Other publications

This list shows a selection of work written by Arie de Geus, various press interviews and other articles of interest.

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  • An Old Model for Success

    Keith Ryan, An Old Model for Success - Insights Magazine in association with IBM , Nov-05

    There's a memorable passage in The Living Company, by Arie de Geus: "When I entered my first place of work [in the fifties]... I felt a slight level of discomfort. The theories back at business school had mentioned labour, but there had been no talk of people. Yet the real world... seemed to be full of them. And because the workplace was full of people, it looked suspiciously as if companies were not always rational, calculable and controllable."

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  • Beating uncertainty in business

    A P de Geus, Beating Uncertainty in Business - Mondial

    Over the last 20 years uncertainty in and around the world of business has increased. Companies are no longer sure how to react to the changes taking place. This uncertainty raises vital questions. What should your managerial priorities be? And, first of all, what are the underlying causes?

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  • Belastingdienst

    Belastingdienst - Dutch Inland Revenue , 01-Mar-04

    Waar de Belastingdienst vorig jaar voorzichtig begon met een verkenning van de toekomst, timmeren sommige andere organisaties al lange tijd aan de weg met hun 'vergezichten'. Zo zijn de Shell-scenario's inmiddels ruim drie decennia een begrip. Belastingbulletin belde met Arie de Geus, in zijn tijd een van de voorvechters van het scenariodenken binnen de oliemaatschappij. 'Als je dit verstandig aanpakt, kom je nooit voor verrassingen te staan.'

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  • Birth of the living company

    Morgan Witzel, Birth of the Living Company - Financial Times , 21-Aug-03
    Arie de Geus is best known for his role in the development of the concept of the "learning organisation". He has also produced a series of works on organisation that take a holistic view of companies and their environment. A working manager who only turned to academia late in his career, he combines pragmatism with high theory. His statement that in the future a company's only sustainable advantage may be its ability to learn became a business mantra of the 1990s ...
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  • Het Einde van 19e Eeuws Denken Het nieuwe kapitaal: menselij

    Cora van Wezel, Het Einde van 19e Eeuws Denken Het Nieuwe Kapitaal: Menselijk Talent! - ICT Manager , 01-Jun-02

    Voormalig Shell topman Arie de Geus denkt niet elke dag na over ICT als zodanig. Waar hij zichzelf wel vragen over stelt is wat is de aard en de plaats van Information Technology in het bedrijfsleven van vandaag? Is het een technologie op zichzelf, heeft het absolute waarde of is het alleen maar een bepaald 'stadium' van iets diepers en heeft het daardoor een veel wijdere uitwerking? Arie was o.a. Hoofd Corporate Strategic Planning en na zijn pensionering bleef hij minstens zo actief als ervoor. Hij verworf faam als management strateeg en is auteur van het inspirerende boek 'The Living Company'. IcT manager 'ontlokte' hem zijn hypotheses en visies rond ICT, mens en organisatie

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  • Secrets of the Hot Seat

    Simon London, How to Run a Company - Secrets of the Hot Seat - Financial Times Business Book Review , 20-Nov-03

    Business 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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  • Iedere Avond Loopt het Kapitaal de Deur Uit

    Hendrik van Oostrum & Rob Huisman, Iedere Avond Loopt het Kapitaal de Deur Uit - Financieele Dagblad , 28-Sep-01

    De link tussen een carrière van veertig jaar bij Shell en het gedachtegoed van Karl Marx is niet snel gelegd. Behalve door Arie de Geus. 'Winst is niet het doel van ondernemen, maar het resultaat ervan.' Hij is gefascineerd door Het communistisch manifest van de hand van Marx. In Wenen sprak hij twee jaar geleden een zaal vol personeelsmanagers toe. Nahem betrad Charles Handy het podium. Handy, net als de Nederlander een veel gevraagd spreker op congressen, vatte De Geus' betoog kort en bondig samen: 'Jullie leven in de wereld van Karl Marx.'

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  • Innovation and the Human Contract

    A P de Geus, Innovation and the Human Contract - The Insurance Specialist , June 1997

    Is there anything we can learn from companies older than ours? This was the question that some people at Shell asked themselves in the mid 1980's. Business history is a much neglected subject nowadays. Is that because today's world is so different from the past that history carries no lessons? Or are we so absorbed by the present that we do not afford the time to look at the past?

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  • Modelling to Predict or Learn?

    A P de Geus, Modelling to Predict or Learn? - European Journal of Operational Research , 26-May-92

    Many a time, the search for a good answer to a good question leads to unexpected, but often satisfactory discoveries. Looking at the table of contents of this issue of the European Journal of Operational Research, one wonders whether one is looking at such a case.

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  • Planning as Learning

    A P de Geus, Planning as Learning - Harvard Business Review , March/April 1988
    Some years ago, the planning group at Shell surveyed 30 companies that had been in business for more than 75 years. What impressed us most was their ability to live in harmony with the business environment, to switch from a survival mode when times were turbulent to a self-development mode when the pace of change was slow. And this pattern rang a familiar bell because Shell's history is similarly replete with swiches from expansion to self-preservation and back again to growth ...
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