The Elephant and the Flea

by Charles Handy

Overview

Discusses everything from the author's childhood in a Irish vicarage, to Oxford University, to his first job as an oil executive with Royal Dutch/Shell in the Far East, to a professorship at the London Business School, and finally to his status as an eminent social philosopher and international business guru.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591391289
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	12/26/2002
Series:	Reflection of a Reluctant Capitalist
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.02(w) x 8.14(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Charles Handy is a writer and broadcaster, known to many for his “Thoughts for Today” on the BBC’s Today program. He was named Business Columnist of the Year in 1994 for some of his pieces in The Empty Raincoat. His books, including The Empty Raincoat, have sold over one million copies around the world. He has been, in his time, an oil executive, a business economist, a Professor at the London Business School, and Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts. He and his wife Elizabeth, a portrait photographer, live in London, Norfolk and Tuscany.

Read an Excerpt

“We are faced with a tug-of-war between our desire for a separate identity and our need for combination. We want to be ourselves but to survive in a bigger world, we also need to be part of something bigger. Fleas need elephants, just as elephants need fleas to keep them alert and dancing.”

“This also applies to my own life story, as I found elephants too imprisoning to my eventual freedom as a flea. But the idea also applies to economies who need both, to business which has to structure itself to allow fleas to co-exist with the elephants, to society which needs to encourage individualism but needs the conformity of the elephant, to education, to religion, to marriage and other relationships, and to all people seeking to structure their lives.” –Charles Handy

Copyright 2001 by Charles Handy