Social Power and the CEO: Leadership and Trust in a Sustainable Free Enterprise System

The power of top management is pervasive and profound. It affects the quality of economic life, but also our personal and social lives. Equally strong is its impact on the sustainability of a free enterprise system. Psychoanalyst, teacher, and management consultant, Elliott Jaques argues that great as this power is, it is being squandered, not because of what managers do but because of what they don't know. Serious misconceptions about managerial leadership — and equally serious misunderstandings of people — abound. Jaques argues that the problems inherent in the way management is practiced are attributable to gravely dysfunctional systems of managerial leadership, systems that have evolved over the years and are now, despite their ineffectualities, taken for granted. The result of more than a half century of thought, observation, analysis and experimentation, Jaques' book is essential reading for academics, students, consultants, top management, and executives on the way up throughout the public and private sectors.