Beyond Certainty

by Charles B. Handy

In this challenging and exhilarating collection of 35 recent essays, the best-selling author and social philosopher shares his reflections on a changing world, a world in which we can be certain only of uncertainty. To plan for the future in such an environment, says Charles Handy, we must learn to think differently. In vintage Handy style, the author offers pearls of wisdom and truths about work and organizational life. He advocates compromise as the path to progress and urges organizations to give more freedom to individual employees in order to maintain a balance between commitment and creativity. Beyond Certainty is a book to dip into, enjoy, and share with colleagues and friends.

Genres: Business, Management, Leadership

176 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 1995

About the author

Charles Brian Handy was an Irish author and philosopher who specialised in organizational behavior and management. Among the ideas he advanced are the "portfolio career" and the "shamrock organization" (in which professional core workers, freelance workers and part-time/temporary routine workers each form one leaf of the "shamrock").
Handy was rated among the Thinkers 50, a private list of the most influential living management thinkers. In 2001, he was second on this list, behind Peter Drucker, and in 2005, he was tenth. When the Harvard Business Review had a special issue to mark the publication's 50th anniversary Handy, Peter Drucker, and Henry Mintzberg were asked to write special articles.
In July 2006, Handy was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Law by Trinity College Dublin.

Reviews

[Stephen Redwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Handy is an understated sort of person. He writes of values, is modest about his own achievements, and is thoughtful and considerate about the place of business in our world. This might well be a recipe for flakey ideas based on weak logic, but somehow he manages to bring together ideas, reality and facts and produce thought provoking substance. This set of essays was first published in 1995, but they are as relevant today as they were then. This may reflect the slowness of change in the world of work, but it may also show a level of prescience in his thinking that we should have given more attention to at the time. The essays cover a lot of ground: the changing relationship between employers and employees, the role of business in society, and new portfolio based career structures, among other things. All are short snippets, making the book easy to pick at rather than take as a straight front to back read.

[Fergal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Handy’s ideas on portfolio employment becoming more prevalent and large office spaces becoming entirely unnecessary except for meetings were scarily prescient. However, the fear of and respect for Japanese business culture seems baffling; one wonders if 25 years from now people will be similarly baffled by our current fear of China.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book in an Oxfam shop in Edinburgh and in began my passion for Charles Handy's voice. I have a bookshelf now at home devoted to him.