Temporary Society - Hardcover

"Truly a classic reborn. What a pleasure to read this great combination of old and new predictions and valuable insights by Bennis and Slater." —Edward E. Lawler III, , author of From The Ground Up (Jossey–Basss, 1996)

"A pioneering study still offering deep insights into American Life. If it was Max Weber who first defined bureaucracy and predicted its triumph, Bennis and Slater may go down in sociological textbooks as the men who first convincingly predicted its demise and sketched the outlines of the organizations that are springing up to replace it." —Alvin Toffler,, author of Future Shock

"Were Slater and Bennis prescient, or merely lucky guessers, when they wrote this book in 1968? No. They deeply understood–before the rest of us–the fundamentals of human Andeavor, the axioms of social and economic enterprise. The Temporary Society is timeless in its message and essential reading for the citizen–leader of the 21st century." —Donald C. Hambrick, Samuel Bronfman Professor of Democratic Business Enterprise, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

"The world has always been more wild than those who don′t really read history admit. If [Warren Bennis and Philip Slater] choose to regard the present era as unusually torn by change, they′ve got a good point. What′s more, they advance cogent ideas on how to live in a time of tumult?." —The New York Times

"An And to authoritarianism? Leaders as facilitators? Democratic workplaces and families? Warren Bennis and Philip Slater predicted as much in the early 1960s. They were also the first, as far as I know, to foresee the collapse of global communism as inevitable. In this update of their earlier work, they reopen that conversation and draw all of us readers in to become futurists ourselves." —Art Kleiner, author, The Age of Heretics

Examine most any business bookshelf and you′ll find work after work devoted to fads that have passed, to fads in the making. Occasionally, however, you′ll discover the exception: that rare book that manages to identify and illuminate the awesome if sometimes silent trends that have and will continue to impact business life for years to come. The Temporary Society is one such book.
The Temporary Society could be regarded as the business version of Naisbitt′s Megatrends. Here, readers will examine the implications of a world in which capitalism has become the primary economic model in which freelance and contingent work arrangements predominate, where families struggle to reconcile home life and career, and governments take a backseat to the forces of global commerce. And the amazing part is that The Temporary Society was first published thirty years ago.
In these six essays–including "Democracy Is Inevitable," originally published in the Harvard Business Review–renowned business pundit Warren Bennis and Brandeis sociologist Philip Slater presented a take on the future that struck most of their contemporaries as being too far–fetched. But in the years since, their predictions have materialized with uncanny accuracy, and Bennis has gone on to become one of today′s most widely respected business thinkers.
Now, in this thirtieth anniversary edition of their seminal work, Bennis and Slater team up again to reflect on the events of the last three decades and look forward to the changes ahead. Featuring a new preface by the authors and contemporary introductions to each chapter, The Temporary Society is as relevant as ever, with fresh predictions for the networked organizations and flattened hierarchies of the future.
A welcome antidote to the hype surrounding new movements and business fads, the classic book that prophetically heralded the current state of our world–newly revised and updated––contains much–needed wisdom for the century to come.