as well as their economic ones) to provide the necessary leadership
to facilitate the next wave of business transformation. As a medium
for exploring some of the dimensions of this transformation he turns
to the metaphor of the insect chrysalis: the stage in the life cycle
of lepidopterons when, within a self-spun cocoon, rapacious (and
somewhat ugly) caterpillars undergo a sensational re-configuration
of both form and function, to emerge as delicate (and often beautiful)
butterflies (or moths if their particular genes so dictate).
As the author emphasises, this degree
of transformation is not achieved without some serious and radical
shifts in the nature of the beast that involves 'self-digestion'
before metamorphosis is possible. Insights from this powerful metaphor
are used to illuminate many aspects of corporate transformation
throughout the text. Elkington pushes this insect metaphor in at
least two other directions in this book. In the first, he explores
some of the concepts and implications of chaos theory through the
by-now very familiar issue of the butterfly effect - that longstanding
systems principle that relates small perturbations in initial conditions
to very amplified outcomes in systems when they are in states far
from equilibrium. The author is not at his most convincing at these
moments.
Notwithstanding a number of serious
inconsistencies in logic, the author re-employs insect metaphors
to greater effect, with his introduction and explication of the
so called Meta-Matrix he and his colleagues at SustainAbility developed.
To his caterpillar and butterfly analogies, he now adds honeybees
and locusts, a compendium of images of corporate organisations as
sources of metaphoric insight. And somewhat surprisingly, this works,
in spite of the inconsistencies and the further stretch that he
demands with his 'insects' engaged in varying ways with yet another
image - the Learning Flywheel.
The strength of this book lies less
with the metaphors that litter it, than with the literal arguments
that are used in favour of business transformations that heed the
responsibilities demanded by the triple bottom line. These are as
powerful as they are serious and endow the book with a 'need to
read' recommendation. Review: Dr Richard Bawden
 The
Elephant and the Flea
Looking backwards to the future
By Charles Handy
ISBN: 0 09 179363 7
Publisher & date: Random House, 2001
Format: Hardback
Price: A$45.00
We are faced with a tug-of-war between
our desire for a separate identity and our need for combination.
We want to be ourselves, but to survive in a bigger world, we also
need to be part of something bigger. Fleas need elephants, just
as elephants need fleas to keep them alert and dancing.'
Having just completed two very successful
events with Charles Handy, we make available The Elephant and
the Flea in which Handy uses the major themes of his life, looking
at his experience and theories of life and work to discuss the future
of everything from education, work and marriage to capitalism, management,
religion and society.
'Back in 1981, I had decided that
it was not enough to prophesy. I ought to try and practice some
of what I had been preaching, to find out for myself what it felt
like to leave the shelter of organizations and fend for myself -
to be what I have come to call a flea, outside the world of big
organizations that had been the pillars of the employee society
of the twentieth century…
'What is the world going to look
like in the e-age, with its mixture of fleas and elephants? What
is the future of capitalism and how will it change given that value
is now vested in knowledge and know-how rather than land and things
you can see and count'. BUY
 Terror
in the Mind of God
The global rise of religious violence
By Mark Juergensmeyer
ISBN: 0 520 23206 2
Publisher & date: University of California Press, 2001
Format: Hardback
Price: A$37.50
Beneath the histories of religious
traditions - from biblical wars to crusading ventures and great
acts of martyrdom - violence has lurked as a shadowy presence. Images
of death have never been far from the heart of religion's power
to stir the imagination. In this wide-ranging and erudite book,
Mark Juergensmeyer asks one of the most important and perplexing
questions of our age: Why do religious people commit violent acts
in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and
terrorizing entire populations?
This, the first comparative study
of religious terrorism, explores incidents such as the World Trade
Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway nerve
gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United
States. Incorporating personal interviews with World Trade Center
bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas
leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political
leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others, Juergensmeyer takes us
into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violent acts.
