This list shows a selection of work written by Arie de Geus, various press interviews and other articles of interest.
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Secrets of the Hot Seat
How to Run a Company - Secrets of the Hot Seat - Financial Times Business Book Review , 20-Nov-03External weblinkBusiness books fall into two main categories. By far the largest is written by academics and consultants, people who tend to be long on theory but short on real-world management experience. Less frequent are memoirs and "how to" guides written by career managers, in which anecdote too often substitutes for insight. There are, however, notable exceptions to the memoir rule. Books such as Alfred Sloan's My Years at General Motors (1963) and The Living Company (1997) by Arie de Geus, former Shell manager, demonstrate that some multi-talented managers can cross the divide
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The Future is Multiple
The Future is Multiple , 1996Language creates reality. The language that we use when we speak to one another in our companies creates the reality that we face inside those companies. If we talk about the company as an asset-based, profit-producing machine, we create a different reality than when we see a company as a living thing, a community of people. Talking about companies in the language of a human community may make us see the corporate reality in a way that can help solve problems resulting from our previous views.
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The Living Company
The Living Company: A Recipe for Success in the New Economy - The Washington Quarterly , March/April 1997External weblinkIn the world of institutions, commercial corporations are newcomers. They have been around for only 500 years - a mere blip in the course of human civilization. In that time, as producers of material wealth, they have enjoyed immense success. They have sustained the world's exploding population with the goods and services that make civlized life possible ...
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The Living Company: A recipe for success in the New Economy
The Living Company: A Recipe for Success in the New Economy , Winter 1998What distinguishing features characterize the New Economy? Is it a mere wave of new technology, or should we look deeper? Does it threaten only the weak and the meek? Or have the basic conditions to achieve long-term business success changed dramatically?
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VOEKS AT 50- SHELL AT 110
VOEKS AT 50 - SHELL AT 110 - Draft article for the Dutch pensioners magazine , September-00VOEKS is 50, the Koninklijke 110 years of age. My father and I together have been there for 53 of those years- 1936 to 1989- i.e. all of VOEKS' life and half the lifespan of the Koninklijke. What a good moment to look back as well as forward. VOEKS is, obviously, strongly related to the Pension Fund. But there is a long history that preceded both.