Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontier of Management represents both a culmination of two decades of scholarship that Rosabeth Moss Kanter has contributed to management and organization theory, as well as a road map for the future. The title of this new book has the intended double meaning of introducing her commentary on important managerial issues, as well as suggesting that her work has been (and continues to be) on the cutting-edge. Although the book brings together previously published articles that appeared in the Harvard Business Review and elsewhere, it has both coherence and freshness. It is a tribute to the contributions that Kanter has made to the ®eld of management and organization that none of the ideas in the book seem dated, nor far o the mark, despite having been published years earlier. Indeed, at this stage, many of the concepts and ideas that Kanter has introduced over the years have passed into standard usage within the ®eld.
As a reader familiar with most of Kanter's books as they have been published, I did not expect to ®nd the volume under review to make a major contribution. I was pleasantly surprised to ®nd that she has pulled together into one volume her major contributions, with new introductions and linkages. This book provides, as it says, a refresher course, a handbook, a guide, and an agenda. It is for this reason the book is a valuable addition to the libraries of management researchers and practitioners.
The book is organized into six parts: an introduction about leading `change-adept' organizations; and sections on strategy, leading change, managing people, crossing boundaries, and managing meaning (values and purpose). Each section contains several articles about the topic, along with a newly written overview.
The introduction elaborates in a new way on the ideas developed in World ClassÐ concepts, competence, and connections (or in her other terminology, thinking, making and trading)Ðby providing context to current management fads and fashions and introducing the notion as an on-going organizational skill that builds on the past and moves into the future. The section on strategy also builds on other work over the last several years on organizational transformation, such as core competencies, and lays out a framework both for managing the business today, and meeting tomorrow's challenges. Section 4 on managing change further explores the meaning of innovation, creativity, and customer relationships. The section on managing people addresses the themes of power and powerlessness, developing professionalism in all workers, rewards and motivation, and the need to follow-through on promises for employability security. In addition, the section raises institutional issues, such as the portability of pensions, that may make the ¯exibility that many organizations seek possible. The section on crossing boundaries develops the ideas of how to collaborate for both competitive and collective advantage, and introduces the intriguing concept of politics as an essential managerial skill. It also revisits the issues of the relationship between community needs and business in a global economy. In the last section of the book Kanter explores the meaning and the utility of values in management, concluding with what may be Kanter's next radical' notion that the long view must be a shared view'.
Overall, this book should be of interest to both teachers and managers. It brings together many of the currently `hot' topics of management and organization into an easily readable and perceptive text that could be used for graduate or undergraduate