In the process, he helps us understand why these acts are often
associated with religious causes and why they occur with such frequency
at this moment in history. Terror in the Mind of God places
these acts of violence in the context of global political and social
changes, and positions them as attempts to empower the cultures
of violence that support them. Juergensmeyer analyzes the economic,
ideological, and gender-related dimensions of cultures that embrace
a central sacred concept--cosmic war--and that employ religion to
demonize their enemies. BUY
 The
Future of Leadership
Today's top leadership thinkers speak to tomorrow's leaders
By Warren Bennis, Gretchen Spreitzer and Thomas Cummings
ISBN: 0 7879 5567 1
Publisher & date: Jossey Bass, 2001
Format: Hardback
Price: A$49.95
The Future of Leadership presents
nineteen original chapters from a stellar group of scholars and
experts - including Bennis himself - who represent the leading thinkers
in management today, as well as some of the newest up-and-coming
leaders. This seminal work reveals their collective wisdom and candid
speculations about the future of leadership and the new economy.
No other book available on the topic
offers the caliber of contributors and the range of thinking included
here. Leadership experts such as Charles Handy, Tom Peters, Edward
Lawler, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, as well as young Silicon Valley
entrepreneurs, present their valuable insights into the challenges
leaders are likely to face as the new millenium unfolds. They examine
a range of timely questions about leadership such as: Why do we
tolerate bad leaders? Why is leadership everyone's business? How
will ethics play into new leadership? And how does the new economy
influence leadership? BUY
 D2D
Dinosaur to Dynamo
How 20 established companies are winning in the New Economy
By David Stauffer
ISBN: 1 84112 136 3
Publisher & date: Capstone, 2001
Format: Hardback
Price: A$58.95
D2D presents a ground-level
perspective on the real-world challenges company leaders face in
aligning their firms in an economic era. David Stauffer explains
how these leaders successfully exploit emerging technologies, meshing
them with the traditional strengths of their long-standing enterprises.
He tells how these top executives have successfully coped with various
business upheavals - such as global production and selling, instant
worldwide information sharing. Complex e-networks of suppliers,
customers and strategic partners. BUY
 Antitrust
Goes Global
What future for transatlantic cooperation?
By Simon Evenett, Alexander Lehmann and Benn Steil
ISBN: 0 8157 2501 9
Publisher & date: Brookings Institution Press, 2000
Format: Paperback
Price: A$35.55
The enormous growth in business mergers
and acquisitions (M&A's) has heightened the importance of antitrust
policy worldwide. Recent antitrust cases such as the Microsoft dispute,
AOL-Time Warner deal, and the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger have
underscored the high stakes involved in antitrust enforcement and
the impact competition standards can have on key sectors of the
world economy. How antitrust policy is interpreted and enforced
can determine not just whether companies will make-or lose-several
billions of dollars, but also the fate of entire industries.
Since the United States and European
Union are the key players in global M&A activity (by 1999, over
80 percent of all cross-border M&A transactions involved American
and European firms), the ability of these two bodies to co-operate
on antitrust policy will dramatically influence the future direction
of the global marketplace.
The book evaluates competition policies
in the US and EU, focusing on the economic and legal questions that
would arise should the US and EU move to deepen their co-operation
on antitrust. Contributors assess whether and how the US and EU
can reconcile competition policy differences, evaluate the merits
of establishing global antitrust standards, and discuss how future
transatlantic disputes are likely to be resolved. BUY
 Running
from the Storm
The development of climate change policy in Australia
By Clive Hamilton
ISBN: 0 86840 612 0
Publisher & date: UNSW Press, 2001
Format: Paperback
Price: A$35.00
A lively, comprehensive and provocative
account of the key issues that affect climate change policy in Australia.
It details the many policy failures, the murky politics of climate
change, the corruption of the policy process, the influence of the
fossil-fuel industries on our politicians and policy makers, and
the ethical issues that underpin the public debate.
All of these issues are discussed
in the context of the momentous international developments before
and after the landmark Kyoto Protocol in December 1997. BUY
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