Revolutionary account of the transformative potential of the knowledge economy Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

This volume synthesizes thinking on knowledge management and intellectual capital from a broad range of sources and identifies how human resource management can make a value-added contribution.

Many people set out to achieve a dream-starting a business or learning to play the piano or publishing a book-but they don't succeed, and the dream fizzles away. In many cases, these people have lots of skills and expertise, such as deep knowledge of the business or career they are interested in, so why don't they succeed? Paul Levesque and Art McNeil have discovered that making a dream come true requires cultivating skills of a higher order-macroskills-that inevitably spell the difference between success and failure no matter what the specifics of a person's dreams are. These are the skills Dreamcrafting outlines in detail.

A common charge leveled against the autopoietic perspective is that it does not explain change or, consequently, knowledge creation. This book demonstrates that knowledge creation is not always an ongoing process, as is claimed in many process philosophy and autopoietic research works. The author introduces the idea of recursivity, which represents the explanatory potential for uninterrupted knowledge creation and paves the way for interaction between process (e.g. production) and stability (e.g. structure). The book describes the nature and role of recursivity in detail, especially in terms of how a system’s structure and production become media for one another. The book also acknowledges the value of the systems perspective on organizations in management studies, but suggests a different approach to defining systems, one that includes autopoietic elements.

With this innovative book, readers will discover how to effectively implement change initiatives by gaining a better understanding of both the behavioral and operational aspects of an organization. The new second edition continues to show them how, through Action-Learning Teams, they can accomplish tangible business objectives while creating superior workforce development within their organizations. New material integrated throughout the book will help them facilitate these teams in a virtual environment. It also clearly shows them how to design and deploy significant organizational initiatives and change processes.