Managing On the Edge: How Successful Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead

An exploration of why companies decline and why so few of the top 500 companies in the US 10 years ago have kept their place. Pascale approaches the question partly by looking at Japanese companies which have remained successful (particularly Honda), partly by a close look at big American companies like Ford and General Electric. His conclusions are that American and British companies tend to be run by small cliques of people who, no matter how hard they work and how determined they are, eventually run out of ideas. He sees that Japanese companies are much more democratically managed and that Honda, for example, positively encourages conflict by divisionizing.