DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC tells the 40-year story of the creation, demise, and enduring legacy of one of the pioneering companies of the computer age. Digital Equipment Corporation created the minicomputer, networking, the concept of distributed computing, speech recognition, and other major innovations. It was the number two computer maker behind IBM. Yet it ultimately failed as a business and was sold to Compaq Corporation. What happened?

Edgar Schein consulted to DEC throughout its history and so had unparalleled access to all the major players, and an inside view of all the major events. He shows how the unique organizational culture established by DEC's founder, Ken Olsen, gave the company important competitive advantages in its early years, but later became a hindrance and ultimately led to the company's downfall. Schein, Kampas, DeLisi, and Sonduck explain in detail how a particular culture can become so embedded that an organization is unable to adapt to changing circumstances even though it sees the need very clearly.

The essential elements of DEC's culture are still visible in many other organizations today, and most former employees are so positive about their days at DEC that they attempt to reproduce its culture in their current work situations. In the era of post-dot.com meltdown, raging debate about companies "built to last" vs. "built to sell," and more entrepreneurial startups than ever, the rise and fall of DEC is the ultimate case study.

•    Edgar Schein is one of the founders of the organization development field, a widely respected scholar and a bestselling author

•    Shows how the unique culture of DEC was responsible both for its early rise and for its ultimate downfall-a real-life classical tragedy

•    Schein was a high-level consultant to DEC throughout its history, with unparalleled access to the company's story as it unfolded over the course of four decades


DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC tells the 40-year story of the creation, demise, and enduring legacy of one of the pioneering companies of the computer age. Digital Equipment Corporation created the minicomputer, networking, the concept of distributed computing, speech recognition, and other major innovations. It was the number two computer maker behind IBM. Yet it ultimately failed as a business and was sold to Compaq Corporation. What happened?

Edgar Schein consulted to DEC throughout its history and so had unparalleled access to all the major players, and an inside view of all the major events. He shows how the unique organizational culture established by DEC's founder, Ken Olsen, gave the company important competitive advantages in its early years, but later became a hindrance and ultimately led to the company's downfall. Schein, Kampas, DeLisi, and Sonduck explain in detail how a particular culture can become so embedded that an organization is unable to adapt to changing circumstances even though it sees the need very clearly.

The essential elements of DEC's culture are still visible in many other organizations today, and most former employees are so positive about their days at DEC that they attempt to reproduce its culture in their current work situations. In the era of post-dot.com meltdown, raging debate about companies "built to last" vs. "built to sell," and more entrepreneurial startups than ever, the rise and fall of DEC is the ultimate case study.

WINNER OF THE 2015 IBPA BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD IN POLITICS/CURRENT EVENTS

The Ecology of Law

Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei argue that at the root of many of the environmental, economic, and social crises we face today is a legal system based on an obsolete worldview. Capra, a bestselling author, physicist, and systems theorist, and Mattei, a distinguished legal scholar, explain how, by incorporating concepts from modern science, the law can become an integral part of bringing about a better world, rather than facilitating its destruction.

This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: the world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Capra and Mattei show that this has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good.

Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on this planet. This is a profound and visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet.

There is a growing epidemic afflicting people working in social change that is rarely talked about - burnout. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, offers The Age of Overwhelm as the salve for healing.Whether we are overwhelmed by work or school; our families or communities; caretaking for others or ourselves; or engagement in social justice, environmental advocacy, or civil service, just a few subtle shifts can help sustain us. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, bestselling author of Trauma Stewardship, shows us how by offering concrete strategies to help us mitigate harm, cultivate our ability to be decent and equitable, and act with integrity. The Age of Overwhelm aims to help ease our burden of overwhelm, restore our perspective, and give us strength to navigate what is yet to come.

The more traditional forms of leadership that are based on static hierarchies and professional distance between leaders and followers are growing increasingly outdated and ineffective. As organizations face more complex interdependent tasks, leadership must become more personal in order to insure open trusting communication that will make more collaborative problem solving and innovation possible. Without open and trusting communications throughout organizations, they will continue to face the productivity and quality problems that result from reward systems that emphasize individual competition and “climbing the corporate ladder”. Authors Edgar Schein and Peter Schein recognize this reality and call for a reimagined form of leadership that coincides with emerging trends of relationship building, complex group work, diverse workforces, and cultures in which everyone feels psychologically safe. Humble Leadership calls for “here and now” humility based on a deeper understanding of the constantly evolving complexities of interpersonal, group and intergroup relationships that require shifting our focus towards the process of group dynamics and collaboration. Humble Leadership at all levels and in all working groups will be the key to achieving the creativity, adaptiveness, and agility that organizations will need to survive and grow.

If you want to build a better life and a better world—and really be prepared for any possible future in these turbulent times—you need to become a resilient investor! This trailblazing guide will expand your ideas of investing way beyond Wall Street. Your time, your energy, and the things you own are investments too, and you'll learn to diversify them in ways that move you toward your life goals.

The Resilient Investment Map lays out all your assets—personal and physical as well as financial—and then provides three essential, timely strategies (Close to Home, Sustainable Global Economy, and Evolutionary Investing) that will help you grow each of them. The goal is to become more resilient: able to anticipate disturbance, rebuild as necessary, and improve when possible. You'll discover that the choices making you more resilient also enhance our communities, our economy, and the planet—building real wealth for all.

• An international bestselling classic (over 250,000 copies sold of the first edition), newly revised for today's managers
• Recognized as one of the most influential management texts of the last decade, Images of Organization revolutionized the way we look at organizations
• This classic book has been revised, updated, and abridged to meet the needs of today's managers
• Copublished with Sage Publications

This pioneering work is based on a simple premise with profound implications: All organization and management theories are based on images, or metaphors, with paradoxical effects: they can create profound insights but also grotesque distortions. Morgan makes his case by showing how theories of organization and management have been shaped by a few powerful metaphors-most notably those of the machine, the living organism, culture, politics, and, more recently, the learning organization, complexity, chaos, flux, and change. With this seminal work, he shows how managers can avoid superficial management fads by selecting metaphors wisely and then using them creatively to generate insights, ideas, and new ways of working.

As the first book to offer a concrete method for integrating the strengths and overcoming the weaknesses of competing management perspectives, Images of Organization has established itself as a classic and influenced management thinking throughout the world. The new edition retains all the vitality of the original and has been updated to integrate significant research of the last decade. It has also been abridged and revised to increase its accessibility and usefulness for managerial audiences.

Images of Organization-The Executive Edition is a monumental work. No other management book covers so much ground while developing the implications for management with such force. Morgan is a master of the links between theory and practice. He has a gift for stripping complex ideas to fundamentals, and for fusing a kaleidoscope of insights into practical schemes for reading and shaping organizational life. This essential volume provides the kind of organizational "radar" system managers need to negotiate the demands of the 21st century. It is a resource they will turn to again and again.

• An international bestselling classic (over 250,000 copies sold of the first edition), newly revised for today's managers
• Recognized as one of the most influential management texts of the last decade, Images of Organization revolutionized the way we look at organizations
• This classic book has been revised, updated, and abridged to meet the needs of today's managers
• Copublished with Sage Publications