The Elephant And The Flea
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Bookseller Charles Handy's best-selling new book looks at how individuals (the fleas in his analogy) relate to multi-national conglomerates (the elephants). In addition to addressing how and why we work today, he covers a wide range of preoccupations and issues including the increasing fear of big business: 'it is easy to see why many observers think that the big corporations are now both richer and more powerful than many nation states. They worry that these new corporate states are accountable to no-one - that their financial clout makes governments beholden to them ... The elephants, people feel, are out of control.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A former oil executive and economist, as well as an early proponent of the "free agent" lifestyle, Handy (The Age of Unreason) uses his career as a telling example of how the nature of work has changed over the past 20 years and tries to predict how people will earn a living in the years ahead. Handy opens the book three-quarters autobiography, one-quarter social commentary with warm recollections of his Irish countryside childhood before elaborating his metaphor for the workplace, that of the elephant and flea. "Elephants" represent established corporations and large organizations of every kind, while "fleas" symbolize people who work independently as small-scale entrepreneurs. Handy, who used to work for Shell and has made his living as a lecturer and author since 1981, finds problems and opportunities in both kinds of establishments. Elephants, he contends, need to figure out ways to grow bigger while maintaining personal client relationships and rewarding creativity. The fleas need a better way to forge connections among themselves. Handy offers some general advice, but his main purpose is to try to make sense of the first 70 years of his life and the last two decades of the Western workplace. Some of his labor market analysis will seem familiar to readers, as it has already seeped into the cultural lexicon, but Handy's fans will appreciate this unusually personal look at the labor revolution. This is not the start-off book for those new to his work, however.