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It’s Broken, Let’s Fix It

The Zeitgeist and Modern Enterprise

  • Book
  • © 2002

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Authors:
  1. Gerard M. Beuckelaer

    1. Kapellen, Belgium

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Table of contents (26 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XI
    Download chapter PDF

  2. The Merits of Capitalism

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 1-1

  3. Why Was the Winner Victorious?

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 2-2

  4. Introducing Evolution

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 3-18

  5. What Is Capitalism?

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 19-24

  6. Contraction and Expansion

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 25-32

  7. An Example, a Scenario and Some Thoughts About Them

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 33-48

  8. The Enterprise

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 49-62

  9. The Enterprise and the World

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 63-77

  10. Commerce and Crafts

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 78-86

  11. Leadership

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 87-98

  12. The Selection Machine

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 99-116

  13. Decisions

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 117-124

  14. Excellence and Mediocrity

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 125-131

  15. Courage and Bureaucracy

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 132-139

  16. Pleasing the Stock Market

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 140-152

  17. The Almighty Bonus

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 153-157

  18. The Cost of Cost Cutting

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 158-166

  19. Employees

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 167-173

  20. Attention Span

    • Gerard M. De Beuckelaer
    Pages 174-176
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Keywords

About this book

We used to have this saying:"Ifit ain't broken, don't fix it." That was a pow­ erful piece of wisdom. It meant: "Ifsomething should, against all odds, func­ tion properly, then do not touch it, you might make things worse!" But then, the re-engineering fashion emerged, and somebody whom I used to deeply admire as one of the most brilliant teachers I ever saw at work, when he was still an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts In­ stitute of Technology (MIT), coined the phrase:"Ifit is not broken: break it!" Now that is obvious non-sense on a logical level,but is it on a social level? Society, and thus business, is driven by fashions. Some of us call it fads. There have been more of those than I care to list here. The more colorful, the moreattention it gets.Attention translates more exuberant the statement, the into book salesand lecture fees.But it does not stop there.Very obviously, the more you pay for a speaker, the higher the distribution numbers for his book, the "truer" his message must be! Wewill revisit the "strange loops" caused by recursion often in this book. Let's start with one example. Did I pay a lot for this lecture because it is good, or is it good because it is expensive? One can very easily see a mechanism here that will make us gravitate towards ever louder and shallower truths.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kapellen, Belgium

    Gerard M. Beuckelaer

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: It’s Broken, Let’s Fix It

  • Book Subtitle: The Zeitgeist and Modern Enterprise

  • Authors: Gerard M. Beuckelaer

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04890-0

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-540-67325-5Published: 20 November 2001

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-08672-4Published: 01 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-662-04890-0Published: 17 April 2013

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 284

  • Number of Illustrations: 71 b/w illustrations, 6 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Macroeconomics/Monetary Economics//Financial Economics, Computers and Society, Philosophy, general

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