In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school and bedside table, and continues to influence the thinking of leaders and managers across the globe today.

Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a range of sectors - consumer goods, technology, services - the book identifies eight common 'attributes of excellence' that made these organisations successful. Though many of the profiled companies have since lost their edge (or disappeared completely), these eight management principles, each highlighted in a chapter in the book, have shown themselves to be timeless.

These simple business truths, so eloquently encapsulated by Peters and Waterman, are proof that the fundamentals of management - a focus on people, customers and value, entrepreneurship and excellence - ring as true today as they ever did.

In Search of Excellence is a seminal business book, worthy of a place on the bookshelves of anyone who wants to understand how effective management works in practice.

The "Greatest Business Book of All Time" (Bloomsbury UK), "In Search of Excellence" has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table.

Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, "In Search of Excellence" describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful.

Joining the HarperBusiness Essentials series, this phenomenal bestseller features a new Authors' Note, and reintroduces these vital principles in an accessible and practical way for today's management reader.

Adhocracy: Any form of organization that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results. In an era of accelerating change, organizations, and national economies, most likely to succeed are those with the ability to adjust and adapt. Robert H. Waterman Jr., coauthor of the best-selling In Search of Excellence, shows how and what this sort of innovation must become a way of life for business organizations across the board. What is needed is an environment that fosters the use of an ad-hoc problem-solving technique, in effect an "adhocracy" that functions outside the often initiative-stifling bureaucracy. Drawing on twenty-five years' experience in management consulting, Waterman offers clear instructions on how to establish adhocracy and make it work: creating task forces and independent business units, even two people meeting in a hallway to solve a common problem. A lively and insightful work, this should become an essential handbook for managers at all levels who recognize the need to redefine the rules for success.