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Competing in the Third Wave: The Ten Key Management Issues of the Information Age By Jeremy Hope and Tony Hope. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. 253 pages, hard cover, $27.50
"And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And God fulfills himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Tennyson's words in Idylls of the King in many ways reflect the realities of the current tumultuous business environment: downsizing, restructuring, globalization, technological change, and the information explosion. In virtually every segment of the business world today, the old order changes and a radically different competitive landscape emerges. Managers are left struggling to make that transition and to position their organizations for success in a post-industrialist, knowledge-driven society. In Competing in the Third Wave, Jeremy and Tony Hope describe the basis of the changing competitive landscape and attempt to provide a road map for managers to the new information age. In doing so, they draw on their own considerable expertise as internationally recognized business consultants and authors, as well as on the expertise of management experts such as Peter Drucker, Theodore Levitt, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and C. K. Prahalad.
Peter Drucker notes in his Post-Capitalist Society that "Every few hundred years in Western history...