by Thomas W. Malone

We humans have come a long way from our earliest hunting and gathering bands to the increasingly networked, decentralized organizations of today.  At each step along the way, new technologies like writing, the printing press, and now the Internet were key enablers of our progress.  While centralized hierarchies are in no danger of going away, new technologies are now making it feasible-on a scale never before possible-to make more and more business decisions in more decentralized ways, through loose hierarchies, democracies, and markets.  Managing successfully in this world will require you to expand your managerial repertoire beyond the traditional model of command and control to a broad range of ways to coordinate and cultivate-both centralized and decentralized.

But all along the way, the key drivers of our progress have been our own human values-our desires for material well-being, for freedom, and for all the other things that matter to us.  Whether we think consciously about them or not, our values influence the choices we make.  And if we want to make those choices wisely, we need to think deeply about the things that really matter to us.  Either way, the choices we make now about how to use the amazing potential of information technology to organize work will shape our future for many decades to come.

As I write this conclusion in the spring of 2003, there are plenty of signs of trouble in the world.  In the last few years, many stock price indexes have lost more value than at any time since the Great Depression, and the prospects for economic recovery are still very uncertain.  Fighting continues in the Middle East, and we face the very real possibility of a widening worldwide war of terrorism, perhaps even a global confrontation across cultural and religious lines. 

In times of trouble like these, we humans are often tempted to retreat.  We want to look to powerful centralized leaders to save and protect us.  We want to go back to the way things used to be.  We want to stop worrying about "luxuries" like social values.  And we want to stop experimenting with new ways of doing things.

Tempting as it may be, however, this may be exactly the wrong way out of our present problems.  Perhaps the solution to our problems lies not in going back to the old ways, but in going forward to the new ones; not in looking to authority figures to protect us, but in figuring out for ourselves new things to try; not in focusing ever more closely on the economic bottom line, but in looking deep within ourselves for the things that really matter.

Of course, there are no easy answers here.  Figuring out for yourself how to do your work and live your life in ways that are consistent with your own deepest values is no easier now than it ever was.  But one of the most important messages I have for you in this book is that you probably have more choices than you realize in your work and your life.  And that, in this time of vast change in the world, your choices probably have more impact than you realize in shaping our world for the rest of this century.

By the time you read these words, the problems I see around me today may have become much worse, or they may have gone away.  In the short term, you may see signs of increasing centralization, or you may see the opposite. 

But regardless of the short term ups and downs that are always present in human affairs, the deep forces we've seen in this book will continue to work their way through our businesses and our societies, year after year and decade after decade..

Where will it all end? 

Of course, we don't know for sure. 

But it seems quite possible that when future generations look back at the history of business, they will realize that the huge, centralized, hierarchical corporations of the 20th century were not the pinnacle of business organization.  Instead, they may see these "traditional" corporations as merely a temporary aberration-an interlude of centralization-between periods of largely decentralized organizations. 

But the decentralized organizations of the 21st century, unlike their predecessors, will be able to take advantage of the benefits of both bigness and smallness.  They'll give individuals lots of flexibility and freedom, but they'll also integrate people and activities all over the world on a scale never before even remotely possible in the history of humanity.  The powerful economic and technological forces pushing in this direction make this outcome very likely indeed. 

But one aspect of the future is less certain:  Will this be a world that is not only more efficient economically, but also better for the people who live in it? 

That is up to you. 

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press.  Excerpted from The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life by Thomas W. Malone. Copyright (c) 2004 Thomas W. Malone; All Rights Reserved.