 Picture courtesy of Elizabeth Handy |
Episode 2: Charles Handy
Highlights:
In 1974 I made the earliest attempt to describe the different cultures or types of organizations. Every organization, I felt, is a different mix of the same four basic cultures which I represented with names of Greek Gods:
- Zeus Culture, after the powerful head of the gods, an organization dominated by the personality and power of one person, often the founder or owner.
- Apollo Culture, after the God of harmony and order, dominated by rules and procedures.
- Athena Culture, after the warrior goddess, the symbol of the project organization, the culture that dominates consultancies, advertising agencies and, increasingly, all innovative businesses.
- Dionysius Culture, in which the individual has the freedom to develop his or her own ideas in the way they want - an artists' studio, perhaps, or a university.
I started out wanting to make organizations more efficient but soon I began to worry about another problem: organizations were shrinking in their numbers and concentrating on fewer and younger full-time employees, by outsourcing or subcontracting.
Half of the working population, I suggested, would not be full-time employees by the year 2000. These people would have to develop 'portfolio' lives, a mix of different bits and pieces of work, some for money, some for fun, some for free. By the end of the century, my prediction had come true in Britain and much of Northern Europe.
The next episode looks at the work of Peter Drucker.
Read Charles Handy's biography
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