Though bureaucracy appears on almost every "biggest problems with business" list, most management books simply suggest ways to make it work better. This book shows how to replace bureaucracy with fundamentally different principles for organizing and coordinating work.

Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot confront head-on the key organizational issues that are threatening the very existence of today's corporations. They assert that "bureaucracy is no more appropriate to the information age than serfdom was to the industrial era. Only freedom and community will work."

The Pinchots describe "intelligent organizations" that make full use of the intelligence of all employees. By developing and engaging the intelligence, business judgment, and wide-system responsibility of all its members, an organization can respond far more effectively to customers, partners, and competitors. The Pinchots provide a far-reaching guide to:
o establishing internal free markets
o liberated teams
o community in the workplace
o equality and diversity
o democratic self-rule
o multiple sources of authority
o limited corporate government

The Pinchots support the sweeping changes they propose with numerous examples of how these changes are already being implemented in such diverse organizations as AT&T, the Canadian National Railroad, DuPont, Russian entrepreneurial firms, Hewlett-Packard, and the U.S. Forest Service.