Corporate Failure by Design

"A compelling chronicle and analysis about why industrial-era organizations are likely doomed to failure because of their inability to adapt to the rapidly advancing age of information. Reinventing organizations is not enough-they have to be virtually obliterated, then rebuilt through new relationships." -- J.D. Power III, Founder and Chairman, J.D. Power and Associates "Make no mistake about it. Jonathan Klein's Corporate Failure by Design is an important book. Ideally, every manager and executive should read this book. If it helps to turn around only one organization, it will have proved its worth. Those who do not read Jonathan's book do so at their own peril." -- Ian I. Mitroff, Harold Quinton Distinguished Professor of Business Policy, University of Southern California This book is a MUST-READ... [W]ith the release of Corporate Failure by Design: Why Organizations are Built to Fail, Dr. Jonathan Klein takes his rightful place among the best and brightest of business writers and analysts in the 21st century! No other author has used insight and research skills to so eloquently state the true dysfunctional nature of the organization, and the very fact that each organization is literally designed for failure right from the start. I guarantee that you will find Dr. Klein's book enlightening ... a real eye opener! -- Richard S. Hockett, Founder/President Creative Business Solutions

This work explores how organizations are built to fail, arguing that personnel often serve individual rather than organizational interests; consequently the organization is likely inadvertently pursue self-destructive goals. The book also outlines possible solutions.Based on data regarding corporate mortality, organizations are built to fail: a conclusion critical to managers, employees, stockholders, consultants, customers, vendors, competitors, and therefore all of us who transact with and depend on organizations. Yet, literature about organizational management tends to focus on education and inspiration, and to bristle with optimism about the potential success of applying its wares. Ignored, in virtually all of this literature is the reality that personnel may or may not be inherently self-interested, but certainly join business organizations in order to serve individual rather than organizational interests. Individual self-interest is advanced through control of various processes in order to rationalize that self-interest as a productive, organizational purpose, which not simply suppresses opposition but also conceals or even demonizes that opposition. These processes include such familiar organizational functions as individual and organizational goal-setting, job and organizational design, leadership, hiring, performance appraisal, compensation, promotion, communication, corporate culture, and change. At all levels, therefore, the organization's long-term interest is undermined by the goals of the very members of whom it is comprised—it is built to fail. And through control of its various internal processes and elimination of opposition, the organization pursues self-destructive goals without knowing it.